The Way Between The Worlds

I have just left another comment about NOLA as "Third World" and my distaste for the classification on Travelling Mermaid's blog (she has an excellent post on Dr Blakely's comments contrasted with some volunteers who came down here). I have been thinking about this term since I posted on the subject a month ago and got some thought provoking comments.

I was talking on this subject to one of my very good friends who is also Scottish and lives in the US. I have come to the conclusion that another classification is needed. One that communicates the richness, the magic that is almost tangible here. N'awlins often makes me feel like I'm in a novel in the style of Magic Realism. I feel like the upside down craziness of Jeanette Winterson in Sexing the Cherry, or I'm following Alice down that rabbit hole.

The rules here distort somewhat. Expectations are different. People are different. Its on the edge between things. Its like everywhere else and like nowhere else. I said to my friend that it feels a bit like the most magical place from my childhood: "the way between the worlds" in the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. I think this is a better classification of this place than "Third World".

I know that this still leaves other aspects of this place (crime, FEMA failure, federal flood, hurricane relief and recovery, school system) not front and center but I think that's OK (as long as we make sure that no one ever forgets what happened and what is still needed here). The problem with the "Third World" description, for me lets the politicians and people in power off the hook (or at least not working as hard on NOLA's behalf as they could). It says we know we're doomed because this is how we classify ourselves and our position as a city. We need to advertise in our own classification of this city why this city needs to be saved, what is so special, why it matters to the world.

I think it would be good to say farewell to the Third World mantra and take on a more magical definition. Something that tells of the magical mystical NOLA that gets in your blood.

I know I am a newbie but I believe NOLA can be feisty and satirical without being self-defeating in the classification. The third world has no NOLA.

NOLA is the way between the worlds.

"Third World" New Orleans?

There is an issue that has been conspicuously absent from this, my blog of New Orleans. The issue, of course, is Katrina.

The issue of Katrina is huge. So big that I've been daunted at the prospect of posting on it but I knew it was something I would have to do. So I'm going to do it in bite size pieces. I was inspired to finally begin this endeavour by a comment that Darren got at work and one I have often heard myself: "Welcome to the Third World".

I was puzzled upon hearing this the first time and attributed it to the response (or rather lack of one) to the Katrina aftermath. It was a phrase that the national media latched onto to describe the scenes of homeless citizens crying out for assistance. I have to admit I remember asking at the time if this was pounced upon so eagerly because most of these poor suffering people were black? The correlation of the circles of enslavement, debt and exploitation of African countries certainly fits with how the black community of New Orleans has been treated.

But this term also annoyed me. Yes the suffering was terrible and yes it should never have happened. But this suffering was different from that of people who have walked for days with little food or water for months on end through the African desert to get to a refugee camp. This suffering was First World! It was so awful because in America these people should have had government assistance, should have had proper levees protecting their homes, should have had water flown in to help hydrate them in the stifling heat. If this tragedy is looked at in the classification of Third World then there is done a great disservice to the magnitude of the wrongs that were done and the injustices suffered.

Yet I think there is more to what these people have meant when Darren and I have been met with the greeting "Welcome to the Third World" and I think its a greeting we would have heard had we come to this city prior to Katrina. This phrase is said almost with a degree of pride. I find it very odd.

I realise it is in reference to how inept and corrupt things can be run down here. I realise it refers to the way the rest of America has always neglected New Orleans. I don't realise how it can be accepted here. Or how flippantly it is bandied around. It has a degree of fatalism about it. If New Orleans is the Third World then its doomed to always fall behind other American cities.

If it was being used to describe the abject poverty that the New Orleans poor live or rather exist in, then I can understand it. The projects were slums (they are presently sitting empty waiting for either the old occupants to return or to be torn down). The poor live in housing which is totally unacceptable and try to eek out a living on next to nothing. And, of course, like the Third World, the poor here were/are mostly black. And like the Third World, they are OK when confined to their neighborhoods but condemned when they dare to misbehave and invade the richer areas. But this is also true of most big American cities: 'over the rhine' in Cincinnati, east Cleveland, Detroit.

It makes me mad when I hear (white of course) people claim that it is 'unfortunate' but you have to admit most criminals have black skin. This is something that the national media have been good at projecting and, of course, it goes back to slavery, segregation and civil rights. Instead of associating the color of their skin as a reason for their behaviour, we need to see the common thread of poverty. The don't turn to crime because they are black but because it is a means of surviving because you are poor. Perhaps if this reality was addressed the crime in America could be properly addressed.

New Orleans is not the Third World. Katrina was devastating but it wasn't a Third World event. Yes, some people lost their lives (close to the same figure as 911 - this is another post), yes some people were treated live animals, yes there was too little too late. But what people lost were homes with running water and electricity, they lost possessions, they lost pets, heirlooms, photographs. In the Third World when there is a crisis they don't have such things to loose.

There are some other articles on this issue I found online here and here and a blog post here.