Gram was born. My cousin Jason and his fiancé Bridgette had a baby. I was in New Orleans on the eve of Katrina to attend their wedding, and ended up on my uncle's roof with cameras and not a roll of film, surrounded by water, ignoring the dead bloated bodies desperately waving at helicopters. They haven't married yet. Bridgette wants to wait until she fits in her wedding gown again.

Not only do I live here, but I live with my incredibly talented oh so crazy artist girlfriend in the upstairs apartment of her flooded out house. She lost everything. According to the mental health community, that is why so many here are stressed, depressed and/or crazy. According to some in the mental health community since Katrina the suicide rate has increased. The air of depression in the city is insidious.

For a while the city was in shock, oddly calm, but the legendary crime of the Big Easy is back, sort of. The city is half it's former size, so mathematically it just cannot be as bad as it was. A solid 75% of post Katrina crime is Black on Black. The feeling from the major media outlets is that this is the only issue. It's big news, but in my opinion the media is missing the point and the cause. It's too simple and a social disservice to write it off as drug or gang related. It's about poverty, mis-education and hopelessness. When you are hopeless it's easy to kill. Those that listen to rap music or live in the former hood know the ghetto New Orlinean motto, "We don't give a f***"! Another aspect of the murder rate here is that many unsupervised teenagers have made it back to the city alone. This was discovered by the implementation of a new curfew. After arrest the authorities realized no parents were around. Unsupervised hopelessness is a living nightmare that will do anything to survive. Instead of dealing with the root issues the feds are sending attorneys, the ATF, the FBI and La Migra.

Though slowly the city is being rebuilt. But like so many cities in the U.S. a community of misunderstood, unappreciated, undocumented and uncounted Latino immigrants are doing the work. One real story of this past year is all about race. 6-months-ago I use to see these Latino brothers shopping at the market I go to. Over the past few weeks I've been noticing that many of them are shopping with their wives, and more than a few are pregnant.

"Can I have a tamale with those craw fish please?"

New Orleans has a huge Latino population. There was a sense that this mobile work force would come rebuild and leave. Not so, the Latino wave is here to stay. The friction and animosity between the Latinos and Blacks is palatable.

When I'm feeling low I eat fried chicken, usually four drumsticks. Two week-ends-ago on a rather sad night I stopped at my neighborhood gas station/fried chicken spot on Canal St , in the Mid City neighborhood. A young brother with his baseball cap coolly cocked to the side walked up to the counter; I arrived close on his heels. The Latino employees were finishing up a large order. Two young Latino cats walked up to the counter next. The Latina employee asked them what they wanted in Spanish.

The young brother next to me exploded in a calm voice, "We were here first."

The young lady behind the counter looked at the young brother, but the Latino cats continued to order, and she began to prepare their order.

"HEY YO, WE WERE HERE FIRST!" the young brother yelled.

The Latino cats yelled at the young brother with hands waving, and at the end of their rant one mumbles to the other, "Puto".

The young brother flipped out. "Puto, puto, puto, I speak a little Spanish. Keep talking I'll show you who the puto is."

The gentleman behind the counter quickly waited on the young man and then me while the young lady continued with the Latino cats. The Second Spanish-American war was averted for now.

The housing stock is another major story of the past year, which brings me back to my first question, what is New Orleans being rebuilt into? The developers are tripping over themselves for the steal; I mean deal of the century. Much of the city was destroyed. I have been trying to buy my first house in one of the neighborhoods that wasn't flooded. It's not working for me. The market here has gone crazy. Prices have risen 16%. The national average hovers around a 3% increase. Rental prices are up 75%. Gentrification isn't a fitting term. Usually poor people are inched out, but in New Orleans the poor have been shoved out. Except for one housing project, all the others remain locked up, literally with chain link fences. The new HUD, Housing for Urban Developers has plans to demolish most of the projects and replace them with mixed income housing. As I become older I'm finding that I'm a right thinking left acting cynic. I don't have the answers, but I have observed that the mixed income equation almost always screws poor people of color. The flavor of poor Black folk made New Orleans what it was, the food, the culture and unadulterated excitement and fun amid the danger. If this first year after Katrina is any indication that era is gone never to return.

Stephen Perry, President and CEO of the city's Convention and Visitors Bureau is quoted in Ebony Magazine as saying " New Orleans is the greatest African American city in the World".

He is wrong. New Orleans isn't a Black city anymore.

New Orleans Land will be the largest drunk theme park in the world where wealthy White folk can live as Latinos do the backbreaking work and a few Black folk are around for authenticity and entertainment.

But seriously, if a tragedy of this magnitude would of happened anywhere else in these United States , except for Overtown Miami, East Baltimore , North Philadelphia , South Central Los Angeles or Gary Indiana, etc, things would have been handled differently, wink, wink.

Clarence Williams is a distinguished visiting lecturer in photojournalism at the University of Southern Mississippi. The After Katrina Newswire is a project of the School of Mass Communication and Journalism at USM (www.usm.edu/afterkatrina). This story can be reprinted with this credit included.