I moved to Treme—America’s so-called “oldest Black...

I moved to Treme—America’s so-called “oldest Black neighborhood”—because my mother-in-law’s shops in the French Quarter were starting to see more thefts, more vagrants casing the place, more close calls. She needed help, and I wanted to be nearby. Treme was only a few blocks away. It felt like the responsible thing to do.

The neighborhood, of course, has been thoroughly romanticized by the media, by liberal documentarians, by the kind of white tourists who come down for a weekend, get drunk on “vibes,” and go home thinking they’ve touched the soul of the South. They leave with portraits of resilience and trumpet solos echoing in their heads. But I live here. Within our first month, both my wife’s and my cars were stolen. Not broken into—gone. Packages don’t just go missing—they’re taken. Sometimes while we’re literally watching for them to arrive. Delivery drivers might be working with the local thieves; we’ve seen that too. You stand on your porch and wonder whether the guy in the Amazon vest is casing the house.

Walking my son to the playground two blocks away, or to the hipster coffee shop—where the baristas have tattoos of Louisiana flora and bumper stickers about abolitionist housing policy—means keeping your eyes on the ground like a bomb tech. You’re not looking for cracks in the sidewalk. You’re scanning for broken glass, condoms, human shit, animal shit, trash, needles, cracked lighters, crack pipes, and enough leftover blunt guts to fill a pillowcase.

There are “bars” here—really just cinderblock bunkers with neon signs and no windows. Outside them: rotting piles of chicken bones and crawfish shells that sit for days, weeks sometimes. No one cleans them up. No one cares. Trash in the grass, trash on the curb, trash ground into the sidewalk. It’s just part of the atmosphere.

To be fair—and I want to be—my neighbors have been decent to me. They’ve listened to my complaints and often share them. Their kids are sweet to my son. We wave, we nod. But fairness doesn’t override facts. And the fact is this: it is the people. Not all of them. Not every person. But overwhelmingly, yes—Black culture in this neighborhood is the problem. Not the system. Not gentrification. Not “white flight.” The culture itself.

Fights break out in the street. People scream at each other in public like it’s a stage play. Grown men get high and wander into traffic, yelling at cars. Women threaten each other in front of their kids. Toddlers roam near broken bottles while their parents are passed out or screaming. There is no shame. No self-awareness. Being dysfunctional here doesn’t carry a social cost—it carries street cred.

The police don’t even try to intervene anymore. Instead, they’ve installed cameras—big, ugly, blinking blue-light boxes mounted to poles that flash like club strobes at night. They scatter the worst actors like rats. That’s the security system now. Surveillance and fear.

A few weeks ago, I was podcasting late into the night wi @CSandbatch. His car battery died. As we were trying to jump it, a Suburban pulled up. Three Black guys in hoodies got out and started surrounding us. I didn’t wait to find out their intentions. I racked my 1911 loudly. Risky, sure. But effective. They turned and left. Welcome to “community policing,” New Orleans style.

At night, the city hums with decay. You hear the chirping of dozens of fire alarms with dead batteries—an ambient soundtrack of neglect. It’s funny, in a sad kind of way. Everyone here hears it, no one changes it.

I grew up in Northern Virginia. My experience with Black America was the opposite—normal families, striving professionals, order and discipline. Here? It’s like a different civilization entirely. It’s not even American. It’s Caribbean. It’s Central American. Quirky, stabby, corrupt, surreal.

The crime stats have improved, technically. But only because the city is leaning on AI facial recognition and real-time analytics to preemptively arrest people. It’s working, but it’s not organic. The culture didn’t change. It was restrained, digitally. Like a zoo using tranquilizers instead of fences.

Tourists and transplants love to romanticize all of this. “So authentic,” they say. “So real.” They come for the food and the music. They spend a weekend in Bywater or Frenchmen Street and think they’ve glimpsed something profound. But they never live here. They don’t raise kids here. They don’t lock their doors four times and sleep with a gun on the dresser.

White liberals are the worst of them. They condescend with their praise. They marvel at the grit, the flavor, the soul—never noticing the despair, the entropy, the generational rot. They don’t have to live inside it. They take photos of second lines and murals and then Uber back across the parish line.

Any white person who stays here either lives completely segregated from Black neighbors or has adopted South African-style security measures. Cameras, bars, private patrols. And if you talk about it? If you tell the truth? You’re racist. Not observant. Not honest. Just racist.

I came here with no racial resentment. I’m half Puerto Rican. My wife is Pakistani. We are multicultural to the bone. But this neighborhood—this city—has stripped away every illusion I had. I am now the most cynical race realist I know. Not because I wanted to be. Because I had to be.

We’re leaving when the lease is up. We’ll help my mother-in-law retire and move her somewhere safer. I won’t raise my son pretending things are better than they are, or tiptoeing around reality because it offends elite sensibilities.

New Orleans has failed like every other large, mostly black city. It convinced everyone to celebrate its failure. It doesn’t need help. It needs an exorcism of a broken culture. But hey, maybe a few more Super Bowls won’t be so bad, and everyone here thinks that’s worth living like this.

PS I know it’s gay to complain about New Orleans and nothing will ever change but it’s frustrating and I puts a weight on the soul