All my life, I've had friends of different races. Until I moved to New Orleans. Here, the blacks want nothing to do with the whites, as a rule. I have a few black friends, but most of them are co-workers and we were able to develop a friendship over time. Never in my life have I been exposed to racism such as this.

That's quite surprising -- is the integration all a show put on for the tourists then? When I was there a few years ago, the best street-corner jazz band I saw in the French Quarter was three black guys, two white guys, and a Japanese guy, the city mayor at the time was black, all the restaurants and bars I went too seemed sensibly cosmopolitan, and all-in-all the place had every sign of having outgrown its unfortunate racial history. It's sad to hear that that's not actually the case.

Peter