Mr. Softee: Mayor Ray Nagin's Leadership Ability Is Melting When New Orleans Needs It Most

If my sink springs a leak, it needs all of my attention. So how it is that Ray Nagin, mayor of a sunken New Orleans, finds time to address every open mike is a mystery to me. But someone should tell him that's not a good look. He was in rare form this week when he declared that New Orleans would once again be a "chocolate city." It didn't take long for white commentators to figure out he was alluding to the idea of returning New Orleans back to its largely black population, and his comments left a bad taste in the mouths of his white constituency and made for tasty sound bites coast to coast.

Nagin was clearly addressing the unspoken presumption that the new face of the city is likely to be a little richer and a whole lot whiter. His statement spoke to well-founded concern, and the evidence of this is everywhere. The government didn't give round-trip tickets to the people escaping the Katrina flood. They were one way, all the way to far flung places like Massachusetts and Utah, much to the dismay of some of their new neighbors. They put those folks on planes and said "see ya, and I wouldn't wanna be ya!" The Feds have been slow and, and often stingy, in financing the rebuilding of New Orleans. Residents in the mainly black Ninth Ward, who weren't allowed back to see their homes for months, are fighting the government for the right to retain their property. This is not the how you send folks away if you intend to welcome them back later.

Black people were at the heart of the city's culture and character and don't know how---or if--- they will fit into any new plans. The answer is, they won't, and Ray Nagin knows it. Nagin isn't the first black person to suggest that Katrina was divine retribution for something, but that's a point best made in the intimacy of barbershop panel discussions or barstool punditry with the boys. Nagin was bold to speak to these well-founded concerns, but the Martin Luther King Day event was the wrong place and the wrong time. Then his backpedaling made it worse, suggesting that because the recipe for chocolate includes whole milk, he meant everybody would help repopulate the city.

Right.

And the returning Latino, Asian and Native Americans would be the sprinkles? Yes, of course---now it all makes sense . . . In the mythical Land of Make-Believe. . If he truly believes that New Orleans will welcome back its mainly black, mainly poor, citizens, then Nagin is delusional, indeed living in his own chocolate city filled with peppermint trees and gumdrop rain.

In the real world, Nagin's Candyland Shuffle proves he's indecisive and easily swayed by public opinion. And if any city needs decisive leadership, it's New Orleans. He has to advocate for the largely poor and voiceless black New Orleanians, loudly and without apology, no matter how sour the reaction. And for people who have lost everything, they can ill-afford to have those who would be their advocates squander the chance to make their case with intemperate outbursts, and weak desert analogies.