Census Finds Hurricane Katrina Left New Orleans Richer, Whiter, Emptier

[somone]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-04/census-finds-post-katrina-new-orleans-richer-whiter-emptier.html

Census Finds Hurricane Katrina Left New Orleans Richer, Whiter, Emptier
By David Mildenberg

Five years after Hurricane Katrina drove Lena Johnson from New Orleans, her family’s home since the 1930s, she misses its food, music and Mardi Gras. And she never wants to live there again. “It was like a bird leaving a cage,” said Johnson, 60, a New Orleans Chamber of Commerce employee for 24 years who left for Dallas and recently earned a college degree there. “I’m in Texas because there’s opportunity for me to grow. Home is still suffering.”

The extent of the exodus after the August 2005 disaster can be gauged by 2010 Census data released yesterday. New Orleans lost 140,845 residents, a drop of 29 percent from 2000. The percentage of black population fell to 60.2 percent from 67.3 percent. The loss in New Orleans translates into one fewer congressional seat for Louisiana -- now six instead of seven.

“The city is more affluent, more Latin and a little whiter than it was before Katrina,” said Jacques Morial, a community organizer whose father and brother were its first and third black mayors.

The storm, the most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history, killed at least 1,330 people in Louisiana and Mississippi; 85 percent of New Orleans flooded after levees collapsed. The storm surge extended as far as 10 miles inland, displacing almost 200,000 residents, a congressional report in February 2006 found...

[WingDinger]

1. Just like many took advantage of.

[OHdem10]

2. By design??

[slackmaster]

6. Halliburton Weather Generator

Bush's fault.

[localroger]

3. Greetings from the dept. of DUH

It was inevitable whether by design or not. Poor people who established themselves elsewhere in the aftermath of the storm are still poor, and much as they might like they can't just pull up their new hard-earned roots and return when the housing and jobs still aren't here. I'm frankly surprised that the population of Orleans parish is as high as it is today. A lot of people have gone out on limbs to return. But the urban poor, who were a lot of that blue streak in NOLA, never did have the means to do that. I hope y'all aren't too upset with "blue dog" Mary Landrieu because after two fingernail scraper elections (she once said "nobody will ever call me 'landslied Landrieu') I don't see how she doesn't get replaced by an actual Republican on the next cycle, unless the right somehow teabags itself into obvlivion.

[jberryhill]

4. Than, say, 1840?

What's the historical reference point for all of this?

[scarletwoman]

5. The census is taken every ten years. The 2000 census data would be the reference point.

It's really not that complicated.

[jberryhill]

8. Oh, I get that....

I'm just thinking that there are some who would probably consider an antebellum reference point to be the target here, in terms of how rich and how white they'd like it to be.

[bettyellen]

7. the reference was very specific: pre- Katrina vs post- Katrina

[jberryhill]

10. Yes. But, the question is...

Is New Orleans richer and whiter enough yet?

[Behind the Aegis]

9. .