Natalia's Field Notes

After class, Darci, Irma, Nish, and I went to Algiers. From I-10 we saw where the projects used to be, and apparently they were redone recently. The houses look really nice now, in good condition and well-kept. We kept driving to go to Mardi Gras World, a big tourist attraction where the Mardi Gras floats are kept throughout the year. We saw a few local convenience stores, a Christian bookstore, and some antique shops as we were driving. The convenience stores were pretty run-down, and the antique shops (which were closer to Algiers Point) looked really nice. Most of the people I saw outside were African American. Once we got to Algiers Point, though, the majority of the people I saw were white.

We stopped at the Dry Dock (a cafe and bar), and I noticed that pretty much everyone at the restaurant was white. Three middle-aged white men (Ed, Bruce, and Jim) invited us to sit down with them. They were all eager to tell us about their Hurricane Katrina stories, which is odd because Algiers wasn't damaged nearly as badly as a lot of other neighborhoods. The area had some wind damage, but Bruce, Ed, and Jim were not really affected by the hurricane. Bruce told us that his neighborhood used to be all white people, but after Katrina, more black people moved in; as a result, white people moved out (which is a lot like what Working Class Heroes' Kefalas discussed as White Flight). Bruce said that he loved his neighborhood, though, and that he got along really well with his neighbors despite any racial differences. Ed kept telling me that there was nothing to do in Algiers and that he often went into New Orleans when he had plans with friends.

After that, we went to O. Perry Walker (a high school, grades 8-12) to see how public schools are in Algiers. We got there right after school got out, and everyone (the principal and most school officials) was leaving to go to O. Perry Walker's basketball game. The security guard told us that the school is really into sports. While we were there, we saw two pregnant students, and every student we saw was African American. I went on the website later on to find out that the school is 97% African American, 2% Hispanic, and 1% Asian. Only 67% of students graduate, while Louisiana's state average of students who graduate is 80%. I was talking to my mom, a counselor at UNO who goes to different high schools to encourage students to go to college, about O. Perry Walker, and she was telling me about one of her co-workers that goes to O. Perry Walker to talk to kids a lot. Apparently, last month, a 19-year-old that dropped out of O. Perry Walker was arrested for murdering two people in the Fischer Housing Projects in Algiers. One of the victims was another O. Perry Walker student. When murders like these happen in the projects, I think it makes people wary of the neighborhood--it might make people think that it's "a bad area." Like the realty situation we talked about in class, often realtors tell white buyers not to live in "a bad area," while they won't say that to a black buyer. It's kind of ridiculous how that is so easy to believe when looking at the residential segregation in Algiers.

Anyway, we drove to the police station afterward, which was really odd. All of a sudden, there were horses and chickens--Algiers became so rural. Once we found the police station, we tried to talk to three different officers about crime in the area. None of them were very helpful, and a female officer was really rude. One of the officers told us to look at NOPD's website and search Algiers' crime statistics. According to the website, the most common crime this year in Algiers is theft.