Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
The share of African-Americans in the center city population increased steadily
over the second half of the 20th century (see Figure 9.6). In fact, the city's black
population grew consistently all the way up to the time of Katrina, while the white
population began to decline from 1955.
In the 1970s, the black community became the majority in New Orleans and in
1978, Ernest E. Morial was elected Mayor.
Since then, all New Orleans mayors have been African-Americans (see Chapter
8). Latent racism in the surrounding parishes led to increased political tensions
between the center city and surrounding parishes, especially Jefferson and St
Bernard, further straining municipal finances.
The dilapidated public school system, high poverty concentrations,
unemployment, and crime rates reinforced middle-class flight (black and white) to
the suburbs, encouraging ever more extensive wetlands development. At the same
time, the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain in St Tammany Parish became the
Promised Land for the white middle class. Incidentally, and for historic reasons,
blacks have traditionally occupied metropolitan neighborhoods with the lowest
elevations. This historical fact does much to explain why the African-American
population, although accounting for only 43% of the metropolitan population,
represented 74% of Katrina flood victims (see Figure 9.7).
Indeed, part of the difficulty encountered even today with reconstruction efforts
is the direct result of latent tensions between the city and its suburban parishes,
supported by state authorities in Louisiana [BRG 07].
The extent of segregation can be seen through a synthetic indicator such as the
index of dissimilarity proposed by Duncan [DUN 55], the use of which has been
popularized in the United States by Massey and Denton [MAS 88] (see Chapter 4
and Chapter 8). Calculated at the level of census tracts in the 2000 census, the index
of dissimilarity for blacks over other racial groups in the New Orleans MSA is
0.665. This value may be usefully compared to other cities in the southern United
States, such as Birmingham, Alabama (0.7), Memphis, Tennessee (0.66) and
Atlanta, Georgia (0.615).
It appears that New Orleans was one of the most segregated cities in the Old
South and even in the entire country, when the national average stood at 0.652.
