Earlier this week, New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin noted that his city would again be a chocolate city, so all you of the vanilla or caramel persuasion, it would be advised to head north. After much fallout, however, mayor Nagin apologized, not once but twice, saying all were welcome in New Orleans.

Mayor Nagin’s concern for the racial makeup of New Orleans, which by most accounts wasn’t much of a city in the first place, is purely political. Nagin is concerned about his reelection prospect. Before Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was over 60% black. Today that figure has changed significantly, Nagin, is desperate for as many of the city’s poor and minorities to return as quickly as possible, thereby boosting his reelection prospects. This represents the simplest strategy to achieve his political ends. More complicated, however, would be to call for a re-birth of New Orleans, a city radically different from its past, a city of economic and social revival. This strategy would be far more challenging for Nagin, which is why he has opted for the former.

Rather that concerning himself with the racial makeup of the Big Easy, Nagin should be concerned with the work ethic of those who return. By every account, New Orleans had one of the largest collections of drags on society anywhere in the developed world. New Orleans, while being a tourist Mecca, was also one of the nation’s poorest cities. This was largely attributed to the culture and work ethic of its inhabitants. Their race is (and should be) of no consequence. History shows that deadbeats come in all shapes and colors. Minimum wage, minimum skilled, minimum motivation is not the path toward New Orleans’ resurrection.

Indeed, Nagin and other state officials should be calling for hard workers, the educated and the productive to come to New Orleans. Aside from the Central Business District and various tourists sectors of the city, New Orleans mirrored a third world encampment rather than a modern American city. If New Orleans is to be reborn then the deadbeats and the unproductive dead weight that was Pre-Katrina should never return. Perhaps then New Orleans can be a city to marvel and a city of prosperity, rather than a city of degradation, sloth, corruption and incompetence.
http://www.cbc.ca/storyview/MSN/world/national/2006/01/18/neworleans-mayor060118.html