Holding a Neighborhood Association Accountable for its Neighborhood...

Have you ever decided to pass on ranting about something just because you don't want to start trouble with people you might have to work with later? I've been conflicted about talking about the Lakeview neighborhood of New Orleans for a couple of weeks now, in spite of some disturbing behavior I've observed. Tuesday was the straw that broke the camel's back for me, though.

There's a bit of a disagreement between residents of Lakeview and the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority of late, stemming from a proposal to extend the Canal Street streetcar line two blocks into the Lakeview neighborhood. I won't go into the details, but if you go to my streetcar website, you can get the backstory. As an advocate for public transit in general and street railways in particular, I don't view the neighborhood's objections as credible. They come off as NIMBY to me, but I've told leaders of the Lakeview Civic Improvement Association that I'm willing to keep an open mind. I feel that this is a generous position on my part, given the obnoxious behavior of Lakeview residents at a recent public meeting held to discuss this project.

Expressing their opposition to the streetcar line expansion, Lakeview residents in the audience made numerous rude and offensive comments, both socio-economic and racial in nature. The haves-versus-have-nots sort of comments come whenever a relatively wealthy neighborhood is involved in public improvements that help the working class, so those were to be expected. The open racial remarks, however, stunned me. One of the guests at the meeting was Mark Major, who is the General Manager of NORTA. Mr. Major is black, and given the political nature of NORTA, one woud assume he is politically connected to Mayor C. Ray Nagin. Nagin, being black and a Democrat, was not a very popular figure in white-bread, Republican, Lakeview before the storm, much less now. These folks got 10'-12' of water in their houses from the 17th Street Canal breach. They need someone to blame, so the black mayor, black Congresscritter with 90K in his freezer, and female Democratic governor make better targets than their Personal Lord and Savior, the disprespectful piece of crap who lives in the White House. Not many of these folks use or require public transportation, for themselves or their families. One woman actually stood up at this meeting and advocated placing a major transit terminal one block from an elementary school and a middle school in a different neighborhood (Mid City) to keep it out of her neighborhood. Let's forget rider safety, now, this one doesn't even care about the safety of children.

The shame of it is that I really like the Lakeview neighborhood. I was in Lakeview daily, riding the bus and going to friends' houses, from the time I was twelve until we moved into Gentilly when I was teaching high school. Lakeshore Drive was where we'd hang out after school, in both high school and when I went to the University of New Orleans. I could go on and on about Lakeview, and watching all that water pour into the area was very traumatic for me.

But as much as watching the neighborhood drown was traumatic, hearing the overt racism coming from the "pioneers" that have returned to rebuild the neighborhood after the storm was equally shocking. We used to say that overt racism was something for Jefferson Parish, and that at least New Orleanians were more civil. It appears that the storm has changed the rules.

Still, as I said, I wasn't going to write about this. The folks I've met and corresponded with from Lakeview don't fit the mold of the crackers in the crowd. They're working hard to make things happen in their neighborhood, and I was willing to give them a break, until Tuesday. I was having coffee and writing at the Starbucks on Harrison Avenue in Lakeview on Tuesday morning, when two men walk in and get in line. They were discussing rebuilding their houses when one mentioned that he had to send a package to someone and all they had for an address was a post office box. UPS and FedEx don't deliver to post office boxes, so that meant this person had to use the US Postal Service to ship his parcel. He went on a rant loud enough that I could hear him over NPR's Morning Edition in my headphones and the blender making frappucinos.

This person used a code-word phrase I'd never heard before. He said that he didn't like going to the post office because he had to deal with "Democrats." At first I chuckled, because the dad of one of the boys in my son's Scout troop works for USPS and is a staunch Republican. It didn't hit me until the woman behind this guy chimed into the conversation with the term "those people." It was the first time I'd ever heard someone use "Democrat" as a code word for "black." When it sunk in, it made sense. Since the storm, the closest post office to Lakeview is up on Jefferson Davis Pkwy., in Mid City. I go to that post office because it's usually not terribly crowded, and the ladies who work the counter at that post office have always been black. They're friendly, competent, and helpful when I go there, so only someone who just don't like black folks would have a problem with the place.

It's easy to dismiss one person in line at a coffee shop as a cracker asshole, but when others around the cracker join with him and concur with his racist perspective, it's a bit more of a concern.

The neighborhood leaders distance themselves from the racists amongst them, asking people like me to look at the good they do and not to judge their association by those at the meetings. Maybe I'm just old school, though, judging people by the company they keep. There comes a time when civic leaders have to stand up and be counted. Brushing racism under the rug doesn't make it go away. While the neighborhood's activists may not hold the same beliefs of their neighbors, their silence on the subject is almost as disturbing as the crackers themselves. It's nudge-nudge, wink-wink, politics. They want the city to work with them in spite of the fact that the best thing for the city as a whole might be to ignore the neighborhood altogether. Let municipal services fall off even more than they are now. Cut back even further on the NOPD and Military Police presence. Let the businesses that have re-opened fail and abandon them. Perhaps then the crackers will give up on the neighborhood and move someplace else.

OK, letting Lakeview just die isn't a viable option, but neither is continuing the nudge-nudge, wink-wink relationship. Just as Lakeview won't be allowed to die, black folks in New Orleans aren't going away, either. The racists in Lakeview need to realize this and, at the very least, stop offending those of us who don't think someone is inferior because they're black and work at the post office.

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