Will battered Big Easy elect a white mayor?

[T_i_B]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/04/22/wnorleans22.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/04/22/ixworld.html

When Katrina hit the Big Easy she destroyed its levees, flooded its streets, killed hundreds and forced many more into exile. Now she is blowing a storm through its politics. For the first time in a generation, New Orleans, its racial mix as steamy as the local bayous, seems likely to elect a white mayor when it goes to the polls today.

Before the hurricane struck at the end of last August, the city was two-thirds black. Today, with many of its poor still scattered across the South, white and black are evenly split.

On one level, a white man's arrival at City Hall as mayor, the first since 1978, would matter little. America is now "colour blind" in a way unthinkable even then - and certainly in the turbulent 1950s and 60s.

But, on another, it would confirm the worst fears of blacks still here: that "ethnic cleansing" has worked and their home, the birthplace of jazz at the mouth of the Mississippi, is back in the hands of whites.

[Syrinx]

1. I don't care what color the mayor is

I just don't want that one obviously racist white woman, can't think of her name, to win.

And I don't think they are actually going to elect a mayor today, as the snippet says.