Where y'at ?
by: Clarence Williams

The standard greeting in black New Orleans is- Where you at. This is our version of What it is, or what it look like, or how are you doin', and other commonly accepted greetings in other areas of the country. For sure, nobody says where you at but New Orleanians. And mostly its black citizens. While it is clearly three distinct words, three distinct syllables, it can be shortened to two syllables, where, y'at, or even one syllable, w'at. Predictably, this form of talk is known as, what else, yat. And while 'where you at' is intended as a greeting, it can also be used in asking a person what their position is on a subject. The purpose of this communication is to use our standard greeting in the form of asking New Orleanians what their position is on a subject. The subject is Hurricane Katrina. Should that be a surprise? What else can New Orleanians be talking about?

Years ago I was talking with an elderly 'street person' on 125th Street in Harlem. He was a man who had a tremendous amount of knowledge about black America, and especially black New York. He was impressed with my patience in listening to his sometimes long harangues, since so many other passers-by categorized him as just another of New York's many crazies, and left him just to babble to himself. I, too like black history, so my interest was greater than most. After talking at length about Father Divine and his overall impact on the times in which he lived (pointedly reminding me that Father Divine had a soup kitchen in Harlem during the Great Depression years of the 1930's when the Federal government didn't have one) he asked me where was I from. I told him New Orleans, and he smiled and stared at me for a long moment before asking me whether or not he could give me some advice. When I assured him that it would be all right to give me advice he said that he would advise me to not tell people that I was from New Orleans. When I asked him why not he replied that New Orleans is such a legendary place, and there is so much information about it in so many peoples' heads, that many think that they know more about it than the people who were born and raised there. This truism is reflected in all the talk, sermonizing and scrutinization of the city and its people since the catastrophic Hurricane Katrina made landfall there on August 29th

The New Orleans Ninth Ward is being depicted by the media as being a poverty stricken slum with black people all living day to day existences. This is far from being true. The Ninth Ward is the largest ward in New Orleans. And to the New Orleans 'experts', a ward is just a political breakdown in the same way that city councilmen and women represent a certain political division of any city. Harlem is a political breakdown. The Lower East Side of Manhattan is a political breakdown. Congressman Charles Rangel represents a political division of New York City. There are also other wards in New Orleans. I personally was born and raised in the New Orleans Seventh Ward. So lets get one thing straight about this ward business. The Ninth Ward is not a place where all poor black people are herded together. The Ninth Ward, while predominantly populated by African Americans, is a community of people who fall into every extreme of the economic breakdown. The media continues to depict the Ninth Ward as poverty stricken, and to portray it this way is to engage in misinformation, and it is akin to saying that Harlem is a poverty stricken area. Sure there are people in Harlem who live in poverty. And there are also people who live in Harlem who are wealthy. I know people who live in the Ninth Ward who are living in poverty, and I know those who are quite well off. Fats Domino lives in the Ninth Ward, in a neighborhood where the flood waters nearly reached the rooftops. Fats Domino is certainly not poverty stricken. I also know of many other, lesser known African American New Orleans citizens who live in the Ninth Ward and they are far from being poverty stricken. So why would the media portray all citizens of the Ninth Ward as being mired in poverty? Obviously, they think know more about New Orleans than the people who were born and raised there. There is an Upper Ninth Ward and a Lower Ninth Ward. This upper and lower designation has nothing to do with economic status. For instance, there is an Upper East Side in New York City as well as a Lower East Side. When there is a hard rain, it floods on the Lower East Side, but it doesn't flood on the Upper East Side. When there is a hard rain it floods quicker in the Lower Ninth Ward, although it will often flood in the Upper Ninth Ward as well. The upper and lower designations deal with elevation (or a lack thereof) and has nothing to do with economic or social status. More on that in a future communication.

New Orleans is one of the most segregated cities in America, and it has been since its inception. While New York City is a city of immigrants and ethnicities, New Orleans has always been about black and white. There is no in-between in that culture. You are either one or the other. Some black New Orleanians are so fair-skinned and their features so European that you have to ask them whether or not they are black or white. Which brings us to another misconception about New Orleans. Fair-skinned African Americans in New Orleans are not interested in imitating the white American culture. In fact, many fair-skinned New Orleanians are more involved in the practice of the black traditions than are many of their darker-skinned brethren. And while we are at it, lets call black New Orleans what it is: it is a black culture in the midst of white America, perhaps the only real black culture in all of America, and one that does not have an interest in imitating white America. This is the same culture that a few years ago stripped former slaveholders names from schools and other city buildings. So there is no George Washington school in New Orleans, since the 'father of his country' used to own slaves. This created a lot of bitterness in certain sections of white America, but it reflected clearly the black thought that permeates New Orleans: you white Americans are no better than we are. We don't have to imitate white America to feel that we are people. We black New Orleanians are not interested in integration, especially since we see plainly that the definition of integration is: lets all try to act white. So the rigidly enforced segregation throughout the history of New Orleans is responsible for the black culture that evolved there. Indirectly America, with its glorification of whiteness, is responsible for the black culture that evolved in New Orleans. New Orleans was one of the largest slave markets that the American slave-holding culture produced. Many of the tribes that were uprooted from their native Africa were sold to plantation owners in New Orleans and its environs. Much of the African culture that they arrived in New Orleans with is still visible in the daily doings of their decendents. And here is something else for the self-appointed New Orleans 'experts' to ponder: while most black communities in other cities throughout America are mirror reflections of each other, every New Orleans black community is different, reflecting the different mannerisms and mores of the tribes who were stolen from Africa and sold in the New Orleans slave market. These differences are reflected in manners of speech, styles of dress, ways of cooking, in what is valued and treasured, and family relationships. As a for instance, Wynton Marsalis is from Uptown New Orleans, as is Aaron Neville. Wynton and Aaron's speech patterns are quite similar, whereas my speech patterns are unlike theirs and more like others from Downtown New Orleans. Canal Street, incidentally, separates Uptown from Downtown. There are social and pleasure Clubs throughout the New Orleans black community. These are also known as benevolent societies or secret societies. This is a very African tradition. These societies were created for the overall purpose of helping to uplift the communities. In a racist and segregated city, these societies have proven time and again to be a refuge against the chaos and unpredictability that permeates black life in a city where the dominant theme has proven to be race over all other factors. These societies sponsor events throughout the year. One function of many of these societies is the Mardi Gras Indian celebration. This is a cultural event that has been going on for the past one-hundred years or more. Black New Orleanians masquerade as American Indians in elaborate costumes that they make themselves. Neighborhoods (wards) compete against each other to see which Indians are the prettiest. Every Indian tribe is different from every other tribe, again reflecting the differences in the black New Orleans culture from neighborhood to neighborhood. Indeed, if any social anthropologist really studied the New Orleans black culture and analyzed the differences it would be plain to see the differences in the culture. So to the so-called New Orleans 'experts', please stop trying to stereotype us and check out the culture and see the richness and sophistication of it. Another yearly function of these social and pleasure clubs is their annual parade, or Second Line. They dress up in finery and hire bands and parade over a designated route, with locals joining in the revelry, which creates the Second Line, the First Line (if you will) is the band and social and pleasure club members. President Bush, in a speech last month from the New Orleans French Quarter, alluded to the Second Line. Typically, he didn't get it right. He said that the people in New Orleans have Second Lines for deceased Jazz musicians, but he didn't say that Second Lines were a regular part of the New Orleans culture, and that these social and pleasure clubs had them throughout the year and that it didn't have to be because of a funeral. But the main thing that he didn't say was that the New Orleans Second Line tradition is a BLACK tradition. In fact, in listening to President Bush's entire speech he didn't say black or use the term African-American even one time. What's wrong with America's President? Didn't he see that most of the victims of Hurricane Katrina were black? What's wrong with America's President? He recently made a move to have an African burial ground discovered in Lower Manhattan in the 1990's turned into a national historical site. Is he more interested in dead African Americans than live ones? Is that why he waited so long before assisting the (predominantly) black citizens of New Orleans? Was the plan to wait until they were dead and then to eulogize them? What's wrong with America's President? Maybe Kanye West said it best!!!

Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster that struck America. It struck America along the Gulf Coast, devastating New Orleans more than anywhere else. As the world knows now, the American government's response to our plight was a sin and a shame. They tried to make us responsible for what happened to us. They tried to deflect from the fact that many members of the Louisiana National Guard were in Iraq when they should have been in Louisiana. They tried to deflect from the fact that the Federal government underfinanced the repair of the levees that allowed New Orleans to become flooded. They tried to tell the world that the reason they didn't respond to the victims of Katrina was because they were concerned for the safety of the responders because of the lawlessness of the people in New Orleans, with the alleged looting and raping and rampaging that was occurring in wholesale numbers. Every reason given for their lack of response has since been discredited. When every attempt at making us, the victims, responsible for our own plight was discredited, the President owned up to his own failures and inadequacies. Note, though, that he tried everything else before owning up to his own failures. And we know that(among other things) FEMA stands for Failure to Execute Management Adequately.

In September of 1958, George Washington Carver High School opened in the Ninth Ward. Prior to this there was no black (they called us colored then) high school in the Ninth Ward. This was in the Upper Ninth Ward, behind the Desire Housing Project, when living in a housing project was a good thing. There was much consternation in the Seventh Ward , since we would have to go to Carver, and not to Clark, a school in the Sixth Ward that not only was close to my home, but a ward that shared a similar culture to my Seventh Ward culture. There was much apprehension throughout the Seventh Ward, as the Ninth Ward culture was different from ours. There was a larger number of people in the Seventh Ward who were of fairer skin coloring than in the Ninth Ward, and given the legacy of slavery and subsequent colonialism, many people in the Seventh Ward felt that we would be attacked or at least treated with hostility by our mostly darker-skinned brethren in the Ninth Ward. After all, the school was on their 'turf'. What we found when we went to Carver in 1958 was just the opposite. We were welcomed with open arms and made to feel at home in ways that we didn't expect. Before long we had made friends and were attending parties and other events in both the Upper and Lower Ninth Ward. We used to hang out in the Desire Project and have all the fun in the world. This, remember, was before the Government allowed drugs to inundate public housing nationwide. My first girlfriend at Carver was from the Lower Ninth Ward. When I began visiting that area, at 15 years of age, I was so surprised at how well I was treated. In looking back, I saw that I was treated like I was a visiting celebrity, kind of like the way a white boy is treated when he is brought to jail. The cops don't want to arrest him anyway, so if they have to they try to make it as painless as possible for him. My girlfriend not only lived in a home that her father owned, but he owned several homes in the block in which she lived. I was soon to find out that there were many homeowners in the Lower Ninth Ward.And fine homes they were, too, with porches and back yards and flower and vegetable gardens. And the people were so cultured and friendly. I once went to a party in the Lower Ninth Ward with some of my friends from the Seventh Ward. As at most parties or gatherings of the sexes, there is competition over the girls. One Lower Ninth Warder tried to 'build a case" on us Seventh Warders ("Maaan, I might be able to get a dance in the party if some of those cats from the Seventh Ward would go home"). He was asked by some of our Lower Ninth Ward friends just which Seventh Warders was he talking about. When he replied that it was us, he was unceremoniously chased from the party himself.These were the kinds of people we found to inhabit the Lower Ninth Ward, people of character, progressive people, real friends. And homeowners. Does this smell like New York City's Central Park, or Florida's Rosewood, or Oklahoma's T-Town, all progressive black communities that were taken from its black occupants? There were and are no housing projects in the Lower Ninth Ward. This is important to mention, since now there is so much stigmatization connected to housing project existence, as the powers that be have allowed public housing to deteriorate.

We New Orleanians are being tested now as never before. We need to stand tall and strong and evoke the spirits of our African ancestors, which is the true culture of black New Orleans. America's pitiful response to the catastrophe that was Katrina reveals to us once again how we are viewed in this country. Was the government's response about racism? That is a given, since everything in America connected to black Americans is about racism. But it was also about incompetence, with people in positions that they cannot fill. What is the future for us in New Orleans? We don't know, but we do know one thing that it is about: STRUGGLE. Let's delve deeply into our culture and seek justice from the true rulers of New Orleans, the Gods of our African ancestors. Where you at. New Orleanians.. This also means place location, be it Baton Rouge, Houston, Chicago, Atlanta, or wherever. Where y'at, New Orleanians. It's time to be strong and aggressive and unforgiving with our enemies, those who want to see us and our great black culture destroyed. It's time for our voices to be heard throughout this land.

New Orleanians. W'at????????