Black Bourgeoisie Reportedly Live in NO's Lowest Lying Neighborhoods
I wonder if this, if it is a fact, will help ensure that discriminatory eminent domain prerogatives will be met with early and frequent opposition and denunciation?
The New Orleans middle class chose to live in newer homes for all the same reasons as the rest of America. But these homes were low, and often as not African-American. The members of the middle class may have escaped with their lives, but when they return, will the economic opportunity to rebuild their community, homes and African-American-owned businesses greet them, or will this community become another diaspora?
In other black middle class news, the president of the Chamber of Commerce of New Orleans, Alden J. McDonald Jr., is CEO of the third largest black-owned bank in the U.S., Liberty Bank and Trust -- now working out of Baton Rouge, where he and the rest of the NO business establishment have relocated.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/10/opinion/l10kristof.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fLetters
To the Editor:
The poverty we are witnessing in New Orleans, wrought by governmental policy and highlighted by Hurricane Katrina, is shameful indeed. But the quieter tragedy, not yet unfolding, may be our loss of one of America's most vibrant African-American middle-class communities.
My husband and I lived in New Orleans for five years. That the wealthy live on high ground and the poor on low ground is not entirely accurate. While high ground was developed first, and famously, in the 18th-century French Quarter, virtually all construction since then has been on progressively lower ground. Finally, postwar construction in New Orleans, and newer homes still, are on the lowest ground of all.
The New Orleans middle class chose to live in newer homes for all the same reasons as the rest of America. But these homes were low, and often as not African-American. The members of the middle class may have escaped with their lives, but when they return, will the economic opportunity to rebuild their community, homes and African-American-owned businesses greet them, or will this community become another diaspora?
Leslie Myers
New Haven, Sept. 6, 2005
The New Orleans middle class chose to live in newer homes for all the same reasons as the rest of America. But these homes were low, and often as not African-American. The members of the middle class may have escaped with their lives, but when they return, will the economic opportunity to rebuild their community, homes and African-American-owned businesses greet them, or will this community become another diaspora?
In other black middle class news, the president of the Chamber of Commerce of New Orleans, Alden J. McDonald Jr., is CEO of the third largest black-owned bank in the U.S., Liberty Bank and Trust -- now working out of Baton Rouge, where he and the rest of the NO business establishment have relocated.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/10/opinion/l10kristof.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fLetters
To the Editor:
The poverty we are witnessing in New Orleans, wrought by governmental policy and highlighted by Hurricane Katrina, is shameful indeed. But the quieter tragedy, not yet unfolding, may be our loss of one of America's most vibrant African-American middle-class communities.
My husband and I lived in New Orleans for five years. That the wealthy live on high ground and the poor on low ground is not entirely accurate. While high ground was developed first, and famously, in the 18th-century French Quarter, virtually all construction since then has been on progressively lower ground. Finally, postwar construction in New Orleans, and newer homes still, are on the lowest ground of all.
The New Orleans middle class chose to live in newer homes for all the same reasons as the rest of America. But these homes were low, and often as not African-American. The members of the middle class may have escaped with their lives, but when they return, will the economic opportunity to rebuild their community, homes and African-American-owned businesses greet them, or will this community become another diaspora?
Leslie Myers
New Haven, Sept. 6, 2005