Rebuttal to a Carpetblogger

I have to say I'm laughing out loud over Carpetblogger (thnx fo dat, Mr Zombie!) Bob Freilich's attempt to paint the ongoing noise complaints against Cafe Istanbul as a Race War.
After suggesting I'm only comfortable in 'White Space' I really wanna tell him that I go visit my wife every month, in a place where There Are NO White People. And I like it better than here, thanks for asking.
But I digress.

The real joke of assigning racism to this disagreement is this:

The real man in charge of this operation is Pres Kabacoff.

He and Sallie Glassman co-chair the Healing Center and stood in for Chuck Perkins at almost every community meeting leading up to it's opening. He spoke then as though he were the boss of the entire operation, and spoke for Perkins with Chuck sitting right there.

Not only is Kabacoff white, but he's the whole trifecta, rich, white & Republican (to the tune of $25K in donations to David Vitter in 2014).

In an interview with Gawker of February 2015, Kabacoff made some surprising remarks about dealing with the poor of New Orleans, who are predominantly black.

While I suggest reading the entire interview, please note that first, he says he talked the feds into raising the amount an 'affordable housing' recipient could earn, to allow young white hipsters to qualify.

""I tried to influence the federal government to increase the tax incentive for affordable housing so it so it wasn't just for people making 60 percent of median income but 120 percent. That worked. Now, instead of making $20,000 you could make $40,000 to $50,000 in affordable housing, just to have a broader group, so when you did use subsidies you'd not only be dealing with the very poor but the working and middle classes."

Then, after dividing the recipients of affordable housing into three groups, this:

"On the affordable side, probably a third of those people you would love to have as your neighbor, another third—the kind of people who if their refrigerator stops working their life falls apart—if you can get them stable, you want them, and a third you just don't have the social staff to deal with the issues they're bringing to the table."

It doesn't take a crystal ball to know that last third is the poorest of the poor, and who they are in New Orleans, does it? Of course not.

But, having caught some serious flack for these remarks, Kabacoff was interviewed again by City Lab, to explain it all away, saying:

"Either I was being very inarticulate or they misquoted me. When you deal with [that] one third of former public-housing residents, you have to be very cautious about not bringing in a criminal element that you can’t handle. if you interpret that to mean that you want to get poor people out of public housing, well that’s not what I meant. It just means you have to do careful screening, you may have to do some evictions, mainly making sure that you don’t have that criminal element living next to the market rate, because the market rate will [leave the housing development]—as will many public-housing residents."


Think about this:

"When you deal with [that] one third of former public-housing residents, you have to be very cautious about not bringing in a criminal element that you can’t handle."

That third, the poor & black, are more likely to be a 'criminal element' than white people with money? I guess AirBnb crimes and phony crime camera schemes don't count.

Then there's this:

"It just means you have to do careful screening, you may have to do some evictions, mainly making sure that you don’t have that criminal element living next to the market rate."

The sad truth is now evident.

The Front Man is being used to carry the race card, by a Big Boss Man who doesn't want poor black people in affordable housing; because he thinks they'll steal.