Chocolate

Well, the whole world knows by now that Ray Nagin, the mayor of New Orleans, made a little extemporaneous speech on Martin Luther King Day that blew up in his face. The world thinks Hizzoner is an idiot, but there are a few folks in the city who say he was just "telling it like it is."

Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation it wasn't. There was a little something in there to offend just about everyone. Martin Luther King having a conversation from beyond the grave with the mayor? "Surely God is mad at America"? And then there was the Chocolate City thing. One editorial writer in the Times-Picayune tried to explain to the folks who took it as a reference to Willy Wonka that it really was about a song from 30 years ago about majority-black cities. But I fear his voice has been lost in the crowing of "Mayor Wonka and the Chocolate City."

It was hardly stop-the-presses news that, B.K., New Orleans had been a majority black city for more than 25 years. So is Atlanta (the city, not the metro area). So is Detroit. And probably quite a few other major American cities. And because New Orleans was a majority black city, when 80 percent of the city flooded after Katrina, the majority of people affected were, indeed, black. Not all -- quite a few mostly white neighborhoods got flooded out too.

But what was also true B.K. is that New Orleans had a shocking percentage of its population living below the poverty line -- I don't know the exact figures but I think it was somewhere in the neighborhood of a third of the people. And a lot of those living below the poverty line were black. And a lot of them got flooded out and can't afford to return to the city. Housing is in short supply and what there is, is expensive. (Supply and demand.) People who didn't have flood insurance, regardless of race, are scrambling to figure out how to rebuild their homes.

So Mayor Nagin, when he talked about the Chocolate City, was trying to say that he believed the city would be majority black once again when it is finally repopulated. I wish he would have come up with a different metaphor, one encompassing the many races and ethnicities that make up this city. Someone suggested Rocky Road ice cream would be more fitting, a mix of chocolate, marshmallows, and "nuts." New Orleans has always been famous for nutty people! (For the uninitiated, I suggest you read John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces.)

Ray Nagin is not a professional politician. He was an executive with Cox Cable before he became mayor. I hope they will give him his old job back, because I think he just ended his political career with that speech. But considering all he has been through in the last five months, I wonder if he would even want to be re-elected. I sure wouldn't want to be mayor of New Orleans right now, although it appears there is no shortage of potential candidates.

Back when Andrew Young was mayor of Atlanta, in a moment of exasperation with the white business community, he called them "a bunch of smart-ass white boys." First thing you know, every business executive's desk in Buckhead sported a coffee mug with the initials "S.A.W.B." Already people are selling T-shirts that promote Mayor Wonka and the Chocolate City.

This morning, I tuned in the local PBS station (it's good to have them back on the air) and discovered they were having their big fund-raiser on the Sunday before Valentine's Day. Guess what? It's called the Fourth Annual Chocolate Sunday, a to-do at a swanky downtown hotel where people pay $$ to sample chocolates and support the station. I wonder if Chocolate City will help or embarrass them?