October 05, 2005

NEXT POST
Fewer Poor Blacks in New Orleans Here is an article from World Socialist Website by Jeffrey Isaacs. A US Housing Official has said that New Orleans will have fewer poor blacks. I'll spoil the surprise: it isn't because the poor blacks will be provided with proper housing, child care, job training, employment, health care, and other benefits. It isn't because the casinos will be torn down in order to provide schools, art museums, gyms, bakeries, restaurants, small manufacturing concerns that will be organized, managed, and owned by the people in the communities in which they are located. It isn't, in other words, because a radical new experiment in eliminating poverty is being carried out in New Orleans. Precisely the opposite! In an interview with the Houston Chronicle, HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson predicted New Orleans would slowly bring back as many as 375,000 people, but that only 35 to 40 percent of the population would be black. Prior to Hurricane Katrina the city had nearly 500,000 residents, more than two-thirds of whom were African-American. “Whether we like it or not, New Orleans is not going to be 500,000 people for a long time,” Jackson said. “New Orleans is not going to be as black as it was for a long time, if ever again.” Jackson, who was appointed by Bush to aid in the reconstruction of the city, made it clear that such an outcome was not simply the product of the hurricane and flooding, but the desired policy of the Bush administration and the city’s political...

Jodi Dean

Jodi Dean is a political theorist.

DSE
The Typepad Team

Recent Comments