"G-d bless Chocolate City and its vanilla suburbs." — Parliament
Apparently, the mayor is a funkateer.
That's what you call fans of Parliament, the '70s-era funk band famed for hits like "Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)," "Flash Light" and "Aqua Boogie (A Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop)." Parliament also recorded "Chocolate City," leader George Clinton's whimsical take on growing black political clout as reflected in the election of black mayors in such towns as Newark, N.J., Gary, Ind., Los Angeles and Washington.
"They still call it the White House," crowed Clinton, "but that's a temporary condition, too." He went on to prophesize a truly funky administration: President Muhammad Ali, "Minister of Education" Richard Pryor and first lady Aretha Franklin.
I cannot verify it from firsthand experience, but it was always said that in order to really "get" Parliament, it helped to be under the influence of drugs. One wonders if New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin didn't take that too much to heart after a speech Monday in which he said God wants his wounded town to remain a "chocolate city."
"This city will be a majority African-American city," said Nagin, who is black. "It's the way God wants it to be. You can't have New Orleans no other way."
Monday, incidentally, was Martin Luther King Day.
There must have been something in the water that day inducing Democrats to say asinine things. Nagin, apparently channeling his inner Pat Robertson, also suggested that Hurricane Katrina was a sign G-d was hacked off at the Big Easy. Then there's Hillary Clinton's speech comparing the GOP-led House of Representatives to a plantation. Unless they've been raping congresspersons in the cloakroom or whipping them in the rotunda, the comparison is — putting it mildly — a stretch.
It's the Chocolate City remark that most rankles, though, because it's the one that speaks to the future of a major metropolis.
Nagin has said he simply meant to assure a black audience that the unique black culture and heritage of New Orleans would be respected and protected in the rebuilding process. Unfortunately, what he said was closer to this: whites need not apply.
It took him a day to apologize for that crude bigotry, and that was only after trotting out one of the more bizarre clarifications in recent memory: "How do you make chocolate?" he asked a reporter. "You take dark chocolate, you mix it with white milk and it becomes a delicious drink."
And if you buy that, I've got a used levee to sell you.
No, it seems apparent that the mayor's focus is too narrow, too impinged upon by simplistic paradigms of race, too small for the challenges of an historic moment.
Culturally if not demographically speaking, New Orleans was never chocolate milk. It was gumbo — black, but also French but also German but also Spanish but also West Indian but also Italian.
But also poor.
Which is the bottom-line reality. It was a city where the schools were a scandal, where the cops were a threat, where the crime rate was high and where the children learned early to go without.
So in this tragedy, there is opportunity — not simply to rebuild, but to improve, to innovate, to inspire ... to start over.
The question is: Do the architects of the new New Orleans have the vision and the will to seize that chance? Or will they squander it in the name of racial politics? Nagin seems troublingly intent on the latter.
Yes, race and culture have a role to play in spicing a city, making it unique. Irish Boston and Cuban Miami are obvious examples. But race and ethnicity are icing. The cake is a city that works, and that does so for all its people.
Point being, it's fine to wish for a Chocolate City. But I think most of us would settle for a livable one.
