Oct. 2, 2014
New Orleans Projected to Become More ‘Chocolate’
Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Louisiana Weekly
(TriceEdneyWire.com) - For all the colorful traditions and multicultural nuances associated with life in New Orleans, throughout its history the Crescent City has essentially been a Black and white city flavored with a wide array of spices.
That was the case in 1960 when Orleans Parish was the most populace parish in the state of Louisiana. Whites comprised 62 percent of the population. After several decades of white flight to neighboring parishes and Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans became a majority-Black city surrounded by majority-white parishes.
“Well, I think we’re there now as a practical matter,” demographer Greg Rigamer told WWL-TV last week. “Sixty percent of our population is African-American, we have a growing Hispanic population and when you look at the white population, it’s somewhere only in the range of 33 percent.”
Despite those numbers, New Orleans has a white mayor, white district attorney and until recently, a white police chief and majority-white City Council.
New Orleans has high levels of poverty, unemployment and violent crime, and a three-tiered school system that many have described as “educational apartheid.”
Despite those challenges and many others, Rigamer says New Orleans is growing and that most of its growth is being driven by money.
Telltale signs of the city’s economic growth and expansion include its replacement of Hollywood as the most popular destination for making feature-length films and the influx of young professionals seeking high-tech jobs or opportunities in the city’s burgeoning healthcare industry boom.
“There’s no question about that,” Rigamer told WWL-TV. “Dollars motivate people, and think about it, we had a huge influx of people and money post-Katrina in the rebuilding initiative. This real spike in young professionals into New Orleans, it is a derivative of the recovery period.”
While some neighborhoods are being changed by gentrification, their complexion is staying essentially the same, some say, with Blacks, whites, Asians and Hispanics living in clustered communities.
According to Census figures, the Black population was about 37 percent of the population in 1969. Now it’s 60 percent, and over the next 50 years Blacks are expected to comprise 65 percent of the population.
Overall, Orleans Parish is expected to experience major growth. By 2040, New Orleans is expected to surpass Jefferson Parish as the most populated parish in Louisiana.
“The implications are huge, positively and negatively,” New Orleans City Councilmember Jason Williams told WWL-TV last week.
While Williams was pleased about the projected growth of Orleans Parish, he said that the city needs to become more inclusive in order to address the needs and aspirations of all of its residents.
“Yes the city is growing— the region is growing, our city is definitely growing — but we’re not growing the opportunities for the folks that we have right here.”
While opportunities to make money are drawing transplants to the city, there is a glaring need to address chronic problems that plague a large segment of the city’s Black residents, among them crime, poverty and access to quality education.
Asked about frustration among African Americans about continuing to struggle to live a decent life in a majority-Black city, Erika McConduit-Diggs, president of the Urban League of Greater New Orleans, told WWL-TV, “I think that would be true in terms of being able to access jobs at the same rate, being able to access entrepreneurship opportunities at the same pace. When you look at the physical development, the infrastructure development that’s happening in this community, I think that it is very fair to say that there is frustration.”
She added that the near doubling of the Black population will underscore the need for policies and initiatives to empower the African-American community.
“African Americans still account for a majority of high school dropouts, they still account for the majority of the unemployed in our community, and so we really need to be making sure that our policy decisions and our employer decisions and our finance decisions, quite frankly, all align with making sure we are paying attention and serving and bringing along all segments of our community,” McConduit-Diggs said.
She said those decisions will directly impact the number one issue for just about everyone living in New Orleans — crime.
“You talk about unemployment, you talk about violent crime and you talk about the number of times that there’s a Black face attached to that,” Councilman Williams said. “That’s a personal issue for me. As a Black male, as somebody who grew up in this city, as somebody who is raising two Black children in this city, it’s a personal issue for me. I think as we grow, I think that folks who live in the Garden District, folks who live in the Lower 9th Ward, are all realizing this is their issue. When we’re dealing with violence, regardless of who the victim is, regardless of who the perpetrator is, it’s a problem for the entire city and we need everybody personally engaged in that issue if we’re able to overcome it.”
A resurgence in New Orleans’ population could have far-reaching effects. But while the projections look to the future, to a metro area in 2060, it doesn’t factor in hurricanes and the dangerously vanishing Louisiana coastline,” WWL-TV reported. “They are two issues that could put everyone in the same boat, regardless of race.”