New Orleans’ Big Unity Chance

I’ve been trying to think of something insightful to add to this amazing dispatch by Justin Vogt at The New Yorker website about New Orleans the night the Saints won the Superbowl:

Still, it was hard not to notice the way white and black Saints fans called out to each other, embraced each other, shouted in unison. An SUV full of young black women rolled past the corner of Magazine and Sixth Street with its windows down, every occupant (including the driver) with her head out the window, screaming, “Who dat!” Their car was swarmed by college-age white kids.

A police siren wailed—never a good sign in New Orleans. But as the cruiser approached the window rolled down and a Saints banner was unfurled. The crowd erupted. It was probably the first time those cops had ever got a reception like that. I can only hope that sort of thing also happened downtown, in Treme or the Ninth Ward.

[...]

The Saints’s triumph overshadowed the (arguably) more important development of this weekend. On Saturday, the city elected a new mayor: Mitch Landrieu, a member of the Louisiana political dynasty sometimes called the Cajun Camelot. He will become the first white person to hold the office since his father, Maurice “Moon” Landrieu, who served from 1970 until 1978.

[...]

Landrieu’s decisive win suggests that most black voters decided that electing an experienced politician, or a known quantity, was more important than keeping “the Franchise,” as the mayor’s office is known in the African-American community.