Does Black New Orleans Have a Future?
As the months proceed, sympathies for displaced poor, black New Orleanians wane. A recent survey showed the sentiment of Houston residents toward the 150,000 Louisiana evacuees (the largest of any U.S. city) to have grown quite negative. The Houston Area Survey showed that nearly half the residents questioned in early 2006 thought that the impact of the evacuees had been a bad thing for Houston. Representative John Culbertson, a Republican, referred to New Orleans evacuees as deadbeats and summed up his constituency’s feelings: If they can work, but won’t work, ship ’em back. If they cause problems in the schools, if they commit a crime, there ought to be a one-strike rule —ship ’em back. As of March 2006, Culbertson was attempting to add such a provision to pending legislation.52 The Houston Area Survey showed that two-thirds of Houstonians thought Louisiana evacuees had caused a major increase in violent crime. 53 The crime rate indeed increased following the hurricane, but only a li
