The Pitfalls of Post-Colonialism
Editor's Column from LCV Winter 2006-07 (December 15, 2006)

In post-Katrina New Orleans all the metaphoric comparisons to the Third World have returned with a vengeance, reinforced by recent events. Where once we chuckled in smug sophistication when the likes of A.J. Liebling dubbed us “the northernmost of the banana republics and the westernmost of the Arab states,” or when we drove around in an excess of fatalism with “Vote for the Crook; It’s Important” bumper-stickers, today our self-confident smirks have subsided. The world and we ourselves have witnessed the naked exposure to the glare of public scrutiny of a population of people dispossessed for generations within their own city and now dispossessed further in diaspora itself. The endured has become unendurable and the joke is on us. New Orleans, whose simultaneous embrace of grace and dysfunction has long characterized life in the lovingly and ironically dubbed Big Easy, is no longer either.

As we are cast into the throes of redefining and revisioning ourselves, we have the unprecedented opportunity to reconfirm those values to which we wish to cleave and also to divest ourselves of our inherited liabilities. For much of our history — more multicultural and multiracial than virtually the entire country — many
challenges have loomed against our success. Currently, the racial polarization of our post-colonial mindset may well prove as retrograde and disabling as the racial polarization of the era of segregation. Simply put, post-colonialism is the Ecclesiastes-like moment in the state of political and social evolution when the oppressed have acquired the reins and institutions of power from their former oppressors, and in turn adopt their oppressive and corrupt practices.

Descending from the High Ground
Sadly it could have proved otherwise had the high moral ground been maintained. In Louisiana it was the previous generation of the Civil Rights Movement which took the high moral ground of equality and justice,
asserting themselves at grave personal risk, and in the face of public calumny, to the slings and arrows, epithets, bullets, and rocks of the oppressive segregationist establishment. Harkening back to the historic resistance in the previous century of Homer Plessey, and perhaps even further back to Charles Deslondes and Bras Coupé and the courageous and desperate slave revolts, among our Louisiana exemplars of this heroic era were ranked A.P. Tureaud, Dutch Moral, the Reverend Avery Alexander, Oretha Castle Haley, Lolis Elie, and dozens of others.

Aided by a reactionary white flight in response to desegregation that transformed the city of New Orleans proper to a majority African-American population, for the last quarter of a century, since 1980, the political power shift has been near complete as African Americans have come to dominate the mayor’s office, city
council, school board, state legislative delegation, and related city commissions and departments. Of course political power does not necessarily extend to economic power, and the vast majority of corporate and private wealth has remained in the hands of the white community even as the tax base migrated across parish lines. As a consequence, civic institutions, especially the public schools, have languished. Nonetheless, today politically New Orleans has transitioned into a classic post-colonialist phase with the same abuse of power exercised by the former white-dominated power structure. As a spate of newspaper exposés and indictments have documented, this includes the all too familiar litany of nepotism, family dynasties, insider contracts, patronage, and outright theft and corruption.

Remaking the Past
The most tragic dimension of this postcolonialist mentality is the rejection of reform efforts with the argument that such efforts as the newly proposed office of an independent Inspector General is merely a white racist device to curtail the power of African-American politicians. As with our physical landscape following the devastation of Katrina, here too we have an opportunity to remake our political landscape and undo a century and a half of poor planning and practices. The historic truth is that even during the period of white power, there were reformists, many of them white, who struggled to curtail the corruption and abuse of power, sadly, never effectively enough. To portray the white community as monolithic and to ignore the historical reality of the reformists are not only tragic, but will reinforce to Congress and other potential supporters outside New Orleans that perhaps we are not to be trusted with their largesse, however great our legitimate needs.
Retaking the high ground, both physical and moral, is our only hope that our future won’t tragically repeat the failures of our past, including the sins we visit upon ourselves. The feudal practices of councilmanic districts acting in their own rather than the city’s collective interest also retards our growth. The first election of Mayor Ray Nagin, who won with substantial white support, was a hopeful sign that voters were voting on the merits of a candidate and not cynically aligning by race. Nagin’s re-election seemed a cynical return to the polarization that divides rather than unites our community. The Recovery is a unique an unprecedented possibility for this community to set itself right and a repudiate our self-inflicted wound of corrupt practices to build a new community built on sound and ethical values with a new possibility of effective schools, decent housing, and governing ourselves for the common good.

—Michael Sartisky, Editor-In-Chief