I remember asking a Black member of the City Council whether he worried that the culture of New Orleans might be changed by the terrible disaster. So many Black residents had been displaced; so many Latino workers had arrived to rebuild. Would something be lost? He laughed at me. A big, warm, New Orleans laugh. “Nah,” he said. “It’s just another flavor in the gumbo, man.” I love that story (I’ve told it before), because I think what that man said was about the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard anyone say about our country. And I understood as soon as he said it: That is America.