Thursday, May 29, 2008

Dear Baton Rouge: I've been trying to tell you


If you're in my hometown, Baton Rouge, and if you haven't already gotten all pissed off and stopped reading this humble web log. . . .

I told you so.

I TOLD YOU that if you want some clues about how one goes about fixing Baton Rouge, come to Omaha. Similar size metro area . . . college town . . . transportation hub . . . had a downtown that was sucking air two decades ago.

And now,
look at this best-cities ranking in Kiplinger magazine:
Don't pigeonhole Omaha as insurance, Warren Buffett and mail-order steaks. This one-time Great Plains pioneer town has a stereotype-busting cultural scene. Walk through north downtown and discover the indie-rock club Slowdown next to Film Streams, a cinema art house. In Old Market, red-brick roads run past open-air restaurants, galleries and chic boutiques.

Funky, yes, but the city's success is defined by its midwestern values. People preach and practice a strong work ethic and modest lifestyle. They also believe in giving back to the community, and that includes the chief executives of the five Fortune 500 companies headquartered here.

Consider the 175,000-square-foot Holland Performing Arts Center. Built with private funding from corporate executives, philanthropists and civic leaders, this $100-million facility is a symbol of 21st-century urban modernism. A 2,000-seat, state-of-the-art concert hall -- with chiseled acoustic panels -- is the place to experience the classics, performed by the Omaha Symphony Orchestra.
LIKE I SAID . . . I tried to tell y'all so. But to summarize why Omaha thrives -- bustles even, with excellent schools, a thriving arts scene and strong business community -- it all comes down to having the kind of strong civic culture that Baton Rouge lacks. That right there is why Gov. Bobby Jindal can't save Louisiana . . . even if he appeared to be of a mind to do it.

Bobby Jindal can't build a functioning civic culture. Baton Rougeans . . . Louisianians can. But only if they're willing to change.

The difference? Well, you don't see much of this in Omaha:


Or this, found on the Abandoned Baton Rouge blog:


THE LAST PICTURE is what's left of a room at the abandoned eyesore that used to be the upscale Bellemont Motor Hotel. At the end of her second post on the ruins of the Bellemont, Abandoned Baton Rouge blogmistress Colleen Kane made a quite reasonable request of my hometown:
Baton Rouge, kindly explain thyself.

29 comments:

Colleen said...

Hey, thanks for the props. And now I want to see Omaha. My own home state of NJ had Asbury Park infamously in ruins for a decade or two there, but it is on the rise again. I'm not sure what caused the turnaround but I did hear mention of the real estate trend of "follow the gays." I believe this is also known as "follow the artists," and if you can follow some gay artists to where they're settling, that place should really be booming soon.

GO said...

How many Fortune 500 companies does Baton Rouge have again?

How many CEO's and corporate executives can be marshalled-along with their assets-to sincerely and actively pursue and help to create a culture of artistic expression and support of the arts locally?

Yeah...Great point...That was a GREAT comparison to make...

You nailed that one...Omaha does it with multimillioniare philanthropists, and you're mad because Baton Rouge can't do it?

What you're really mad about is that Baton Rouge doesn't have lots of millionaires...

Don't know anyone can change that, except perhaps to make our state a better place for millionaires, and the businesses they own and work for, to possibly or perhaps relocate to our (red)neck of the woods...

Great analysis and comparison.

The Mighty Favog said...

Baton Rouge has plenty of millionaires but no widespread commitment to civic improvement -- and certainly no popular willingness to support things like public education, which is the foundation of a functioning economy and region.

Omaha millionaires DID NOT bankroll a first-rate education system. Omaha taxpayers did, though philanthropists have added some spectacular bells and whistles to a few local schools.

Bottom line, there is a REASON there are a lot of Fortune 500 companies and millionaires in Omaha. Likewise, there is a REASON they're NOT in Baton Rouge . . . at least not to the extent they're here.

Bottom line 2: You get what you tolerate. Last year, I took several rolls of film at my alma mater, Baton Rouge High. I had a couple of those rolls custom developed here in Omaha, and the photo tech wanted to know whether they were pictures of a school destroyed by Katrina.

Think about that. Omahans have no frame of reference for the degree of mediocrity and suck Baton Rougeans regard as absolutely normative.

GO said...

What's hilarious is that the readership of this blog are-once again-putting on display an absolutely dazzling lack of perspective, and ONCE AGAIN bemoaning problems, without wondering about either A.) Solutions, or B.) The context within which these problems sprung up.

The school systems of Ascension, Livingston, and the private school system in Baton Rouge are THRIVING and getting GREAT MARKS on standardized testing and achievements...The reason? Nobody, not a millionaire, not a middle class state employee, not a married college student with school aged children, wants to send their kids to a system that has been run for FOUR DECADES by the NAACP and a ridiculously senile old judge, acting as a puppet at the behest of the prosecution in a desegregation case...

Seriously...a judge that takes 40 years to decide a case? FORTY YEARS? In the balance was our community's school system...

Do you HONESTLY think anyone with half a brain wants their kids in a system like that? Being run like that? Under that sort've weight?

Oh, wait a minute...NONE OF YOU REALIZED THAT, did you?

Otherwise, I'm sure such a germane and illuminating point would've been brought up by people who seem to be most adept at COMPLAINING ABOUT a problem...

We had issues that created a completely different context to complain about this problem...

The minions of the NAACP & a completely inept judge kept the school system under a consent decree for FORTY FREAKING YEARS...You think that might have people at the Capital and folks in the community turning a deaf ear or blind eye to its plight?

Who wants to try to help a system that's basically imprisoned by folks who purport to be after the best interest and the better angels of our nature, but clearly did far more harm than good...

I mean, its REALLY REALLY REALLY easy for all of you to sit here and complain about the state the system's in, but who wants to send their kid into it? None of you did, none of you would, most of you will try your best...

Without context or an actual grasp of WHY the system came to be where it did, how in the world can any of you with a straight face talk about how sad a situation its in...

The community got its school system taken away, and then they realized it might not ever get given back to them...At what point-DURING A FORTY YEAR DESEG CASE-does the community just give up? The judge & the plaintiffs never wanted to give it back...So why dump money and resources, nevermind time and volunteering the resources many had available, to a system that was being run not by the community, but an organization and a judge who were both proven to have smashed it to bits...

The community isn't to blame for our school system...Catholic, Redemptorist, PBS, CPS, Livingston, & Ascension's collective systems and growth are almost DIRECTLY attributable to the NAACP, and that idiotic old bat of a Judge Parker, and their completely inept bungling and gumming up of the works of that system...

The Mighty Favog said...

Yeah, that's right, Cap. It's all the nigras' and da gummint's fault.

And you think it's acceptable that people ought to pay multiple thousands of dollars to "escape" the educational suck? To pay for separate but unequal school systems? I've got news for you.

You. Can. Not. Escape. It.

Every day and every way, you can't escape it, and Baton Rouge can't escape it, and Louisiana can't escape it.

The story is in an illiterate-ass workforce that Corporate America won't touch with a 10-foot bullfrog gig. The story is in a sky-high crime rate.

The story is in high insurance rates, and in spending more, more and ever more for prisons and cops.

The story is in jobs across the trade- and service sectors being filled by people who are manifestly unqualified to do what they're doing -- and it shows in the lousy service you encounter day by day.

But -- Hey! -- the white-flight schools are doing well.

And Louisiana is emptying out.

You know what, I went to segregated schools in Baton Rouge until fourth-grade, when the "neighborhood schools" plan was ordered by the courts as a deseg remedy. And I'm here to tell you that the East Baton Rouge Parish public schools were just as full of violent little dumbasses when the only black faces you saw were those of the janitors and the lunchroom ladies.

And the two black kids at Red Oaks Elementary caught hell from everybody. Most especially from the teachers.

Likewise, you seem to assume that Baton Rouge was the only city to ever endure a decades-long deseg case. You need to get out more.

Lots of cities did, including Omaha.

The difference is that it took a dysfunctional backwater like Baton Rouge to f*** deseg up that badly.

Congratulations. You're now New Orleans. Without the Quarter, or the streetcars, or the brass bands, or the second lines through the neighborhoods.

You must be so proud.

Thanks for writing. You illustrate my point so very well.

GO said...

So wait...Now I'm a racist because I showed you the PROBLEM instead of hollering amen when you turned around to start preaching to us here in the choir?

Nobody said RACE was a problem...I am saying that the COMMUNITY isn't to blame for John Parker, and neither is the COMMUNITY to blame for the NAACP...at least not all of the community.

If you don't like my answers, then you should cease asking or lamenting points you don't wish to recognize the answer to...

Kids escape it every single day. They go to those schools and those systems (& Ascension & Livingston are both NOWHERE near as segregated as you would have us believe), and they get quality educations, and then they use TOPS to subsidize their education...

Then they escape it by going to Atlanta...Or Houston...or Dallas...Or Austin...Or wherever in the heck else they can go...

Heck of a point there, bud...The only ones still stuck are the ones who are brave enough-or poor enough-to not be able to get out...

The fortunate (read: monied and/or intelligent) don't move back when they start families because they don't want to even smell the school system here...

Oh, and don't play the race card against me there, either, you one trick pony, you, because I know black & white alike who refuse to come back...That dog won't hunt, and we're all stocked up on delusional here in the real world...Sell it somewhere else...

Once again, no one is dodging the fact that the system was broken, or that the initial point of the case wasn't a positive development...You'd like the argument to be framed like that, but it simply isn't being, at all...

What we're talking about is how the community lost control, and a motivated (politically? ethnically?) community group held it hostage with quite possibly the dumbest man to ever wear a robe and call himself a judge in history...For 40 years, guv-u-nuh...

That wasn't the COMMUNITY holding it hostage...That wasn't WHITE PEOPLE holding it hostage...That was a judge and a community group.

There is no wrangling, no tangent you can spin off on while raging once again about a machine you want to blame someone else for building...

Own it. The truth shall set you free...

The Mighty Favog said...

Listen. It's not brain surgery, unless you live in Louisiana or a few other so benighted locales.

When you're ordered to desegregate your schools, a community can choose to make it work and set about strengthening its public-education system . . . or not.

Baton Rouge chose "not." Baton Rouge chose to respond by immediately opening up a crapload of white-flight academies and, then, refused to pass any kind of school tax for three decades.

Then -- as public schools deteriorated from a base level of extreme mediocrity to "Oh my God!" -- middle-class white people started to flee the city and parish in droves.

That is not a positive reaction to a community challenge. That's how a community that didn't have much going for it to atart with reacts.

That's a widespread cultural and societal pathology, not a mean, mean civil-rights "agitators" problem. Judge West's and Judge Parker's shortcomings were -- having lived in the community forever -- in not foreseeing that what DID happen WOULD happen, and that the community would end up more segregated than ever.

GO said...

So the community is supposed to subject itself to the machinations and the posturing during the case...

For 40 years?

That's what a "progressive" community does in your eyes?

No one from state government ordered the "white flight academies" to open, and schools like Redemptorist & Catholic High were around long before that situation came to pass...

Livingston & Ascension always had great scores BEFORE the deseg case, on top of that...

What's hilarious is that you IGNORE the fact that the community lost control of its school system. It was no longer their own.

Would you pay a child support for children that aren't your own? Would you pay someone else's car note without being able to drive it?

Of course not...Yet you are excoriating the same community for not passing taxes to fix a system they had absolutely no control over...

No taxation without representation, m'friend...You talked about not escaping, I showed you how the community did exactly that.

You called me a racist, and then agreed with me on EXACTLY what happened and why...

So basically, you've been owned or agreed with me on every point, yet you failed to bring ANY of them up until AFTER I did when whining about this situation, and blamed a community that had its hands tied for two scores while the NAACP & idiotic judges tied the future and the present up with legal wranglings and racially fueled machinations sank it...

People didn't leave because they don't like blacks...People left-and people refused to pass taxes for-a system they had no control or representation within...

Like I said...Own it. The truth shall set you free. I'm glad to see that once someone points out the truth behind your complaints, you-albeit begrudingly and without crowing and tossing out epithets along the way-will accept said truth...

Own it.

The Mighty Favog said...

GO,

You "own" nothing. I said the judges' mistake was in not anticipating that Baton Rougeans would react like a bunch of rednecks -- which they did -- and that things would end badly.

The court needed to get more creative in its solution, though I am unsure whether ANY solution apart from de-facto segregation would have been acceptable to most Baton Rougeans.

THAT is what I was saying. I faulted the judges for overestimating the cultural intelligence of a parish.

And you know what? I didn't even begin to overcome that cultural deficit myself until two things happened -- I found God and the Church, and I got the hell out of Louisiana. (Not necessarily in that order.)

My biggest fault today? I still give a damn what happens to BR and Louisiana. It's a definite weakness.

Perspective shall set you free. So get yourself some and stop ranting like an ignorant peckerwood.

I have indulged you long enough.

Anonymous said...

Two numbers, Omaha 80% white, BR 46% white. No need to post any more statistics.

The Mighty Favog said...

Two numbers, BR 46% white in 2008, 65% white in 1980, pre-busing. No need to post any more statistics.

jamarco said...

You have proved his point. Deseg. and busing really worked? right? Just like mom used to say, "you can't bring your friends up, they will only bring you down". Same goes with the schools in BR. Mamma was right. Now all the public schools in BR are in the same shape. And guess what, the money is still there, in BR. Have you been to Perkins Rowe or the Towne Center? When is the last time you drove down highland road, went into the back gate of the country club of Louisiana by giving the guard a Bigmac? or waited for a table at Louisiana Lagniappe for better than hour, or Better yet have you driven down Airline to Ascension Parish?

If you want to look at some real good numbers look at Ascension Parish. It compares very well to your Omaha.

Ascension Parish:
White Non-Hispanic (76.2%)
Black (20.3%)
Hispanic (2.5%)
Other race (1.0%)
Two or more races (0.7%)
American Indian (0.5%)

Median household income in 2005: $46,424
2005 median house value:
$121,200

Omaha
White Non-Hispanic (75.4%)
Black (13.3%)
Hispanic (7.5%)
Other race (3.9%)
Two or more races (1.9%)
American Indian (1.2%)
Estimated median household income in 2005: $40,484 (it was $40,006 in 2000)

Median household income in 2005 $40,484
2005 median house value: $124,400

The Mighty Favog said...

I love you people. You throw a hissy fit when a federal judge does what federal judges were doing everywhere in 1980 and -- to spite da gummint and everybody else -- crap your own bed and point to it as proof that the feds destroyed Baton Rouge.

Then, after destroying what already was a half-assed majority-white school system, you complain that no sane person could send their kids to the disastrous majority-black district and haul ass for White-Flight Land.

Well, whose damned fault was THAT?

Omaha, starting in 1976, was under just as draconian a desegregation order as Baton Rouge. Perhaps more so.

Omahans didn't much like it, but they made it work and held the public schools together, despite the Omaha Public Schools district being only one of several districts in the county and being slightly majority-minority.

Baton Rouge, which in 1980 had a strong majority of whites in its schools? KABOOM!

And then you go around comparing stats from the BR metro's biggest white-flight parish to stats from Omaha proper, including the 'hood and everything else. And Omaha STILL matches up.

Try facing reality . . . and Louisiana's own shortcomings, as opposed to continually swimming down the river of denial.

People aren't hauling ass from Louisiana for no reason a-tall. You're not about to lose ANOTHER congressional seat for no damn reason whatsoever.

Omaha isn't ranked in the top three places to live in America by Kiplinger merely because it's merely about as good as a suburb in a failed state.

Anonymous said...

It's not about white flight. It's about a large black population, that is uneducated, unmotivated, and that will continue to vote for democratic politicians who perpetuate the problem for their own benefit.

Anonymous said...

When a city has over 100,000 blacks who are granted majority black districts and elect judges like Don Johnson, and Senators like Cleo Fields, and councilmen like Bones Addison, you are screwed. Just move the hell out as soon as you can, and find somewhere like Omaha or some other western or midwestern state with demographics that don't look like ours, and you'll never regret it.

jamarco said...

you keep losing your own argument. If you live in a place with a broken toilet, and no mater how much money you throw at it just can't be fixed. Most sain people have two options replace the broken toilet (private schools) or move to another place with working toilets (ascension-livingston). Why would you want anybody to live in a place with a broken toilet, I don't. When you look at the racial makeup of omaha, how did the busing work, you took a very small number of black students and bused them to white schools right? and probably closed the black schools, that plan did not work here, we bused blacks to white schools and whites to black schools. I lived it!

jamarco said...

i didn't want to point this out not being a racist and all, but of the ten places taht Kiplinger ranked as best places to live not one has a majority black population.

The Mighty Favog said...

Anonymous,

Thank you for finally stopping all the speaking in code and just coming out and saying what you mean. You've proven my point.

Nothing like lumping 49 percent of the population into one big racist stereotype.

The Mighty Favog said...

Jamarco,

Shouldn't you be going now? The kleagle meeting is about to start.

Nice spelling and command of the English language, by the way. I guess that's all the fault of African-Americans, too.

Oh, and Omaha's busing was a lot like BR's. And the Omaha school district -- one of four in the city limits -- always has had a significant number of minorities . . . over 50 percent.

Anonymous said...

Dear Flavor Flavog,

No federal judge destroyed the Baton Rouge School System. The black "students" single handedly destroyed the Baton Rouge School System. You see they destroyed the physical property, buildings, grounds etc. of the schools that they attended. No one wanted to teach there or go to school there so those schools suffered. Then there was desegregation, and as there nature requires, the black "students" then physically demolished the new schools that they attended. This in turn demolished the spirit of learning in the system and anyone who actually wanted their kids to get more than just a free lunch had to send their kids to a private school or leave the parish. That's how the Baton Rouge school system was destroyed.

The Mighty Favog said...

I am reminded why we left Baton Rouge 20 years ago. Dumbass rednecks who are good at hatefulness and bad at everything else.

jamarco said...

nope, i will be around for awhile, will attempt to leave a bit of wisdom EVERY day, even after you stop posting them. I may even attempt to leave comments on some of your other topics also. And by the way us "rednecks" from the great state of looseiana are coming if LSU can pull it out! I have in the past spent lots of money in your town...and i guess you can tell that I had several black english teachers in highschool and at least one at LSU, so my grammer and command of the English language leaves you wanting...

KingHueyDeweyLouie said...

oh boy, thanks for heads up on this one marco! another squealer.

Favog,

You must have been a kid when you moved, or else you never lived in Baton Rouge, maybe your wife did, I don't know. A lot of people don't know these things are in baton rouge even people that still live in Baton rouge don‘t. But there are some very small businesses along the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge, they are easy to miss, like I said a lot of people don't know they are there, as a matter of fact when one blew up several years ago people thought is was an earthquake...big plants and I don't mean alocasias or colocasias I mean, petrochemical plants! Just sit back and take in some clean Nebraska air (if you can stand the smell of corn, although I understand that a lot of corn is now grown in cotton and sugarcane fields around baton rouge) and imagine the amount of money that is generated by the millage taxes that these buggers pay to the city-parish. By the way I don‘t think the $75,000 homestead exemption applies. So there is a lot of tax money in baton rouge. As a side note, Jamarco calls it as he sees it, you shouldn’t resort to name calling and making fun, he types fast and he slept through most of his English classes, I know, I wrote most of his papers. And by the way, he is not a redneck, he hasn’t been on a tractor in years and he doesn’t cut his own grass, some guy named Pedro does (now he really is a redneck).

Anonymous said...

The truth isn't hatefulness or kindness, it's just the truth. I watched the truth unfold from 7th grade through 12th grade. Now I make my money in the construction industry rebuilding and repairing the damage that is done to the schools by the "students", and I'm good at it. I wouldn't be where I am today without those little demolition experts, God bless them.

The Mighty Favog said...

Days, 3-to-11s, Dogs.

Stanocola Medical.

Catalytic crackers. (And I'm not talking about your buddies, here.)

The slop wagon.

The A-Bear Store, where you also could pay your light bill.

Anything else I can do to shatter your assumptions, podna? Since you can't call me a damn Yankee, would you care to try N-word lover?

I would consider it a badge of honor.

Anonymous said...

Last i checked you can't pay a light bill at Hebert Guns! But you can still get decent bar-b-q at Podnuh's on sherwood, however the Italian place across the street is long gone with a Cains in it's spot.

Anonymous said...

Wow. I'm horrified by the comments of the folks who still live here in my beloved Baton Rouge. I don't cross paths with folks like you very often around here, or I'd run to Omaha, too. Guess I'm just lucky to have fallen into a niche that's more or less free of bigots who shun personal and civic responsibility.

Favog, thanks for still caring about BR. I haven't read much of your blog yet, and it might piss me off, but that's okay with me. I'm glad people are talking about it. I'm a transplant from a near-utopia in Colorado, myself, and I plan to stay as long as I feel like there's hope in making this the town it could be. Baton Rouge has lots of things going for it that you can't buy...now we just have to buy a few of the things you can (and enocourage the kind of folks who think it's all about race to either learn about critical thinking or to stay in their caves).

Loree said...

I was at BRHS just yesterday and it looks amazing. The Bellemont's problem was that it was purchased by a corp that didn't care for over a decade.

I too have grieved from afar over the condition of the community - particularly the schools. There are no quick or easy solutions.

It's not either or - its all of the above. It's white flight and Judge Parker and the NAACP.

Loree said...

My parents chose to keep us in public schools during the desegregation mess. And it was a mess. Cultures don't combine easily anywhere. Race has nothing to do with it. Remember "no Irish signs"?

I've adopted classrooms at the schools, I attended. I wish I could do more but it's difficult from afar. When homegrown companies like Canes are fleeing, something has to give. Until people realize that education is key and start paying child support to break the cycle I have little hope for change.