It's inevitable, in the wake of the original template of the Katrina story--ignoring the devastation of white communities like St. Bernard Parish, and Lakeview in New Orleans--that visiting journalists back down here for Mardi Gras would be nose-counting by race. My own personal survey, as I walk the streets, is that parade-goers downtown are very racially mixed. Yet, today's Washington Post has a sober and well-researched look at one of the missing elements: the black middle and professional class, whose balls and parties were not held this Carnival season because most of these folks, who lived in New Orleans East, were flooded out of town, along with their clientele. Other reporting in the T-P has indicated that some business people, primarily Vietnamese, have returned to the East and reopened some shops and eateries. So one would like this writer to have asked why those folks, clearly lower-income, could come back this soon and these professionals couldn't...
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