The 1950's Won't be Returning to Shreveport (Many, Sun: low income, loft)

[Chance and Change]

No matter how some may lust for the past, nor does it matter how long many linger and hold on to the old style of Jim Crow based Ideologies. Life continues to push forward.

It does not matter that some will continue to be blockers and tacklers, nor that some will be Apathy promoters, and still others will seek out and pursue segregationist mental programming and aspirations.

Shreveport, won't be returning to the 1950's.

Some may pack up and run across the River, some may try to move out the farthest reaches of the city limits and some will run seeking the limits of the Parishes range.

It won't change the fact that tomorrow will continue to bring improvements in the climate and growth of the City of Shreveport.

Shreveport, won't be returning to the 1950's.


We can look about and see the challenged schools and the widespread poverty, yet, it will continue to improve and time will bring changes both in the schools as well as in the rebuilding of communities.

People will continue to pursue business growth, and Banking and Investments can't forever continue to ignore the challenged areas nor the people within them. Nor can banking and investments continue the programming of under-funding business in these challenged areas.

There is a great deal being ignored of the capabilities of people, and there is a long standing history of under-valuing large sectors of the people. Yes, Industry may have diminished its current presence, and with that vanishing it may have thrust many into despaired cycles of living.
But that too will come to change. Business Growth will find its way to return, as well as it will find its way to again provide means for people not only to maintain their community, but to rebuild it and diminish the blight which was left to expand due to the decline in industry and jobs.

The old Jim Crow Ideological Grooming will have to fade if not be pushed to the back or it may simply drive many who aspire to such ideology to push on across the river and move further into the wooded areas, hoping to build an insulation to support segregation.

Those are simply madness modeling of some of the people. But the good aspect is, it then leaves the liberal minded who can and will work together, it will leave those who want and will work together.
As well, it will bring a new mentality to the landscape where people can and will find means and reason to see people as all being viable in the 21st Century modeling of the city.

Just as many over many decades and centuries tired by every means with high violence and high level and wide spread bigotry and deep rooted racism. Could not and did not stop any advance in the fact the as people, laws promote and protect the participation of off to be a Legal and Constitutional right.

In spite of all of such negativity which currently dominates the landscape, it will over time find itself to be a useless demeanor, which cannot restrain the growth of the city and the improvement in the lives of the people. Today, the women, the poor whites and Minorities are finding more and more the ways and ideas which promote this region to become far better than the madness it embraced in the 1950's, it will propel itself far past the fights of the 1960's against equality and Constitutional rights being available and supported for all.

It's taken a great deal of work to get the changes which are today present, and it will be the work engaged going forth which will rebuild this city, but what it won't be doing is returning to the 1950's.

[Chance and Change]

Shreveport is learning what it is - from what it once was. It once was a city controlled by Social Conservatism, which means a high degree of social segregation which sought to conserve the ideals of the Antebellum Southern Idealism.

By the same means it sought to conserve the Idealism of Social Conservatism which was modeled upon Antebellum Southern process, is the very same reason, when many raised and sent their kids off to Universities. The kids did not come back, because they came to realize that the world is not made up of the Antebellum Southern Segregationist Ideals, and those kids grew up to want no part of coming back to a constrictive system and society. As their elders passed away and the idealism of such passed with them. The kids only returned to liquidate the assets and businesses their parents once owned and they took the money and moved to some other place.
Sadly, even during many of their University years they would not bring friends home for the holidays, because they did not want their friends to see the bigotry and racism and segregationist mindset which prevailed within their family background.

Some think its money that kept them away, It was not purely low income, because much of the low income and poor pay structure of the South is and was long ago based on an ideological premise that any work paid for which is performed by minorities will be as low as possible, and will not exceed the minimum wage beyond a sternly managed low %.
What those who created that madness and programming, "did not count on the fact one day it would come back and bite their own second and third generation of offspring's, and it would insure that their direct offspring's would not have interest to return". Nor did they count on the fact, their life's work would quickly be sold off by their direct (or second generation in some cases) offspring's, because (direct offspring's) they were not going to come nor were they going to subject to suggest their kids come to live in a places which held such backwards thinking trends.

When those off-springs saw the demise of downtown, simply because integration made it a diverse shopping areas, it was allowed to crumble and close its shops and fade into a desolate shopping area with bricked up buildings, and empty store fronts. It took until recent years to remove the Confederate Flag from the Downtown Courthouse Lawn.

(It was a long time before people wanted to accept that the Confederacy was a fighting force against the United States of America. which lost, therefore why was it a Celebrated Symbol of a system which was Anti American based on what the ideals of the American Flag represents. Which is an allegiance to a Constitution which decrees all person to be free and equality and justice for all. None of which the Confederate Flag represented. It represented an era and system of slavery and indenturing of American people, and thous went to war against the United State of America to pursue those aims, and it lost.)
We as a people of American be it black, white and others, do know that many held within their hearts and minds a hope for some return and some hoped for a prolonging of Confederate Antebellum Social Ideals.

wiki- (Creating the "New South"- 1945 to present)
In the decades after World War II, the old agrarian Southern economy evolved into the "New South" – a manufacturing region with strong roots in laissez faire capitalism. As a result, high-rise buildings began to crowd the skylines of Atlanta, Birmingham, Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, Houston, Dallas, Nashville, and Little Rock. King Cotton was dethroned. There were 1.5 million cotton farms in 1945, and only 18,600 remained in 2009. The Census stopped counting sharecroppers because they were so few.

The industrialization and modernization of the South picked up speed with the ending of racial segregation in the 1960s. Today, the economy of the South is a diverse mixture of agriculture, light and heavy industry, tourism, and high technology companies, and is becoming increasingly integrated into the global economy. State governments aggressively recruited northern business to the "Sunbelt," promising more enjoyable weather and recreation, a lower cost of living, an increasingly skilled work force, minimal taxes, weak labor unions, and a business-friendly attitude. With the expansion of jobs in the South, there has been migration of northerners, increasing the population and political influence of southern states. The newcomers displaced the old rural political system built around courthouse cliques. The suburbs became the base of the emerging Republican Party, which became dominant in presidential elections by 1968, and in state politics by the 1990s.

Sociologists report that Southern collective identity stems from political, demographic and cultural distinctiveness. Studies have shown that Southerners are more conservative than non-Southerners in several areas including religion, morality, international relations and race relations.

Unfortunate as it is, the ideal of the "Racist South" still reverberates in the minds of many from the West and the East. This become a further negative to the region as well unto and toward Cities like Shreveport.
When the concept of Southern cities is viewed far too often as a negative, because of the perceived racial tonality many still feel is predominant in far too may sectors of what makes up the city and region.
Business executives do not think in favor of moving their company to these regions, because it may mean that the Executive himself may have to move to the region. Therefore, they seek out areas which have less of a perceived concept of racial divisiveness.
They also don't seek to bring their mass industry, because they do not want to become entangled in legal matters of cultural and regional racist undertones and undercurrents to result to being costly and disruptive to the industrial process and successful growth of their company.

They also know that as long as that tonality is pervasive, it will continue to feed a disparity in the social conditions, from living, to how education is promoted and engaged and how skill development investments is and becomes a non supported programming. When all these things are present, they also know that despair and destitution spreads and along with it as a conditional result of despair and destitution, is the crime the premise of despair and destitution promotes.

These are long standing resulting impacts from a society built upon Racial Divide, Segregationist Programming and the ultimate of what is the offspring and outgrowth results of a historical Antebellum Slavery and Segregation Based Ideological System.

The ultimate question is, do we understand and realize these things, and are we capable, motivated and or prepared and willing to make the changes necessary. Then comes the point, are we willing and capable and motivated to make the investment to promote ourselves as being far removed from the Past conceptualization of such a bad history.

Reality may indicate that we are not yet at a point to be ready to make the changes in the areas we need to make the changes. It may further indicate that we have not truly faced these truths in the ways we need to face them. To be with a driven motivation to dispel, promote the fact that we have dispelled the old ways of thinking, and be more proactive to insure that we are doing all we can do to insure such ideals never rise to become such a hindering of a city, region and social structure.

It's amazing the work that remains, but the general tonality is often, "don't discuss the past". when the fact of the past is what our current future is derived from. We either recognize it and work to fully change the paradigm and how we are perceived, or we expect the osmosis of life will ultimate bring the change.

We may not realize the segregationist spectrum as being what it is, but what result is, 'we tolerate each other", but have we learned to appreciate and respect and work together with each other. Unless we grasp and learn that point and become a system which can respectfully appreciate and work together, then we are not doing all we can to improve nor prosper this region nor the collective of ourselves as inhabitants of these regional spaces and cities.

Currently, when Immigrants seek to move to America, bring their wealth and build their business, which becomes American businesses, they don't even consider us. Unfortunately, we don't know what that means, but we only need to look at where the worlds Industry resides to grasp the impact it has upon us.
Today, many people from the Far East Asian nations and the Asian Pacific are driven to want to come to America and build and expand their business industry. But the areas they are least considering is the Southern Cities.

To many of those, they still know us as The Racist South, The Backwards South, The Bigoted South and to top it off they see us as a near fanaticism of Religious Zealots who still exist in secular racist segregation within the congregations, while at the same time claiming to be respecter's of God's Oneness.

In some areas, people from the West and the East Coast, as well as Foreign Nation, know us still as breeding grounds for such negativism's such as the KKK and those organizations supporting the Neo Nazism.

Another sad fact is, many kids who go off to University have their own challenges based on their arriving from the South; they are often caught into a spin of trying to show and prove to the more liberal based university student body, that they are not racist, because they hail from the south, but many still find it very difficult and with much challenge to work themselves from under the southern stigma. By the time they do get it to a point of their acceptance as an individual who does not aspire to historical Antebellum ideology. The last thing they want to do is "Return to the South".

One can't serve to Gods, Therefore, one can't server their God who supports Racism and Segregation, and a God who supports Liberal social acceptance of all persons and full spectrum integration without barriers based on skin, ethnicity, and race.

Most once they become educated, prefer to support the latter God. whom supports Liberal social acceptance of all persons and full spectrum integration without barriers based on skin, ethnicity, and race as well as economic equilibrium for all.
Therefore, they are not motivated to return to the southern cities, nor are they driven to bring business they may gain position and authority within, to consider the southern region or the southern cities.

What results is, Us. Are we willing to change and learn the value and needs of change and how to promote ourselves as a changed system, society, region and city?

If not, then we can look for a continuation of much of the same as we've seen over the past 30 yrs. Which is a declining industrial sector, a deteriorated infrastructure, and a deteriorated expanse of communities. We an look to loft plans and slow growth and development of those plans, all the while we will see a continuation of under-performance in all our systems both private and public.

We have the power to alleviate our distresses and improve our lot, and better our city and push for an improved image and stature of our city and the region. We can build one of "Inclusiveness", and dismiss this old system of "block and tackle".

Locking up a bunch of black people has not resolved anything, other than to attach felonies to people who may otherwise by another skin tone may have been given a misdemeanor. We lock our young people up for smoking a joint, at the expense of 10's of thousands of dollars and label them a criminal, then wonder why we've made them ineligible for employment. All the while we have liquor stores feeding the alcoholics who reside in the pristine communities, killing people in our roadways and wife beating, or children neglecting and every other things which is connected and associated with alcoholism and its disease.

We have many priorities out of place. Yes, by right, some people are evil and violent criminals both white and black, who require jail and prison. while we have never let go of the segregationist policies of giving jail and prison time to minorities with ready and glee-filled delight, for may of the same things, young white kids get a call to their parents to come and pick up their kids, or they get a pro-active public attorney who will bargain it down to a mis-demeanor. while the black kids can only get that type of pro-active attorney if and only if their parents leverage the whole home to pay attorney feels and high bail amounts.
These things are remnants of a post slavery and post segregationist programming policy, directly based on a Jim Crow Ideological system of Justice which can't get itself past the ways of historical grooming.

Yes, that too is spread nation wide in how people perceive the South. although that premise is not exclusive to the the south when it comes to the Justice system. yet, people will readily associate it to the south without a second though, because the south has not proven it can or will be different in those regards.

Don't assume there is not some political madness in this, especially when we have 'anti social system politicians' who hail straight from this region sitting in our State and Federal Congress.
Between Jindal, Vitter and Flemming who rally strongly against anything which may benefit any citizen population in social programming.
They do it on a National Stage, which does not present us well in any regards as being politically changed nor to have changed in the social cultural spectrum.
the public as a whole see the attack on programs, they see the outsourcing of LSU and many other things driven to the Privatization Agenda of these political figures. Privatization is culturally no different than the old days of the segregated systems programming and policies and ways of doing business. Therefore. We have massive challenges which pose great needs for change if we expect to become a grow center and with any link or connection to a national or global industrial considered locality, and to improve our ranks in becoming such.

[Chance and Change]

I often wonder if people are mentally lazy, or just filled with apathy? Or maybe they have a deep seated anguish based mentality which brings them to the elements of what makes up what is apathy?

It's amazing that more than 200k people reside in Shreveport, and then add in the people from Bossier, along with the surrounding areas.
For so many people, who have so little to say about anything, is an interesting thing in and of itself.

Now some of that will never vanish, but the wide spread of it in general is quite amazing, but based on some of the statical information about Southern Cities, Southern People, Education and Lack of Education and the wise spread of continually expanding poverty. But there are other elements, it appears many of the people, once they get a degree and that degree leads them to a position, they become even more silent in general forums as such.
the other side of that is, they also many times become stagnated in their job positions and become script followers who result not to improve any systems from the positions they hold which would afford them the opportunity to do so.
Often times some of the greatest things they learn from University is, "don't rock the boat", "submit to confine yourself to protocol", "follow the script" and "don't pursue improving anything" because it may bring responsibility if one takes that step to do so. Many are trained to never question anything anyone in authority position has to say or do. Therefore, there is nothing which prompts anyone in authority to seek to become innovators and progress builders.

We've seen it over and over with the collapsed Industry, a prime example is " the Old Telephone company", they sit on their buts when digital phones came and did nothing, and expected to keep making the push button and rotary phones. Until that market simply dried up. No one was pro-active to see what was coming. Those that saw it only sit back and waited on doom to encircle the business, and still to this day, we have a massive complex, under-utilized and many people who were made jobless.
We sit there for years watching GM make Hummers, when the Hummer market was shrinking year by year, but we had not formal delegation to appeal to GM and bring them any innovative ideas or how they could better gain high productive usages of the facility. The result, when GM downsized, it canceled the companies making the things it no longer wanted to promote or invest in. Now we have a MASSIVE PLAN sitting empty. the even sadder part is we have no viable in-depth plan of how to put the plant to use nor what it can be best utilized for.

We watched the Movie Industry come here, and we had no foresight to build anything for them. We had no idea of the support industry that functions around movie making, so we did not know how nor make an attempt to attract those post production industries with any incentive or anything. So, it became a non issue, at a high loss expense to the areas and region.

Then we had the apathy of the people, who also wanted to push their convoluted morality in way ways that was a negative inference to the people who make movies. Therefore that put a limit on what they'd consider for this areas.

"We" ..... is often the words, which cause of what become as a city to decline and/or become one that has slow process to growth building.

[Chance and Change]

Look about at our youth. We have many who would be delighted to know more about each other, and work together on projects with each other.
but it takes the Adults to Lead this pathway to Unity for our Youth.

Unfortunately, we have too many parents who pursue segregationist programming and segregationist division among our youth. Unaware they are passing on a premise of dissention and seperatness which will further hinder the future of our young people.

We may well not be as smart as we think, when the under-current still support the divisiveness of the old Jim Crow based ideological divisions.
We have to think broad to over come the decades of that drumming in of the old Jim Crow based Segregationist thinking. Unfortunately, many do it but unaware they are following a model of the past, which has promoted the divided nation as well as the divided city in which we reside.

We as the adults of today, have to be strong enough, determined enough and moreso wise enough to break the cycles of the past and build and rebuild with a greater sense of unity and collective development which benefits all.
Then and ONLY then will we come to know what our youth can do through the team working efforts while they learn to respect, understand better and come to appreciate the individualism of each other.

Will the Adults of this era and generation gain the wisdom to understand these things, or will they simply follow the grooming of an era long past gone?