Down in New Orleans

"Billy Sothern is a lawyer in New Orleans; he does a lot of work with death penalty cases. He is an extremely bright and observant writer who has made it his business to look at New Orleans through the lens of social justice. Down in New Orleans offers an invaluable perspective, one that might not be available in books that look at things through a strictly cultural lens. His book is a window into the darker side of how power works on a governmental and civic level in New Orleans, and how policy affects the lives of the less privileged in the city. Sothern gets close to an important truth about New Orleans when he writes: ‘For those of us who live here, even the wealthy and the privileged, it is impossible to ignore race and poverty; regardless of one’s politics or beliefs about the causes of poverty and its link to race, these factors are central in our civic discourse and define daily life in the city.’ Well, the book explores the city’s racial tensions and the disparity of power among white citizens and black citizens. At the same time, though, some of the worst crimes that have been committed by police in New Orleans have been committed by black officers. The city government has been largely black for the last 30 years or so. So it is too simplistic to make it a black/white thing. In New Orleans, as elsewhere, there is every shade of black, brown, and beige."