Posted on 09/05/2005 12:39:30 PM PDT by Brilliant
HOUSTON (Reuters) - If refugees end up building new lives away from New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina may prompt the largest U.S. black resettlement since the 20th century's Great Migration lured southern blacks to the North in a search for jobs and better lives.
Interviews with refugees in Houston, which is expecting many thousands of evacuees to remain, suggest that thousands of blacks who lost everything and had no insurance will end up living in Texas or other U.S. states.
Officials say it will take many months and maybe even years before the birthplace of jazz is rebuilt.
"We advise people that this city has been destroyed," New Orleans Deputy Police Chief Warren Riley told reporters on Monday. "We are simply asking people not to come back to this city right now."
Many evacuees like Percy Molere, 26, who worked in a hotel in New Orleans' famed French quarter, say they cannot keep their lives on hold for very long.
"If it took a month, I'd go back, but a year, I don't want to wait that long," said Molere. "Hopefully we're going to stay in Houston just to stay out of New Orleans" for the time being.
Experts caution that it is too soon to clearly predict the long-term impact of the devastation of New Orleans, a city of less than half a million people more than two-thirds of whom are black. But one scenario would be massive resettlement elsewhere.
"You've got 300,000, 400,000 people, many of them low income without a lot of means, who are not going to have the ability to wait out a year or two or three years for the region to rebuild," said Barack Obama, the only black member of the U.S. Senate.
"They are going to have to find immediate work, immediate housing, immediately get their kids into school and that probably will change the demographics of the region," he told Reuters on Monday during a visit to Houston, the largest single gathering point for the refugees.
Because of the legacy of slavery, southern states including Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina have historically been home to the greatest concentration of U.S. blacks. In 1900, 85 percent of U.S. blacks lived in the South and as early as 1830, more than 58 percent of Louisiana's population was black.
Between 1940 and 1970 economic changes prompted 5 million blacks to quit the south for cities across the North including Chicago, Detroit and New York, marking one of the nation's largest internal migrations.
"It could have potentially that kind of effect," said Obama, whose father immigrated from Kenya.
MIGRATION TRENDS
New Orleans did not always follow the trend. Historically, far fewer residents have moved from New Orleans than from most American cities, despite its high poverty and crime rates.
Nicholas Lemann, author of "The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How it Changed America," was wary of predicting that Katrina would prompt major resettlement.
"It is kind of early to tell," he said.
But he said as officials elsewhere accommodate large numbers of blacks, they should avoid putting them in confined areas as Chicago did in the past, which created new urban woes. "They should think carefully on how to avoid the sort of ghetto phenomenon," he said.
Part of the migration trend will be set by what federal, state and local agencies do to help refugees rebuild their lives.
"What I do think should be focused on now is what is the Congress is going to do when they get back," former President Bill Clinton said in Houston on Monday. "How are we going to find jobs for these people, where are they really going to live, do they need some cash right away?"
"They feel lost."
Now they'll see some real racism.
The Great Flood of 1927 in the delta prompted a good deal of migration north.
I was thinking that the so-called high ground in NO is going to become EXTREMELY pricey. Regarding the migration, my comment is "gee, ya think?"
Yup. "Old" houses will be at quite a premium. "Old" meaning those that survived Katrina.
"They feel lost."
Clinton's not wasting time courting the black refugees for their votes.
At the risk of being called a bigot, I must respectfully disagree. The New Orleans "refugees" just may find life better in their adopting cities. Or, if they are the welfare cases that some think they are, the coming "payments" for the disaster that some Black leaders are suggesting (like the payments to 9-11 families) may lead to a whole new cycle of welfare-ism in new localities. Time and events will tell.
The Liberal MSM really sucks since it went from reporting the news to predicting it. I knew this was going to happen when Miss Cleo started that School of Journalism.
Correction: Obama's father was a Kenyan, possibly a Kenyan muslim, possibly a fellow traveler of the Mau Maus. Whatever his fathers background. Obama's father abandoned him as an infant to be raised by his white mother.
The last I heard there are over 12,000 unoccupied houses in Detroit.
WHAT and lose out on all that federal GRAFT.?.
AND all that money being collected by 3 presidents.?.
"Don't be rididulous"- Balky..
Ever ride in a New Orleans cab from the airport? Not the most pleasant experience. But on the way you had a great opportunity to see some rather strange graveyards and unforgettable poverty.
Having spent time in the ER's of several NO hospitals you quickly got the opinion that gunshots were a right of passage,...usually to the great beyond. A dirty, crime-ridden city beset with horrendous poverty coupled with houses that the Big Bad Wolf could have blown down with mere halitosis!
Add in several billion gallons of brackish water and...Houston, you've got a problem.............
But if you think this is bad, try NYC following a nuclear attack. NO will look like a picnic in the park compared to that one!
I hear that Detroit is making a pitch to these people. I guess it makes sense. Detroit's population has been sinking fast in recent years.
Unfortunately, though, Detroit doesn't have the tax base to sustain them on handouts.
The changing demographics of migration will hurt the democrats as the neighboring states are ALL heavy republican voting blocs. If they lose the heavy democratic stronghold of New Orleans, those who moved to say, Texas to vote, will not affect that state's heavy republican votes. This is the real panic behind the democtratic rhetoric...They simply cannot afford to lose 300,000 black votes!
Texas is much nicer. Really.
Washington is horribly grey and rainy throughout the fall, winter, and spring, causing depression in a large part of the population. Not only that but the cost of living is out of control and we are at risk for a major earthquake.
Why yes there are. I recall the same article. Sounds like a match made in heaven.
He, he. I don't know about that. I've seen some pretty nice ears of corn there. I think you're holdin' back on us.
They will be resettled in certain key states and in certain key locations within the target states. The "Pols," irrespective of party, are dividing up the resettlement locations in order to ensure each other a lifetime position.
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