Charlotte Allen of the Independent Womens’ Forum, you’ll remember, shook her finger at “liberal-elite puritans” (read: one guy at the Washington Post) for not unreservedly embracing this year’s Mardi Gras even though many of its black and poor residents are unable to participate and the city still lies in ruins.
I guess Ms. Allen didn’t want to be reminded that not everyone is able to indulge in the “simple pleasures” of Mardi Gras. Here’s an example of what she doesn’t want to think about because, well, beads! While white society dances the night away at the Comus and Rex balls, there are no cotillions for the black Carnival societies in New Orleans.
Just before midnight on Tuesday, the young women of this city’s most prominent white families waltzed and waved in flowing gowns and tiaras at the formal galas held by the oldest and most glittering krewes of the Carnival season, Comus and Rex.
Usually, there are parallel Mardi Gras balls held by the city’s large, historically black Carnival organizations.
Amanda Williams and Amirah Jackson, in fact, were supposed to be among the young women whose accomplishments and dreams for the future were announced to society at largely black cotillions here this year.
But unlike the mostly white families of Comus and Rex who were able to continue their traditions in the face of Hurricane Katrina’s destruction, Ms. Williams and Ms. Jackson could only daydream about what might have been in the ball gowns they never got to wear.
They were to have been presented by the oldest black Carnival society in New Orleans, the Original Illinois Club, which has been holding a tableau ball on the Saturday night before Mardi Gras since 1895. But for the first time in two generations, there was no Original Illinois Club ball, or any other debutante soiree given by the large historically black Carnival organizations. They simply are not here anymore.
It may seem a bit silly to talk about debutante balls, which have their own issues of class even when race is taken out of the picture (you may remember the passage in “Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil” in which the Lady Chablis crashes a debutante ball), but these balls and the krewes that put them on have been effective means of keeping black New Orleanians out of the upper echelons of power.
Like so many other aspects of New Orleans, Mardi Gras has long been rigidly polarized along racial lines, with its black and white adherents celebrating equally enthusiastically but almost totally separately in krewes, which are private, nonprofit clubs.
Rather than open its membership to blacks, for instance, Comus simply stopped parading in 1991 when a city ordinance banned discrimination within organizations that hold Mardi Gras parades, which rely on public money for crowd control and sanitation, among other things.
Like other krewes that stopped parading, Comus, made up almost exclusively of white men, continued to hold balls. Other krewes, like Rex, opened their membership and have held integrated parades, but the debutantes at their balls are almost exclusively white.
And make no mistake, these things are about social and professional contacts and keeping those concentrated in the “right” hands. In my first couple of years of practice, a huge bone of contention in the office was the Favorite Sons of Ireland dinner, an all-male St. Patrick’s Day event that is attended by all the (male) power brokers in the City, from the Mayor to the Cardinal (I’d love to see what they do this year with Christine Quinn, the new City Council Speaker, who’s female, Irish and a lesbian to boot). All the men in my office went, and the women were always pissed off about it because we were shut out of the access. But the male partners had a point when they said they couldn’t very well stop going, since the access was good for the firm. How good a point that was is up for debate.
Back to the debutante balls. Having been shut out of the white balls and krewes, black New Orleanians formed their own social clubs to encourage their own upward mobility. For instance, the Original Illinois Club is so named because its members were largely Pullman porters for the Illinois Central Railroad, considered a prestigious job at the time. Now its members are businesspeople and professionals. In keeping with the theme of upward mobility, the focus of the debutante balls in the black Carnival clubs is on the young women’s accomplishments, goals and character rather than on family connections:
Unlike the white clubs that have traditionally emphasized family names and lineage, the black clubs focused on accomplishment above all else, local historians say, putting emphasis on a young woman’s education and suitability for higher learning and the work force.
And they’re a huge deal in New Orleans, with the debutantes being profiled by the Times-Picayune, which also extensively covers the balls. So the cancellation of the black debutante balls is a huge blow, and only serves to highlight how much more vulnerable black New Orleans is than white New Orleans, and how much more devastated:
Many of the black clubs are hoping to hold traditional debutante balls next year and plan to invite the young women who missed their turn. But the future is uncertain.
“A lot of the organizations are struggling financially because of the storm,” said Gerard Johnson, a member of the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, of which he was king in 2004.
Zulu, the largest black Carnival krewe, paraded this Mardi Gras but did not hold a debutante ball.
Zulu’s annual ball usually draws 16,000 people to the New Orleans convention center. In lieu of the ball, Zulu held a smaller party for its members last Friday night.
Earl Jackson, a former king of the Original Illinois Club and its financial secretary, said only one of 50 members lived in New Orleans now.
“It was probably one of the saddest moments we’ve ever had, canceling the ball,” he said, vowing that it will be back next year. “We will not let it die.”