The Washington Post reports that C. Ray has run on at the mouth again:
New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin has suggested that the slow recovery and rebuilding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina — which has prevented many black former residents from returning — is part of a plan to change the racial makeup and political leadership of his and other cities.
“Ladies and gentlemen, what happened in New Orleans could happen anywhere,” Nagin said at a dinner sponsored by the National Newspaper Publishers Association, a trade group for newspapers that target black readers. “They are studying this model of natural disasters, dispersing the community and changing the electoral process in that community.”
He apparently feels that as a result of his now-infamous “chocolate city” remarks on Martin Luther King Jr Day in 2006, “everybody all around America” woke up, and wanted to “make sure” Nagin “didn’t go any farther”.
While it’s true that last year’s comments upset many people, the biggest reaction by far seemed to be, “What an idiotic thing to say!” — but even allowing for Nagin’s tendency to lose himself totally in the moment, this is over the top.
After Nagin’s last major gaffe I wrote:
What happened to Nagin on Monday was more than his mouth disconnecting from his brain. He finally succumbed to the pressure he’s been under from his “black” constituents — the folks who haven’t trusted him or didn’t vote for him because he wasn’t “black” enough.
For months, every single thing he’s done has been analyzed in terms of black and white. We’ve heard, in excrutiating detail, about the racial composition of every meeting, panel, and commission he’s been involved with. He even had the daring audacity to meet with some “white” business-people in Dallas right after the storm. Horrors!
Nagin’s been walking a fine line that mixed-ancestry people have tried to walk for generations… because they’re not “black” enough, and they’re also not “white” enough.
I’m less inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt this time around.
If saying dumb things can be considered a “plot” to ruin a city, then the architect behind New Orleans’ ongoing problems is Nagin himself.
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