NEW ORLEANS — Mayor C. Ray Nagin said Monday that the hurricanes that devastated this city last summer were a sign that "God is mad at America" and at African Americans in particular, remarks that appear to have hit the weary populace like a lead weight and may cast a further cloud over his reelection prospects.
During a Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration, Nagin gave a meandering speech in which he imagined himself talking to the late civil rights leader.
He also spoke of New Orleans becoming "chocolate" again -- an apparent reference to "Chocolate City," the 1970s funk recording by Parliament that called on blacks to fill the urban void left by white flight.
At one point, Nagin joked that he might be suffering from "post-Katrina stress disorder."
But it was the mayor's remark likening the damage done by hurricanes Katrina and Rita to the wrath of God that drew comparisons to extreme statements by controversial televangelist Pat Robertson and became the talk of political New Orleans.
(Robertson suggested after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a stroke this month that Sharon was being punished for "dividing God's land." Robertson later apologized.)
"As we think about rebuilding New Orleans, surely God is mad at America," Nagin said. "He's sending hurricane after hurricane after hurricane. And it's destroying, it's putting stress on this country.
"Surely, he's not approval [sic] of us being in Iraq under false pretenses. But surely he's upset at black America also. We're not taking care of ourselves. We're not taking care of our women. And we're not taking care of our children."
The remarks by the mayor, who is black, appeared to be an attempt to foster racial unity and appeal to disgruntled African American voters. Black activists and community leaders have criticized a rebuilding plan, proposed by a mayoral commission last week, that would give residents of badly flooded New Orleans neighborhoods just four months to prove the viability of their areas before possibly being forced to sell to the government.
Asked by a television reporter afterward whether his vision of a "chocolate" city might be racially divisive, Nagin explained that he hoped for a racially diverse New Orleans.
"Do you know anything about chocolate?" the mayor said. "How do you make chocolate? You take dark chocolate, you mix it with white milk, and it becomes a delicious drink. That's the chocolate I'm talking about."
