New Orleans Niche
Uma Nagendra
NPN Emerita
Those of us New Orleanians at out-of-state schools sit in a fairly complicated position. With colleges at the forefront of many volunteering efforts, the name of our hometown has a particular taste for our classmates. For them, it’s a good cause, a spring break trip; it’s a faraway disaster, but it isn’t a home. The New Orleans they want to help doesn’t feel like the New Orleans we knew, making conversations awkward. After participating in numerous promotional events, we get tired of having uncomfortable conversations with our classmates and eventually stop going. The profound difference in perspective creates a rift between the volunteers and the New Orleanians at school evident in public portrayals and advertising for Katrina Relief. For instance — In order to encourage classmates to volunteer or donate, the leaders of the Katrina Relief group posted a series of photos of a devastated New Orleans on the main campus walkway. A classmate of mine from New Orleans reported that she had to avoid that area for an entire week because the pictures incited too much emotion. She had been warned about the photo series, so she knew to avoid that part of campus. As she entered an academic building to attend class, however, she was confronted with a flyer at eye-level on the door depicting the rubble of a house moved off its foundation. The surprise was too much for her. Before the day was over, she had emailed the group’s organizers to petition for less graphic signs.
The difference in point of view here is astounding. The signs and photo series were created to appeal to the vast majority of the school population—liberal-minded young people from anywhere but the south—for whom the shock of seeing broken buildings and flooded streets can be a valuable persuasive force. Caught in the bubble of exams and term papers, few college students would pay attention to New Orleans if it weren’t taped at eye-level to their classroom door. The two or three New Orleanians at school saw the pictures in an entirely different light, however. While the shock factor was important for the rest of the students, we didn’t need to be re-acquainted with the destruction. What was necessary for them was excessive for us.
Though it seems we New Orleanians living in the far off lands of out-of-state college should each be engrossed in our schools’ Katrina activism—we know the place, we have a stake in its future—many of us shy away from the volunteer scene. Why? We don’t disagree with sending people to gut houses and we do want people to pay attention to the city and help our neighbors. I can only speak from my own experience, but it seems that regardless of how much we’d like to contribute while still at school, a significant rift in point of view separates us from working closely with our volunteer classmates. This awkwardness can be conquered with time. In my opinion, the largest obstacle is conflicts in perceptions not of our city but of us as residents, volunteers and students.
I’m privileged to go to a school where Katrina activism is still alive. I’m not complaining. In fact, I’m pretty proud of the winter, spring, and summer break trips, ongoing fundraisers, and informational sessions pulled together by my classmates, many of whom have no connection to New Orleans beyond volunteer work. They’ve worked even harder than I have on rebuilding my own city. In other places, New Orleans never enters the conversation, no one travels to gut houses, and artwork memorializing Katrina is even vandalized.
Being proud of them, however, doesn’t mean I feel comfortable in their programs. It’s surprisingly difficult to find a niche that allows me to both volunteer and maintain my identity as a New Orleanian. I tried it once—during my first winter break, I joined my school’s first Katrina Relief trip. Before the group even came down, I was set apart from the others as a resident and seen as a resource instead of a volunteer. I didn’t fly down with the rest of the group, I slept in my own house instead of a tent, and I drove to the site where they woke up each morning. When we first met up in town, no one in the group had considered that I would actually want to work with them any more than welcoming them to New Orleans. Outside of the city, there’s an overpowering perception of New Orleans residents as either victims or homegrown activists who serve as resources to incoming volunteers. Since the gross majority of winter and spring break volunteer workers are from out-of-state, it often appears being a volunteer means that you are an outsider.
So while my classmates’ identities are solid as outside volunteers, we New Orleanians at school belong to both New Orleans and the rest of America as half-residents and half-outsiders. Although I live in the city too short a time to consider myself a resource to others, I am adamantly opposed to the thought of myself becoming an outsider to the city I’ve lived in my entire life. By associating with the volunteers at school, I feel that I’m aligning myself with the outsiders and losing my already shaky ties to the neighborhood. I could get over feeling awkward with time, but further distancing myself would be stepping too far.
This is my story—to assume it applies to other New Orleanians living away from home would be foolish. The possibility that the blessing of out-of-state volunteers could inadvertently exclude another important group of young willing workers, however, is extremely unfortunate. The situation is, in fact, entirely unnecessary. There’s no need for anyone to assume that New Orleans residents can’t volunteer for someone else’s well-being. Why wouldn’t I want to work? Here in the city, New Orleans residents fill a diverse range of roles, volunteering more hours towards their neighborhoods’ recovery in their everyday existence than a whole team of spring breakers from Massachusetts. I wish the families whose houses I worked on that winter break didn’t have to be surprised to find out I was from New Orleans. If a specific niche doesn’t exist for us, we’ll have to make our own, and make it known that out-of-state New Orleanian students are ready to rebuild.
Uma Nagendra is entering her sophomore year at Swarthmore University where she is studying comparative literature and biology. Uma spent the summer interning at NPN, and her favorite book is The Little Prince.
NOLA Volunteer News, Trumpet Issue #8 Sept. 2007
