NEW ORLEANS Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
Mayor Ray Nagin apologized Tuesday for a Martin Luther King Jr. Day speech in which he predicted New Orleans would be a “chocolate city” and asserted that “God was mad at America.”
“I said some things that were totally inappropriate. … It shouldn’t have happened,” Nagin said, explaining he was caught up in the moment as he spoke to mostly black spectators, many of them fearful of being shut out of the city’s redevelopment.
During the speech Monday, Nagin said repeated hurricanes that destroyed parts of America’s coast and exerted stress upon the nation were a sign of God’s anger toward the country, as well as black communities that had not done enough to fight crime. He also said New Orleans has to be a majority African-American city because “it’s the way God wants it to be.”
Excluding suburbs, New Orleans was more than 65 percent black before Hurricane Katrina. The storm displaced about three-quarters of the city’s population. Most of the estimated 125,000 residents who have been able to return are white.
When Nagin, a former cable company executive and political novice, was elected in 2002, he received about 90 percent of the white vote, according to polls conducted by Ed Renwick, the director of Loyola University’s Institute of Politics.
Nagin received less than half the black vote, Renwick said Tuesday, and the mayor’s heaviest criticism since taking office has come from rival political factions in the black community who have portrayed him as catering to the interests of white businessmen.
Nagin has been trying harder to gain the trust of black residents, but in attempting to do so he may have offended much of the base that got him elected, Renwick said.
“Obviously, blacks were the weaker portion of his victory margin, but some of the remarks he made Monday will possibly dampen enthusiasm among some whites,” Renwick said. “It seemed to be another Nagin-being-Nagin. He has a penchant for just speaking off the cuff and not thinking it through.”
Renwick added: “He also tends to speak to the literal audience he’s with at the time instead of the whole world he reaches through the TV, radio and print media.”
Nagin said his comments about God were inappropriate and stemmed from a private conversation he had with a minister earlier.
“I need to be more sensitive and more aware of what I’m saying,” he acknowledged Tuesday.
Nagin said his speech was really meant to convey that blacks were a vital part of New Orleans’ history and culture and should be encouraged to return.
“I want everyone to be welcome in New Orleans – black, white, Asian, everybody,” he said.
Nagin said the other main point he’d hoped to make Monday was that when blacks do return, they must work to stamp out the crime and political infighting that have held them back.
 
Contact Brett Martel at [email protected]