If Not Chocolate, Maybe Butterscotch

New Orleans Mayor Nagin may not get his wish to have a chocolate city after all. According to a new study, 80 percent of the city's blacks will not be moving back home.

The city of New Orleans could lose up to 80 percent of its black population if people displaced by Hurricane Katrina are not able to return to damaged neighborhoods, according to an analysis by a Brown University sociologist. Professor John R. Logan, in findings released Thursday, determined that if the city's returning population was limited to neighborhoods undamaged by Katrina, half of the white population would not return and 80 percent of the black population would not return.

The article goes on to say that storm-damaged areas had been 75 percent black, compared to 46 percent black in undamaged areas of the city. It also found that 29 percent of the households in damaged areas lived below the poverty line, compared with 24 percent of households in undamaged areas. And more than half of those who lived in the city's damaged neighborhoods were renters. But I think geography can't explain away all the reasons the black residents will stay away. Now that they've had a taste of life outside New Orleans, now that they've had a chance to stand on their own feet and succeed, they probably realize they'd be foolish to return. Show me a city that has a Democratic mayor, a Democratic police chief and a Democratic school superintendent and school board and I'll show you a city where blacks live in the worst of circumstances. Throw in the corruption that permeates every level of the Democratic political machine in Louisiana, and any black who is not wired into party politics has a bleak future in New Orleans. New Orleans is a city untouched by conservative Republicans and as such, the empty lies of liberals to minorities show glaringly in the destitute lives of the city's poorest citizens.