America’s caste system thriving in New Orleans: Neighborhood inequities driven by Louisiana’s unique succession laws

New Orlean’s poverty rate of 23.7% is more than double the US average of 10.5% and New Orleans’ median homeownership rate is below the national average of 64% at 48.3%. Uptown is a New Orleans’ neighborhood, home to the St. Charles Streetcar line, Audubon Park, legendary quarter back Drew Brees’ mansion, and two well-known universities, Tulane and Loyola.

Tulane University President’s mansion located Uptown on Audubon Place, also known as Zemurray Mansion. Photo by: Infrogmation.

Consider that New Orleans is nearly 60% Black yet Uptown is 78% white, and the average home value in New Orleans is below $250,000 whereas the typical home value in Uptown is approximately $660,000. Long touted as a tourist attraction, New Orleans’ fails to prioritize its broader community, instead letting wealthy, well-educated, and often white neighborhoods hog the city’s resources.

Neighborhood Inequities: Flood Risk and Food Deserts

Sitting below sea level and shaped like a bowl, flood risk and lack of access to high ground are alarmingly harsh realities for many New Orleanians. Neighborhoods closest to the river are less likely to flood. Audubon Park poses as Uptown’s community backyard facing out to the Mississippi River, meaning Uptown has a lower flood risk. The average household income in the entire US is $88,607 and the City of New Orleans average household income is only $71,938, yet Uptown has an average household income of $130,972. Uptown is therefore less vulnerable to flooding and has more access to resources for a faster recovery from disaster.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Lower 9^th Ward, which was covered in water up to 12 feet deep, was the last neighborhood to have power and water restored, and the last to be pumped dry. Still reeling from Katrina, disparities in the Lower 9^th Ward extend beyond increased flood risk in the form of access to fresh food: the Lower 9^th Ward doesn’t have a single grocery store. The US Department of Agriculture defines a food desert as any low-income area of more than 500 people without a full service grocery store within one mile. The national average for number of residents served by one supermarket is 8,800 whereas the average number of residents served by a grocery store in New Orleans is 18,000. The Lower 9^th Ward is a food desert of about 5,500 people, without a supermarket, instead relying on 10 corner stores that don’t sell nutrient dense food. Meanwhile, Uptown has several supermarket options for fresh and nutritious food, including Whole Foods, Winn-Dixie, Robért Fresh Market, Rouses Market, The Fresh Market, Langenstein’s, Canseco’s, and more.

NOLA Village Market is a corner store in the Lower 9th Ward, located at 6100 St. Claude Ave. Photo by: Anthony Turducken

Inextricably Linked: America’s Caste System and New Orleans’ Legal System

Louisiana is the only Civil jurisdiction in the United States, and New Orleans has a unique set of
succession laws. Louisiana’s public law, including its criminal justice system, is like the rest of the US, following the common law principle of stare decisis. However, New Orleans’ private law follows Civil law, operating based on specific codified laws, most notably those concerning real estate, trust and estates, and inheritances.

Forced heirship is a concept embedding intergenerational wealth and furthering the racial wealth gap by guaranteeing that a child’s financial welfare is linked to their parents’. According to Louisiana Civil Code Articles 872 and 935, transfer of ownership of the deceased’s estate occurs immediately upon death, and the deceased’s estate includes the property, rights, and obligations accumulated at death. Forced heirship laws encouraged wealthy settlers, who early claimed land on higher ground, to pass down their properties from one generation to the next, ensuring the next generation would thrive to the same degree as the last. On top of that, forced heirship laws contribute to the poverty cycle by including obligations, otherwise known as debt, in the deceased’s estate; children who grow up in poverty are further hampered by the
debt of their parents.

“Our founding ideals promise liberty and equality for all. Our
reality is an enduring racial hierarchy that has persisted for
centuries,” Wilkerson says of America’s “shape-shifting, unspoken
race-based caste pyramid.”

Reflecting on the fact that property rights are a central goal of America’s democracy, it’s time to examine the quiet implications of Louisiana’s laws on the racial wealth gap and New Orleans’ alarming neighborhood inequities. Americans learn wealth accumulation, and getting access to a better life, comes from saving and investing, but this is false. Intergenerational wealth, through inheritances and intra-family asset transfers, is the main driving force of economic well-being and racial wealth inequality. Since most intergenerational transfers are flowing to families that already have an abundance of resources, this prevents intergenerational economic mobility, making it inherently antithetical to the “American Dream.”

Behind the performative and celebratory culture of New Orleans’ is America’s caste system, lurking within New Orleans’ legal system, which strengthens intergenerational wealth, intensifies neighborhood inequities, and dismantles communities across the city through forced heirship and zoning laws. While the caste system wasn’t built yesterday, its implications for tomorrow and years to come are destructive. The gross injustices of geographic racism and intergenerational wealth exclusion must be addressed now. As Wilkerson put it, “we are the heirs to whatever is right or wrong…” and the harm is “ours to deal with now.” Given that rules of inheritance and succession play such an important role in the accumulation of wealth, essentially guaranteeing that the next generation will have the same structure as the last, public intervention and repair is necessary.

This piece was edited by Chandler Welch as part of Professor Kelley Crawford’s Digital Civic Engagement course at Tulane University.