nagin says it

Okay. Ever since Katrina hit and the levees of New Orleans broke, I've been trying to talk with people about an article I'd read in order to advance a theory about why I think the government has been so obtuse about relief for the people of New Orleans. In the best of times I barely even note who wrote what, and even where I read it blurs quickly into the great mists of time, but this stuck out somewhat because it had been part of an idea I'd had about fencing off Africa from the rest of the world. After a great deal of confused googling all morning, I've come up with the piece I'd read, an extract of it anyway, a snippet. It was Soljas, by Nik Cohn, in Granta #76.

I'd just finished reading a horror story about the abduction of kids for troops in Africa in one of the multifarious incarnations of the Best American Series, either Travel Writing or Essays, when I read this piece in Granta and I was struck by the similarities between them. In short, I was so appalled by the behavior of these people that I was devising my favorite cure for all social ills; to wit: fencing off an area where they can have at it without endangering the rest of the world. So far I have designated the South Pole for Israel, for Zionists (moved from Paraguay or Uruguay after last summer's turkey shoot in Southern Lebanon); Utah for teenagers; and Africa for Gangstas of every stripe. I'm thinking we have the technology to enforce these measures and we can check back with them in, say, the year 3000, see if we can reintegrate them into society then.

Anyway, I'd read Cohn's piece and nearly died of an eyeball hemorrhage while doing so. It was about life in the rest of New Orleans, the non-tourist rest of New Orleans. Youngsters being gunned down in their early twenties. Youngsters wanting that distinction because their friends would all have pictures of them transferred to t-shirts in homage, until, of course, a few days later when another would be splatted all over the side of a building or the inside of an automobile... whutevah. The situation, so well described by Cohn, seemed irremediable and my remedy was to scoop them all up and drop them into the Sudan or maybe darkest Congo... somewhere they'd be faced with a new set of survival and suicide imperatives... somewhere I'd be busily fencing off from the rest of the world. I know that practically speaking a lot of African residents would need to be airlifted out of their homes, but from what I've read I don't think many of them would be upset about that.

I'd had to settle on Africa because another planet is out of the question. So many Americans have cows about the barbarity, nihilism and suicidal acts of some Islamic fundamentalists. Pfeh. If they'd read this piece maybe they wouldn't be so quick to attach one race or one religious persuasion to that. In fact, if you ask me, the Islamic suicide bombers at least have altruistic intent, and anything approaching that noble was completely missing from the scene in New Orleans. At least, I feel Cohn would have mentioned that if it had been in evidence even peripherally. So, I was irked that there was never any discussion of this that I could find in the wake of the levee failure after Katrina. It drove me nuts. Everybody screaming "racism!" at the top of their lungs, and never mentioning at all the completely unmanageable drug and murder ethic that ruled the New Orleans ghetto pre-Katrina. The unspoken benefit of that disaster was it wiped out this culture.

Nobody will talk about it. I at last found at least mention of it in this clip of Ray Nagin speaking shortly afterward. It comes near the end, and the volume on this clip is very loud, so you might want to quickly turn it down:

I'm going on about this because I feel that open discussion of it might actually lead to better treatment of the victims of this disaster. It seems to me as though everything is being done to restore the tourist attraction New Orleans and the rest of it is being left to rot, with either no help, or hazardous to your health help, nothing approaching reasonable or comprehensive by way of restoring the property of the denizens of that murder zone. I can see how in the "minds" of this administration this is the best way to make sure that problem stays dead. It unfortunately is hurting a lot of innocent people, which is perfectly acceptable collateral damage in their math. It is not acceptable, here or anywhere. We don't solve any of it if we don't talk about it.

By the way, while googling, it appears Soljas may have come out as a book, a stand alone piece, and it was included in a compilation of best music writing of 2002. It got mostly rave reviews, but one black kid got pissed off that an old white dude would use the word "niggas" and get away with it. Also Nik Cohn has written: Tricksta: Life and Death and New Orleans Rap. I'm not so sure I want to read that, but....

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