It's All About Race in This Race

New Orleans is in a race against time to rebuild. Not only to retain its character and identity, but against the oncoming hurricane season. It needs a competent and skilled mayor to lead the recovery efforts and rebuilding process - both in material and tangible ways as well as to help heal the emotional wounds suffered in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

I don't care what color of skin the next mayor has - it's got nothing to do with competency and ability. If that next mayor is white, black, green, gray, purple or gold, I couldn't care less.

But the New York Times wants you to think that there's something wrong with that picture. And they lay the argument that it's all about race in this race.

In great confusion and peculiar circumstances, this city has suddenly found itself in the midst of an unexpected mayoral election campaign. The result may once again upend this city's old order: a white man might be elected mayor in a city that was, until a few months ago, mostly black.

That outcome would have been undreamed of before the hurricane, but the high probability of one of Louisiana's most potent political families entering a race that almost didn't happen could further transform a political calculus that has prevailed here for nearly three decades.

Considering how the city has failed its citizens for at least that long, this transformation of the political scene can't be bad.

But to the Times, this is a problem. The current mayor, Ray Nagin (aka Whiplash Nagin), you see is black. The guy has done an awful job before and after Katrina hit. I've derided his skill, comments, and flip-flopping on key decisions (often within 24 hours of making them). Decisiveness is key to getting things done in a prompt manner and reassures the public that you're doing the right thing. Nagin's polling has continued falling ever since the hurricane hit as people saw just how poor a job he did.

That's brought out potential challengers, including Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu and Audubon Institute Chief Executive Ron Forman. Excellent. Now is the time for New Orleans to elect someone who can do the job necessary and vital to the city's rebuilding and rebirth. The city's residents deserve better than they've gotten in the past - and they should demand better of their elected officials. This Washington Post editorial points out the Whiplash effect in action, yet it would seem that race permeates every angle of discussion.

New Orleans politicians and power brokers have helped along the sense of unease, saying and unsaying all sorts of things that trouble the purists. Members of Mayor C. Ray Nagin's rebuilding commission first said all neighborhoods of the city would be rebuilt. Then they reversed themselves, recommending a building moratorium in much of the city and suggesting that some neighborhoods -- many of them centers of African American culture -- be forced to prove their viability or be bulldozed. Amid the ensuing uproar, the mayor came out against the moratorium, reverting to the position first articulated by his committee members.

The mayor at one point announced that he wanted to create a casino district to stimulate growth, then quickly dumped the idea. Later, he declared that New Orleans would again be a black-majority "chocolate city" -- then he apologized, saying chocolate is made by blending dark chocolate and "white milk."

Down in the bowl that is the Lower Ninth Ward, all the back-and-forth has left Shelby Wilson, a graphic artist who stables her two Arabian horses on the Mississippi River levee, feeling suspicious of "a screw job, a power play," despite assurances to the contrary. Her home, a sturdy bulwark with three-foot-thick walls made from old barges, could be bulldozed if her neighborhood, which is predominantly black, is not rebuilt.

The Times is afraid of offending the status quo (a trait that it extends to other things, including foreign policy - a story for another posting perhaps). The problem is that the status quo in New Orleans is not worth keeping. Not when the city's residents were poorly served by a police department that fled in the face of adversity, a leadership that planned poorly for a natural disaster, and did even worse as the days wore on.

Poliblogger also comments on the article.