Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2007 - (Page 82)

by Benjamin C. Toledano photo essay by Cheryl Gerber Editor’s Note: Benjamin C. Toledano’s idiosyncratic essay, originally published in the September, 2007 issue of Commentary, a New York-based magazine obscure to most Louisianans, has clearly touched a cultural nerve. The article has and been passed around the state like electronic samizdat, six separate people e-mailing it to me. Never having experienced a groundswell of interest like this before, we thought it part of our mission to share this analysis of New Orleans’ social and political character and practices, purely coincidently in an issue where Michael Lewis and James B. Borders also engage with similar themes. —Michael Sartisky Reports of the death of New Orleans as a major American city have not been greatly exaggerated; they have only been greatly delayed. Although the funeral was not conducted until Katrina struck, the death took place several decades ago. Since the disastrous storm, there has been much lamenting over the lost joys of the city’s cuisine, music, and architecture, and ringing proclamations of the need to “save” and “rebuild” New Orleans. For at least the prior 50 years, however, these undeniable charms and graces had masked problems of major proportions, unexposed until over half of the city’s residents were forced by the hurricane to leave town. The fact is that the majority of New Orleans’s citizens were poor, black, uneducated, unemployed or underemployed, and living in near slum conditions. Today, the city is a very, very different place. Along with everything else Katrina did, it eliminated some of the sub-marginal public and private housing, reduced unemployment, lessened (somewhat) the sale of illegal drugs, lowered the number of illegitimate births among teenage girls, and drastically cut the number of victims of the public-school system. New Orleans will henceforth be closer to the mythmakers’ idealized notion of it: smaller, whiter, and more dedicated than ever to its main sources of commerce: tourism, the port, and conventions. Yet no comfort can be taken from what a forced mass exodus has done. The city, or what remains of it, continues to suffer from what it is, from what it was, and from how it arrived at this catastrophic end. Since history is ignored only at one’s peril, it might be of interest to consider what caused the death of old 82 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES\Winter 2007-08

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2007

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2007 Contents Friends Editor’s Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Katrina: Days of Terror, Months of Anguish Paintings by Rolland Golden The Historic New Orleans Collection The Great Ouachita River Flood of 1932 Jazz Notes Louisiana Architecture Louisiana: Where Land Meets Water Louisiana State Museum Through A Lens Sharply: An Interview with Michael Lewis MR-GO: A “miracle” mired in controversy Louisiana Foodways Louisiana Association of Museums New Orleans: An Autopsy Bookstand Sound Advice Forum

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2007

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