Two sides to the Katrina recovery: one black, one white — separate and unequal
New Orleans and the regional economy are “embarking on a new path, benefitting from new infrastructure, investments, a more diverse set of [employment] clusters, and an entrepreneurship boom,” says a 10th anniversary report by The Data Center, which, in alliance with the Brookings Institution, has been keeping comprehensive records of the Katrina recovery since Day One.
That there are more restaurants here than before the disaster — despite a shrunken city population — has become a meme popular with recovery pundits. Tax incentives have created Hollywood South, with New Orleans now rivaling Hollywood itself in TV, film and ad production. A billion-dollar medical center and research facilities have just opened. And the list goes on: revitalized and expanded business corridors along Magazine Street, Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard, St. Claude Avenue; the Whole Foods branch on a resurgent Broad Street, an upsurge in entrepreneurial ventures, dog parks and an abundance of bike lanes all over town.
Property values have rebounded to pre-Katrina levels — and higher still in some areas, as residents rebuild and newcomers compete for space in trendy neighborhoods. The chartering of almost all New Orleans public schools — including those run by the Orleans Parish School Board and the ones that were taken over by the Recovery School District, is being hailed as a national model worthy of emulation in other cities. High school graduation rates are up as are college entry rates, notably so among black males. Despite troubling levels of murder and rape, overall crime is down.
In sum, 10 years post-Katrina, New Orleans is a great place to live and raise a family.
Or is it?
Because beneath the froth of genuinely dynamic improvements, Data Center numbers also reveal the lurking hulk of the “City That Care Forgot,” to use one of our famous nicknames. I speak, of course, of the Chocolate City, to use a moniker of more recent vintage that was revived after the storm by our former mayor, Ray Nagin, now doing time for public corruption. Nagin was trying to offer reassurance to black New Orleans that the world many of us remembered so fondly would never be taken away.
In ways that the mayor would not have encouraged, that has proven to be true. With middle-class blacks figuring prominently in the exodus that has reduced the city’s population by about one quarter, New Orleans has a poverty rate (27 percent) well above the national average. Fully 67 percent of black New Orleans households are considered low-income, while 44 percent earn less than $20,900 annually.
And small wonder. Over half of black men are unemployed in New Orleans and the spike in rents and associated costs makes housing more and more difficult to come by. It comes as no surprise then that the incidence of murder and other forms of violence is concentrated among these same people, both as perpetrators and victims. Nearly 30 percent of 16-to-24-year-olds are considered “disconnected youths.” More than half of the children live in poverty, according to a report put out this week by the Urban League of New Orleans. An anniversary report by the New Orleans Tribune quantifies many of these persistent problems.
For all the buzz about recent academic gains, for too many students the public school system remains, as it was before Katrina, a place where hope and dreams die a slow death. Too many students graduate unprepared for the colleges that now admit them and, given the economy’s continued dependence on tourism and the convention business, a high school diploma is often nothing more than a ticket to a low-wage job Two sides to the Katrina recovery: one black, one white — separate and unequal | The Lens:
