The Slow Death of New Orleans

In case you hadn't been keeping up, it continues apace. Check out this article, from Yahoo News. The headline says it all.

New Orleans May Lose 80 Percent of Blacks.

Jesus. Of course, the article also says that 50% of whites wouldn't return. According to the US Census Bureau, New Orleans, in 2004, was home to 484,674 people. 325,947 of those people identified themselves as Black/African American, while 135,956 identified as White. That leaves 16,570 others, most of whom are Asian (there's a pretty large Vietnamese population in the area). When you put the numbers together, not counting people of Asian descent or other racial groups, the population of New Orleans would drop from almost 500,000 to about 130,000.

That's a 75% population loss. Those are the kinds of things that happen during and after wars. I mean, Berlin, which was largely destroyed during World War Two, suffered a 36% population loss. And that was after years of round-the-clock bombing by the British and the US, and after the full-scale battle over the city between the massive Red Army and what was left of the Wehrmacht. Jesus.

But, as for New Orleans, there hasn't been an invading army. And the people of New Orleans are very attached to their city. Do you think this is going to happen? Do you really think these people are going to give up their homes without a fight? This is bad, bad, bad.

Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?

We all might soon.