New Orleans

New Orleans has such a powerful history. It is the place to be and a popular place to visit. It has strong characteristics that clearly make them unique from the rest of the country. In New Orleans African Americans had the ability to acquire, purchase and own real property during an era when America was still immersed in slavery. New Orleans had such a strong heritage and it seems like not a lot of people knew about this. I myself was not aware of their strong culture. New Orleans was very popular for its Mardi Gras celebrations and its architecture. Jazz was a vital attribute to the New Orleans culture. Many famous musicians speak so highly of this place. Music saved the lives of many in New Orleans. New Orleans differed greatly from the rest of the young United States in its Old World cultural relationships. It is a European African Caribbean American Southern city with a large “Creole” population. New Orleanians had an appreciation of good food, wine, music, and dancing and festivals were frequent. Watching the video it seems as if they have a preoccupation with dancing. New Orleans is the city at the bottom of the bowl… the Mississippi River surrounds the city giving it the shape of a bowl.

The Stages of Metropolitan Growth states that “while their city (New Orleans) was unique in many ways, it was not immune to the various ills that America’s urban flesh is heir to.”(p71) Like the rest of the African American population, Plessy v. Ferguson knocked New Orleans down and the strong movement that they had going was put on hold. Schools began to resegregate, public schools were shut down, and 900,000 black voters were eliminated. New Orleans was now racially segregated. As a result of racial segregation middle and upper income whites were located in the outlying suburban communities which were literally higher than the rest of the city, while the blacks were located in the lower parts of the city where the flooding was most severe. They couldn’t avoid the perils of White Flight, and it wasn’t long before the White population fled the city. With the building of roadways and highways that ripped the streets of Clairborne Ave. in Treme. A city that embodied New Orleans heritage was overshadowed by Interstate 10 which provided the road for Whites to move to the suburbs. James Carr said “If the city of New Orleans had been a more diverse community, it may well have had the political clout to secure the levees long ago.”(The Social construction of Disaster p275)

Engineers have been worried about the levees since 1927 and they knew that it was only a matter of time before the levees gave way. The Brutal Hurricane in 1893, The Great Storm of 1909, the flooding of the Mississippi River in 1927, the list goes on and on. So many warning signs yet the city thought that they could buy more time. Even their survival in 2004 with Hurricane Ivan hadn’t taught them any lessons. They still didn’t have a Hurricane Command center and lacked strong communication of what to do. They knew that their levees could not survive a Category 5 hurricane. Unfortunately August 27, 2005, their luck had run out. People can hypothesize about what could have happened but no one would have guessed it would be this bad. Hurricane Katrina ripped through New Orleans, straight through the levees that they thought would uphold and ruined the lives of many.

The hurricane ruined many important cultural landmarks. If not for the vivid memories in the minds of so many New Orleanians and scholars it would have already disappeared. In the video he said that “this rich history doesn’t shield us from our problems, it helps us deal with them.” Often times for New Orleanians it is their memories that keep them going. The hope that one day things may return to the way it used to be before violence, drugs, segregation and Hurricane Katrina hit their city.

People always say that New Orleans didn’t feel like America but does this give the country any right to treat it like it is not? Perhaps if the same efforts were made in New Orleans as in Plaquemines Parish, Hurricane Katrina would not have had such a horrible impact. Plaquemines Parish made sure that they put a plan into place and followed through with it. They knew who needed to be rescued, where they lived and what had to be done. The Great Deluge explains to us that numerous studies had been done and they knew that the levees would not suffice in the event of a serious Hurricane. Even on August 26, 2005 Mayor Nagin had reservations and continued to make excuses as to why they could not evacuate. In the article they spoke of how the animals in an animal shelter were evacuated in the event of a Category 3 or above, yet no one found it important to evacuate human beings at a fear of lawsuits and losing money. It doesn’t seem fair does it?

All of this history all of this culture and love was ripped away. It still hurts the hearts of many because of so many warning signals. It makes you wonder, could it had all been avoided? We have to realize that it isn’t merely about putting fingers; we have to state the facts. We are not trying to play the blame game, so whether it was FEMA, the mayor of New Orleans, or the president, the fact still remains that New Orleanians were abandoned. As a country we definitely should feel disappointed that something of this magnitude happened on our own soil.