San Diego Tribune writer Ruben Navarrette has something to say about Mayor Nagin’s distress over New Orleans being “overrun by Mexicans” as a result of an influx of migrant workers to the area for clean-up efforts post-Katrina:

Before Katrina, New Orleans was only about 3 percent Latino. Now, demographers say the city’s Latino population could swell to four or five times that amount.

That comes as a bolt of bad news for black leaders nostalgic for a city and a culture that for all practical purposes no longer exists…Nagin told reporters that his new worry is how he is going to “ensure that New Orleans is not overrun by Mexican workers.”

The thing is, many of the city’s former residents say that they have no desire to go back.

So why is he looking a gift horse in the mouth? Here Nagin is having trouble getting people to move to New Orleans, and there’s one group that’s already doing it. They’re ready to work hard, pay taxes and build a new New Orleans.

I, as a native Louisianian, will be the first to say that I would be saddened by the loss of any piece of New Orleans’ culture, and as person of color would be doubly saddened by the disappearance of the black community’s contribution to the richness of the city. But why does the influx of Latino workers have to necessarily mean the disappearance of black culture and the “real” New Orleans?

While I agree with Navarrette’s fury over comments by Mayor Nagin (that I myself have qualified as racist on this blog), I disagree with him on the fact that black culture in the city “for all practical purposes no longer exists”. The essence of New Orleans will exist forever, no matter who occupies the city. Louisiana, and New Orleans in particular, boasts cultural and historical richness unparalleled by any other state in the nation, and a huge part of that has to do with people of black and creole heritage. In my opinion, people may leave New Orleans, but that will remain, and the call for prodigal sons to return will continue. A recent New York Times article talked about the “exiles” of Katrina, mostly working-class blacks who, forced to migrate to be able to sustain themselves, have found that life outside of the state is very different. It’s because Louisiana is a special place. It has its own culture and people will return. I believe this.

Beyond my own predictions, why is it so hard for Nagin and Jackson to swallow the fact that Latinos will inhabit New Orleans? The same thing has happened gradually in every state in the country and none of these places have “lost their identity” as a result.

Via / Newsleader.com