When New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin told a Martin Luther King Jr. Day audience it was God's will for the city to once again become "chocolate" as post-Hurricane Katrina rebuilding continues, he didn't mean what everyone thought he meant. Nagin explains, the BBC reports. You decide:

He said he had not meant that it should be an all-black metropolis, asking: "How do you make chocolate? "You take dark chocolate, you mix it with white milk, and it becomes a delicious drink. That is the chocolate I am talking about," he told CNN.

Ray, as long as we're talking chocolate and urban demographics, I've got a few suggestions on future flavor paradigms for The Big Easy.

Probably the best candy metaphor in New Orleans would be chocolate that's green, the color of enterprise. That would symbolize a new drive to end broken families, rampant crime, and the entitlement mentality; as well as to reform public schools. Why, I can see the "Green Chocolate" marketing campaign unfolding nationwide, to supplement private philanthropy and government aid. Lemonade from lemons; all that.

While we're at it, let's at least give credit to Nagin for identifying some the underlying local dysfunctionality in his controversial speech, even if his post-Katrina performance has been largely unhinged and dismal. Although he foolishly dragged God into it - and a cheap shot against the Iraq War - he nonetheless hit on some important self-help themes, as The Telegraph reports:

"Surely God is mad at America," Mr Nagin, himself black, said at a ceremony to mark Martin Luther King Day. "He sent us hurricane after hurricane after hurricane and it's destroyed and put stress on this country. Surely He's not approving of us being in Iraq under false pretences. But surely He's upset at black America also. We're not taking care of ourselves, we're not taking care of our women, and we're not taking care of our children. What are we doing? Why is black-on-black crime such an issue? Why do our young men hate each other so much that they look their brother in the face and they will take a gun and kill him in cold blood?" His diagnosis of the moral health of America's blacks, while bluntly expressed, is one shared by many political and church leaders. The comedian Bill Cosby has also voiced them in the past.

But it was the mayor's thoughts on the future racial make-up of the city - and his choice of language - that prompted the most disquiet. "It's time for us to rebuild a New Orleans, the one that should be a chocolate New Orleans," Mr Nagin said. "This city will be a majority African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be. You can't have New Orleans no other way."

Unfortunately, now he's lumped in with Pat Robertson. Best advice for Nagin comes from Ed Renwick, director of the Institute of Politics at Loyola University: Remember that whatever audience you're in front of is only a slice of your larger, global audience.

Nagin's conduct and leadership will affect global charitable giving for New Orleans reconstruction, and national and state politics politics underlying reconstruction policy decisions.

TECHNORATI TAGS: RAY NAGIN, GOD, NEW ORLEANS, CHOCOLATE

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at January 17, 2006 06:13 PM

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