OT New Orleans: The City that Couldn't Afford to Die

((I posted this to another newsgroup, but it may be germane to the
discussions here about rebuilding New Orleans.))

When a disaster strikes, even though it may in actuality be a
meaningless, random event, people search for meaning within it. Given
the destruction and loss, they seek consolation in being able to feel
that at least some positive purpose was served as well.

Since New Orleans' French Quarter was built on high ground, and survived
the flooding, the theory that it was God's vengeance for breast-baring
bead hoarders looks a little shaky - and that kind of notion would only
be popular on the lunatic fringe.

((I forgot to mention the possibility of it being God's way of telling
us to switch from greasy-kid-stuff Christianity to cooler, more
refreshing Islam... which we will probably hear about from the mountains
of Pakistan any day now.))

Obviously, any disaster brings out the courage of people dealing with
its immediate aftermath and the generosity of those who help the people
affected.

Is there a candidate, though, for a greater or more specific purpose
that this disaster might serve? As perspective emerges on the
consequences of the levee breach in New Orleans, I think that a
candidate has emerged.

In broad, oversimplified terms, the situation appears to be the
following:

The neighborhoods where white people in New Orleans lived were mostly
low-lying, and therefore were mostly destroyed by the flood.

The neighborhoods which were built on high ground, in which the
buildings still survive, were mostly poorer neighborhoods, predominantly
inhabited by black people.

New Orleans had a large, thriving black middle class, unmatched by other
American cities. This means that many black people there had reasonably
well-paying jobs doing honest work, just like ordinary white Americans.

((Source: an article by noted author Anne Rice, "Do you know what it
means to lose New Orleans", which was quoted in the group where this was
originally posted. I knew about the jazz musicians serving the tourist
trade, but this refers to a large number of people additional to them.))

New Orleans was sometimes called 'the most dangerous city in America',
so it does have some black people who are poor and desperate, some of
whom have turned to crime, as well.

It is expected it may take perhaps as much as six months before people
can start returning to New Orleans.

What does this add up to?

Here are two scenarios for what might happen in rebuilding New Orleans:

Scenario A:

During the time it takes to get the city ready for rebuilding, the
people displaced by the flooding find new homes and new jobs in other
cities throughout the United States.

People who lost businesses instead of, or in addition to, homes in New
Orleans often would not be able to recover those losses through
insurance, and the government and charity, while interested in ensuring
displaced people have the basics, would not be in the business of
restoring some people to a former privileged position. Thus, they would
themselves get jobs, and, perhaps later, secure loans and begin
rebuilding their businesses from a small start.

Since New Orleans has an important geographic location as a port city,
resettlement would take place on a gradual basis, starting with people
doing work that had to be done in New Orleans, and then with people who
could make money supplying goods and services to them.

Scenario B:

The people displaced by the disaster are largely housed temporarily
until they can be returned to New Orleans, and are discouraged from
looking for permanent employment and residency elsewhere.

Once the structurally-unsound buildings are reinforced, everyone returns
at once, and the day after, everyone returns to their old job. Of
course, some businesses are now owned by the government that rebuilt
them, instead of by their former private owners, whose equity was
destroyed, but virtually every employer functions.

***

Scenario A, it would seem, is *much* more realistic than scenario B.

Now then: how do the two different scenarios affect different groups of
people from New Orleans?

Scenario B restores almost *everyone* in New Orleans, by and large, to
their former station.

Scenario A lets the white people from New Orleans rebuild their lives.
Where does it leave the black people?

Because New Orleans is a 'dangerous city', there are some black people
from there who are criminals. Thus, it won't be as easy for the black
people from New Orleans to find new jobs and new homes elsewhere in the
United States; being from New Orleans won't automatically free them from
the suspicion and prejudice black people in general face. (Note also
that this suspicion and prejudice is not *entirely unfounded in fact*,
deriving from hatred and bigotry, but largely results from a real crime
problem. Of course, that crime was bred by poverty, and that poverty was
caused by past crimes against black people, but it is not reasonable to
expect white people to risk their personal safety out of guilt feelings
over slavery.)

Plus, their homes in many cases haven't been destroyed. Just their jobs.

So the black people in New Orleans that through hard, honest work built
lives for themselves - will have nowhere to go and nothing to return to.


Just maybe this disaster can serve a purpose. Maybe it will force
America to consider, without pretense or denial, the problems that black
Americans still face.

Explicit legal discrimination has been abolished. Laws prevent employers
from discriminating. The "doors are open", what keeps black Americans
from walking through them? Why are they choosing the obvious dead-end of
drugs and crime?

(( RANT WARNING - this second half of my posting, admittedly, deals with
what might be called a pet theory of mine to explain social pathologies.
I think it's just what used to be common sense in the Victorian era and
before, but what do I know? ))

In a booming economy, like that of the 1960s, there are jobs for people
whose skills are limited.

In an economy like that of the 1970s, it is much harder to find a steady
job without a college degree. These cost money for most students.

Men starting from a poor background, therefore, often have very poor
prospects of *earning enough money to support a wife and family* within
a few years of leaving high school. Of course, black men aren't the only
ones with this problem these days; it's just even worse for many of
them.

All humans are mortal. We are all headed to oblivion and annihilation;
the only ultimate survival is in our descendants.

Those of us who Nature has caused to do the hard work involved in
bringing the next generation into existence - will always have the
opportunity to do so.

Those of us who are not directly required by Nature to work hard to have
descendants, on the other hand, will not have descendants - unless we
are chosen and accepted by those who do that work. Therefore, people in
that group must also work hard - being indirectly required to win the
competition for mates.

Women gestate, women undergo labor, women lactate.

Men are driven to seek out sex, and support a huge pornography industry,
among other things.

Also, if you visit a dairy farm, you will find that the unmodified cows
are much more peaceful in disposition than the unmodified bulls. Yet
they did not learn male-female stereotypes from watching TV.

When do you have crime, riots, and revolutions?

When you have men who don't think honest work is going to put a woman in
their arms any time soon.

Societies in the past have solved this either through denying women
sexual autonomy through a system of arranged marriages, or through
economic coercion by denying women access to most forms of remunerative
work, or both. Also, wars against neighboring communities to capture
women from them have been common.

We have to find another way.

To start with, while first-graders are cute and adorable, and
pre-schoolers even more so, to concentrate exclusively on "Head Start"
programs to solve the problem of the destructive cycle black poverty is
to abandon the next generation of black people when it needs help the
most - around the time of graduating from high school.

Men will work very hard - if they have hope. If all hard work will get
them is bare existence, they may instead feel there is little to lose,
and choose to rebel.

And it isn't just *black* Americans who place a high priority on clothes
that fit, adequate shelter, and the most fulfilling of human
relationships - white men do too, _pace_ Earl Butz.

John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html
http://www.quadibloc.com/index.html
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