You Found us Doing This， This Is Our Way： Criminalizing SecondLines，Super Sunday， and Habitus in Post—Katrina New Orleans

Roberto E. Barrios Li Quanmin Yu Xin

（1.Department of Anthropology， Southern Illinois University， Carbondale Illinois，USA;

2.Yunnan Nationalities Research Institute， Yunnan University for Nationalities， Kunming，

Yunnan，China;3. Department of Anthropology， the Chinese University of Hong Kong， China）

JOURNAL OF ETHNOLOGY， VOL.6， NO.4， 36-49， 2015 （CN51-1731/C， in Chinese）

DOI：10.3969/j.issn.1674-9391.2015.04.06

Abstract：

Super Sunday is a historically African American carnival that takes place on the weekends surrounding St. Josephs day（March 19）. Parade participants wear elaborately beaded and feathered costumes made to resemble the clothing of Native American Plains tribes and refer to themselves as Mardi Gras Indians. Like the masking of Mardi Gras Indians， Second Line parading is a practice that emerged in response to the inequities of racial discrimination in Southeastern Louisiana. Super Sunday and Second Line Parades emerged as ritualized practices in the context of New Orleans urban landscape， where residents denote and cultivate their racialized class identities by living in specific locations and by engaging in uses of urban space that distinguish them from those whom they perceive as their racial others. Second Line performers and Indians are organized in ranked roles that convey values and responsibilities deemed desirable in New Orleans working class African American neighborhoods. The ranked offices of Mardi Gran Indian tribes and the social roles performed by Second Line groups are not just performed to be observed but are also meant to be experienced and imitated. And they are therefore part of the tacit process through which modalities of habitus are transmitted in many New Orleans neighborhoods. In addition to their role in the shaping of New Orleanians durable dispositions， second Lines and Super Sunday are visually impressive practices that are unique to this city and are of appeal to tourists and visitors who “come to New Orleans looking for something spiritual”， in the words of Collins ‘Coach Lewis， member of the Mandingo Warriors Mardi Gras Indian Tribe.

Despite their importance as both disposition-shaping practices for city residents and cultural resources for the tourism industry， Second Lines and Mardi Gras Indians suffered harassment and brutality at the hands of the New Orleans Police Department（NOPD） and criticisms for promoting social disorderliness on the part of gentrifying resident constituencies in the years preceding Hurricane Katrina. The surveillance and suppression of Second Lines and Mardi Gras Indian evoke the question： How do such practices on the part of city government， police， and gentrifying resident constituencies become possible？ How does the scrutiny， policing， and repression of Second Lines and Super Sunday， which are a rich cultural patrimony for some and an economic resource for others， come to be seen as a logical course of action？ And， perhaps most importantly， in what novel ways are these practices of policing and surveillance changing in the context of post-Katrina reconstruction？ In this article I made the case that the criminalization， surveillance， and police harassment of Second Lines and Mardi Gras Indians can only be understood in light of the role played by socially structured space in the production of racialized class differences in New Orleans. I therefore argue that it is not in spite of， but because of， their critical role in the reclamation of urban space and the shaping of embodied dispositions by the citys African American working class that Second Lines and Indian masking have a lengthy history of regulation， monitoring， and outright repression by both the city government and residents with aspirations of hierarchical social mobility. I also argue that the mandatory evacuation of the city of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina created the illusion of the opening of a new frontier for government officials， professional city planners， and local elites， who， in the storms aftermath， came to see the city as a space emptied of its pre-disaster social challenges and open for transformation through neoliberal—a term I use to describe a cultural and policy movement that attempts to reduce all aspect if social life to narratives of capitalist utility and cost-benefit investment logics—tenets of urban development. By exploring these questions， this article elaborates on existing anthropological literature that illustrates the intimate connections between planning， race， and gentrifucation in the US.

In this article， I want to show how the analysis of the surveillance and criminalization of Second Lines and Super Sunday comprises yet another chapter in the complex history of the intimate relationships between urban planning， race， and modern forms of government. In the remainder of this article， I review the location-specific history of race as spatially produced difference in embodied disposition in New Orleans. In this review， I pay close attention to the was the policing， surveillance， and criminalization of Second Lines and Super Sunday on the part of city government agencies and gentrifying resident constituencies have historically operated as mechanisms for upholding hegemonic orders of urban time and space—orders where racial difference is denoted through spatial distance and embodied through quotidian practices. Finally， I bring this analysis to the post-Katrina moment， where expert visions of urban recovery threaten to articulate a novel form of structural violence on the citys working-class African American population through the （re）construction of the city on the basis of neoliberal principles of urban development-principles that limit the possibilities of return for the citys African American working class. In the post-Katrina moment， the axioms of security， surveillance， and progress of modern governmentality outlined by Michel Foucault are being articulated in multiple sites by a variety of actors with the effect of recreating the very ethnocidal violence of American frontier life that Marid Gras Indian wish to remember in the act of masking.

In the context of post-Kartrina New Orleans， the citys mandatory evacuation created a new frontier of race where modern forms of governmental rationality， outlined in recovery plans， articulated with the spatial production of racialized class difference in New Orleans. This articulation had the effect of simultaneously subjecting the ritual and quotidian disposition-shaping practices of working class African Americans to surveillance， policing， and continued conditions of displacement through the disaster-induced diaspora.

This article shows how anthropological approaches that highlight the role of the social production of space in both the shaping of embodied dispositions and the creation of racialized class difference in New Orleans allow us to understand the stakes of recovery planning after Hurricane Katrina. Both the City Council-Lambert and UNOP plans for the Treme area failed to recognize pre-Katrina residents as uniquely constituted products of their life experiences in the neighborhood and integral parts of the city to be reconstructed. The conceptualization of recovery plans in terms of capital-reproducing relationships triggered visceral reactions on the part of longtime neighborhood residents， who saw these recovery-planning activities as enhancing preexisting processes of gentrification and social displacement. Their concerns were not unwarranted. Recently， the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center issued a series of reports that indicate that housing costs have risen exponentially after the storm， putting even efficiency apartments out of the reach of people employed in low-pay， service sector jobs. The Center has also reported that the city remains at 80 percent of its pre-Katrina population levels and that the demographic profiles of arriving residents do not match those of New Orleanians before the storm. Finally， the Center has reported that， although the city has witnessed a rise in entrepreneurialism since 2005， it has also seen an increasing gap in socioeconomic inequities between race and ethnic groups.

The anthropological literature provides us with a unique lens for analyzing the intimate connections between race， policing， and urban planning in post-Katrina New Orleans. Contemporary popular notion of racial difference are rooted in the reactions of Eurocentric colonia settlers to the embodied dispositions and space-producing practices to those populations they encountered in the Americas， Africa， and Asia. The colonizers deemed difference in habitus to be difference in nature. In these emerging discourses of racial difference of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries， the constitutions of colonial settlers were also deemed susceptible to degeneration when exposed to the social practices of their colonial “others”. As the works of Michel Foucualt， Ann Laura Stoler， andPaul Rabinow have shown us， sciences of governmentality like modernist planning took shape in the midst of reactionary movements against the threat that colonial contexts were perceived to pose to the racial purities of European colonizers. From its very inception， urban planning emerged as a technique for the regulation of human bodies and the cultivation of the nations social body： the national race.

In New Orleans， Hurricane Katrina created a new frontier for government officials， residents with aspirations of upward social mobility， and expert planners， all of whom envisioned the citys central neighborhoods and public housing units as emptied of their predominantly working-class African American residents. This imagined empty space allowed for the deployment of expert recovery plans that conceptualized the citys reconstruction as contingent on the creation of networks of pipes and roadways for the investment and circulation of capital. These visions marginalized requests by outspoken city residents that recovery plans focus on the immediate reinstatement of the citys working-class African American population， whose modalities of habitus are a key element in the production and reproduction of the city and its people by its people. These urban plans articulated with long-standing practices， on the part of city government， of criminalizing parading traditions and quotidian socialization practices among working-class African Americans. In the post-Katrina moment， then， historic city ordinances resonate with the passing comments of suburban sheriffs and permeate the contested spaces of recovery plans. All kinds of masking， the wearing of feathers， gathering at the local taverns， and public dancing by the negroes will ?be prohibited this carnival season. If we see some black guys on the corner milling around， we would confront them. Recovery plans need to be thought of in terms of their investment potential.

Despite the violent and financial excesses of recent NOPD policies， participants in Second Lines and Mardi Gras Indian tribes have not remained passive subjects. With the assistance of the American Civil Liberties Union， Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs successfully negotiated the lowering of NOPD parade fees in 2007. In the hurricanes aftermath， Mardi Gras Indians have used their costumes as remembrance sites， sewing beaded patches that commemorate the lives lost during the storm. Life in the disaster-induced diaspora has also triggered a newfound appreciation for masking among many New Orleanians who have returned to the city with the intention of continuing Super Sunday celebrations.