Trey Ellis: Bittersweet Chocolate City. Our nation is perpetually unable to talk about race like grown-ups. When Mayor Nagin got in so much trouble with non-blacks and CNN for vowing to return New Orleans to its status as a "chocolate city," I had a hard time even conceiving of their concern. The history of American urban renewal is littered with stories of my people, Native Americans, the Chinese, hell, most any minority, getting the shaft in the name of progress . The city of Greensboro, North Carolina, built a highway onramp around my great-aunt Alma's home. Spending the night at her place was like trying to sleep in the center of a racetrack.
The occasional majority black, or majority brown, or majority female enclave in the midst of our white-male dominated society is simply healthy and still necessary. It's what Jefferson talked about when he wrote about the necessity of protecting the rights of a minority within a democracy. Sure, it's easier, more neat and it just plain feels better to pretend that two centuries of state-sponsored discrimination vanished some time between the era of earth shoes and Harry Chapin, but, as my dad used to say, "If wishes were horses then beggers would ride."
That said, we have all come pretty far but we still have work to do and it will never get done by pretending we're closer to our goal than we really are.
This is most painfully true in New Orleans where for a few days immediately after Katrina it looked as if the nation was finally going to pay attention to a thorny, vital domestic issue for longer than a news cycle.
If only John Mark Karr had fled to the 9th Ward instead of to Thailand.
 [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed]
11:14:45 AM 
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