Toledano's premature "autopsy"

Lolis Eric Elie, my favorite op-ed columnist in Da Paper, does a great job of putting an article by Mr. Ben C. Toledano in Commentary into perspective.

Now, I don't know Mr. Toledano personally, so I'm loathe to call him a racist. Still, when someone writes things that smack of racism, well, it's the old smoke-and-fire thing. After all, being a member of a segregationist political party doesn't necessarily mean you still think poorly of the Eebil Coloreds.

It brings up an interesting point that we regularly see in urban areas where white flight leaves the city proper in control of African-Americans. It always seems like the outrage about local government corruption is greater when the white folks aren't the ones benefitting from government largesse.

Elie does a good job of taking care of Toledano's not-so-veiled racism, but there is one aspect of the issue that I'd like to develop a bit.

Mr. Toledano's thesis is that the rich WASP-types who are the backbone of social clubs like the Boston Club are responsible for the demise of New Orleans. According to Toledano, it's the Episcopalians' fault, not the Italians, Germans, Jews, and other white ethnic groups. The WASPs messed the place up until the Coloreds took over, and then they just totally trashed the place.

Such a view of the city's history is far too kind to the non-WASP white folks. The entire white community of New Orleans, both those who stayed in the city in the 1960s and 1970s as well as the white-flighters who bailed to the suburbs, must be held accountable for their refusal to support the Orleans Parish Public School system. The Italians and the Jews don't deserve the pass that Toledano wants to give them. The white ethnic groups and the suburbanites rejected public education in favor of Catholic and other private schools.

It's natural for families who are struggling to pay private school tuition to reject the notion of paying taxes to support schools that their kdis don't attend. Politicians responded to this demand from their white constituents and restructured public school financing so that the burden was shifted from homeowners to commercial property owners and renters. Commercial property owners have their own lobby, and there's only so much blood you can squeeze from renters. The net result was that the city's public schools were black and broke, and none of the white folks really gave a damn, Mr. Toledano included.

Just imagine someone from the local Chamber or other economic development group trying to explain our local schools to companies looking to set up shop in New Orleans. They can't say, "dont' worry about our horrid public schools. We have good Catholic, Jewish, and private schools, and what you don't pay in property tax you can use to cover the tuition."

The destruction of the city's public schools in the storm is an opportunity for the metro area to get it right this time. Hopefully more people will focus on that than will join Toledano in blaming the WASPs and the Eebil Coloreds for our problems.

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