Chocolate City
In the aftermath of Katrina, some people allegedly saw this as an opportunity to permanently displace many citizens, particularly poor, African Americans. Two weeks after Katrina hit, Nagin took a weekend trip to Dallas to reunite with his family. While there he was asked to a meeting with leading New Orleans businessmen to discuss the future of New Orleans. In spite of contrary public statements by a few of those businessmen, Nagin made it clear at the meeting that everyone had a right to return home.
He went on to assert he was planning to rebuild a bigger and better New Orleans where diversity, equity and fairness ruled. To get that message to displaced New Orleans residents, Nagin traveled the country, presiding over 170 town hall style meetings to inform them of what was really going on with the city's recovery.
At a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day celebration speech in New Orleans on January 16, 2006, Nagin used the phrase "Chocolate City" to signal that New Orleans would once again be as diverse a city as it was before Katrina. He also forcefully addressed black on black crime relative to recent shootings during a second line parade. Nagin repeated the "Chocolate City" metaphor and proclaimed that New Orleans would be "chocolate again." This was seized upon and parodied by some commentators, cartoons, and merchandising. Various designs of T-shirts with satirical depictions of Nagin as Willy Wonka were sold in the city and on the Internet.
Nagin also stated that New Orleans "will be a majority African-American city because this was what God wants it to be." Certain people found the implication of Nagin claiming to know God's will as troubling as the racial aspects of his speech. He then condemned Washington DC by saying God "sent us hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and it's destroyed and put stress on this country", suggesting God's disapproval of US invasion of Iraq under false pretenses.
In an interview with Tavis Smiley broadcast on Public Radio International on January 13, 2006, Nagin said he used the phrase "chocolate city" in reference to a time in the 1970s when African Americans were just started to exercise political power in places like Washington, DC. The term had been used in many of Nagin's previous speeches and welcomes to visitors of the city. The idea reportedly originated with the song "Chocolate City" by the popular 1970s funk group Parliament.
Read more about this topic: Ray Nagin
Famous quotes containing the words chocolate and/or city:
“The man who invented Eskimo Pie made a million dollars, so one is told, but E.E. Cummings, whose verse has been appearing off and on for three years now, and whose experiments should not be more appalling to those interested in poetry than the experiment of surrounding ice-cream with a layer of chocolate was to those interested in soda fountains, has hardly made a dent in the doughy minds of our so-called poetry lovers.”
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