Remember “Fear of a Black Planet”? How about “Fear of a Brown New Orleans”? I’m not sure if it’s mainstream media’s antagonistic reporting that’s fueling public paranoia or vice-versa, but how many article like this can we read in a week? ABC News muses:

At a New Orleans construction site, the breakfast of choice is no longer coffee and beignets but coffee and tortillas.

Hurricane Katrina, as devastating as it was, has created great opportunities for many. After all, somebody has to tear down, clean up and rebuild this city. And by and large, the people doing the dirty, dangerous work are not native New Orleanians but Hispanics who have flocked in to fill the void left by hundreds of thousands who fled the storm.

Right, because Latinos have tortillas sin nada and coffee for breakfast and cajuns pack beignets in their lunch pails. Give me a break (everybody knows neither are good cold…). Cultural ignorance aside, this topic is truly everywhere. Recurring theme #1: how “unfair” it is.

But union carpenters complain that Hispanics, willing to work for far less than the union rate, are pricing them out of jobs.

“I see a lot of Hispanics eating the jobs up, basically,” says Duane Gardner, a union carpenter. “I mean, you know, hell, you gotta be a blind man not to see that.”

Is it unfair that blue collar workers (regardless of race) lose their jobs? Yes, but what’s unfair about it has nothing to do with Latinos but rather the employers’ complete absence of ethics in choosing to exploit undocumented workers by paying them incredibly low wages and providing sub-standard work conditions.

Recurring theme #2: Loss of culture:

Nobody knows how many Hispanics are working in New Orleans, but there are enough that some people are starting to wonder if they will permanently change the complexion and character of this city.

On Bourbon Street, historically a mecca for jazz and blues, Latin music can now be heard.

Oh, God f***ing forbid music in Spanish be heard in the streets of New Orleans. Whatever happened to New Orleans as a historical melting pot, a mestizaje of cultures — French, African, Native, Spanish — all thrown together in spite of themselves to make a culture truly unique in the world? Oh, yeah, I guess it doesn’t want to add anything else to the mix. I guess things were perfect as is. And I guess the aftermath of Katrina is a testament to that.

The surprise of knowing that people of color continue to discriminate against other POC never seems to wear off.

Via / ABC News