Shreveport White Knights Need to Stop Complaining and Contribute

I moved to the Shreveport area a little over 10 years ago, by choice. I've stayed in the Shreveport area over the last 10 years by choice...there have been opportunities in other places that have come up over that time, and each time I chose to stay in the 318.

Where I come from sometimes feels like a totally different world planet than Shreveport, for multiple reasons. The climate, the elevation, the winters...and the people. More specifically, the general attitude of the people. I'm from the Midwest, where we're known for our over-the-top politeness, borderline awkward hospitality, and occasionally odd accents. (No, we don't all sound like the movie 'Fargo').

Midwest Nice Perspective on Shreveport

Even with our "Midwest nice" reputation, I'm specifically from a state where the politeness has a limit...where, when pushed, we push back...hard. I'm from Michigan, where we use the F-word like punctuation and don't mind a tilly when called for. The biggest university in the state, The University of Michigan, carries the nickname "Wolverines", even though there aren't wolverines native to the state. The nickname comes from the way Michigan residents fought against Ohio during the Toledo War...aggressive, violent, stubborn, even more violent...just like a wolverine.

That might sound like its a big negative, like everyone from Michigan is mean, but we're not. We can be mean when needed, and when its needed. Michiganders will take you to the ground, help you back up, steady you on your seat, and buy the next round. They won't bring it up again, until you do.

The "Shreveport Malaise": Why Residents Talk Down the City

In Shreveport, I find that there's an overwhelming lack of pride in basically anything. People in Shreveport talk more junk about Shreveport than anyone else. Like a big self-hating circle. Its not everyone, so don't take that road. If you've spent any length of time in Shreveport, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

The Shreveport Malaise is real. Nothing will ever work, nothing good should ever happen, no one really likes the city, or whatever is next. Shreveport has a crime problem, crime goes down, residents scream its a lie. Media mogul comes to Shreveport to adopt the city and build his movie studio here..."IT'S A LIE"!

So Isaac Newton's Third Law says "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction", and there's a little of that in Shreveport. Most of the Shreveport Malaise is pretty empty, surface level, immune to facts type hate. When you talk through their anti-Shreveport feelings, their reasons are pretty flimsy.

Shreveport White Knighting and the WalletHub Obsession

The 'equal and opposite reaction' in Shreveport manifests in a fascinating 'Shreveport White Knighting' phenomenon.

If you're not familiar with the concept of 'white knighting', its when someone comes into an argument or conversation to defend someone/something without having an understanding of the context. This is always done as virtue signaling or moral grandstanding.

Shreveport White Knighting comes in many forms, even if its a smaller number of people. They try to be loud, they try to be aggressive, but they rarely try to be correct. Why would they let facts get in the way of their virtue signaling?

There have been a few times over the last few years where the Shreveport White Knighting has centered on a singular enemy. A source that seemed to hate Shreveport, and just wanted to mock the city. But much like all white knighting, this take came without any thought.

The target labeled as an enemy is the personal finance website WalletHub.

Yes, the massive national site WalletHub apparently has it out for Shreveport. They take every piece of research they put together, and make sure the one directive they have to the academics that put it together is to make sure Shreveport doesn't do well. Their whole purpose is to bury Shreveport.

How real does that feel?

Lets be brutally honest: WALLETHUB DOESN'T CARE ABOUT SHREVEPORT. Most of the people who put this research together for WalletHub have probably never heard of Shreveport, or could find it on a map. They literally do not care about Shreveport.

But the Shreveport White Knights want to wring their hands and clutch their pearls over WalletHub stories. They want to pretend like this finance website was founded on the idea of keeping Shreveport down. When there's really a deeper enemy of the city.

WalletHub doesn't hate Shreveport, the numbers hate Shreveport. Brain drain, anti-growth policies, regressive stances, a backflow of tax revenue, and the Shreveport Malaise itself is what hurts Shreveport. The fact that household incomes aren't keeping up, wages aren't keeping up, municipal funding isn't keeping up, and social polices of the city isn't doing anything to attract a new group of residents are all what keeps Shreveport back. Which is what WalletHub sees; not the reason, but the result.

When WalletHub ranks the results of Shreveport against the rest of the nation, Shreveport doesn't look good. Period. They don't actively try to hurt the city, they don't go out of their way to put Shreveport down...they just publish the numbers.

Analyzing Shreveport Jobs, Crime Statistics, and Data Centers

People White Knighting will yell about 'jobs' and 'crimes' as the root of all problems in Shreveport. But there are a couple recent problems with those things.

First, the run of newly created jobs in Shreveport. Look at Amazon alone, they claim about 2,000 brand new jobs being created with their facility on North Market. Then you have SLB bringing around 1,000 new jobs with their expansion, and SkyWest putting in a couple hundred new jobs. Adding around 3,000 new, decent paying, jobs to Shreveport should have made an impact...right?

That's a big number of new jobs...you don't see many industries bringing thousands of new jobs anywhere. The data center fallacy is that they bring jobs, but it really only takes 10-12 people to run those...so that ain't doing it. But 3,000 for a city in a few years should be enough to turn it around...right? If not, what is the magic number? 10,000 new jobs? 25,000 new jobs? Those are unrealistic, not just for Shreveport, for anywhere. So maybe jobs is just magic beans.

Crime...Shreveport crime is down. That's not a theory, its numbers. Not just any numbers, numbers submitted to the FBI for their Uniform Crime Reporting statistics. Which means if the city 'fudges' those numbers, they're lying to the FBI. Do you really think the amount of people involved in a conspiracy like that inside a police department would take the risk to lie to the FBI?

Jobs up, crime down...yet Shreveport isn't fundamentally better? Maybe its deeper than just those two things. Maybe its the mentality?

Building Shreveport's Quality of Life Through Local Events

Please don't take this as a 'just throw your hands in the air and don't try' approach. The opposite is what people should be doing. If the jobs are up, and crime is down, maybe we need to start pushing to make things better ourselves.

Roll your sleeves up, and get involved in more than writing on the internet about how upset the financial website made you. Don't act like some superficial online ranking really damaged you emotionally. Get up and contribute.

I know, I'm writing on the internet now about being annoyed by the Shreveport Malaise, I should be out doing something to make it better...right? Well, I do. I'm involved in at least two large scale events every year that bring measurable economic impact to the Shreveport area. I bust my ass year round to make positive moments in Shreveport, to change the quality of life for others.

That's what we're missing here. The quality of life aspects of the Shreveport community have been drained over the last few decades. The early 2000s saw a huge growth in quality of life opportunities: the opening of Bossier's arena (now called Brookshire Grocery Arena), the filming industry finding a home in the region, professional minor league baseball, new casinos opening their doors, watching new roadways be built around town...it really felt like Shreveport was working to make itself better.

But 20 years later...Bossier's arena still hosts events, just not like it used to. The filming industry is all gone, but 50 Cent is trying to bring it back. The Captains couldn't get the support needed to remain, so they left. The casinos are still there, but they're not being upgraded (except Live Casino) just traded among each other. There are some updates and upgrades to roads...but they're all being paid for by federal dollars approved 5 years ago that have since been cut off...so there won't be any more.

There are things getting better though, because people decided to make it happen. Prize Fest has grown into an absolute monster, and keeps getting bigger and better every year. The city's Mardi Gras parades keep getting bigger, with Krewes growing to Super Krewe size and events bursting at the seams. The Red River Balloon Rally has been growing every year for almost two decades. Shreveport got a brewery for the first time since prohibition when Great Raft opened in 2013. Shreveport has a full blown comic con now with Geek'd Con. The Highland Jazz and Blues Fest has celebrated 21 years now.

These are the quality of life things that actually draw people to a community. The city of Chicago has a worse reputation when it comes to crime than Shreveport does, but they still draw millions of people every year to visit. They see tens of thousands of people move to the city every year. All despite this crime reputation, because they have things happening there. Same with a place like Baltimore, who had an entire show (The Wire) built around how bad their crime is, and people still head there in droves. Because of the quality of life.

Moving Shreveport Forward: Watering Our Own Garden

Shreveport needs to water its own garden more often. Stop sending money outside the city to try and make the city better. Don't spend millions to try and attract a business to bring 10-100 jobs to the city, instead find a locally rooted business that could EXPAND their current footprint. If we invested in local events, instead of spending to try and get outside events to stop by, we could build up what we already have.

While the Shreveport White Knights fight over words written by outsiders over things they don't understand, the people inside Shreveport who actually want to get things done should be having more constructive talks. While the Shreveport Malaise clogs the communities arteries, the people wanting to make progress need to keep pushing forward.

To those who are fighting forward, trying to make Shreveport better: I know the White Knights and Malaise are both tough to fight through sometimes. I mean I REALLY know, first hand, how annoying it can be. I also know how disheartening it can be to watch certain causes or events get over looked by the people in the community who are supposed to help with those things. But keep going. Even when you think what you're working on doesn't matter, there's someone out there who finds complete joy in what you're doing. It might be one of the only things that brings quality to their life in Shreveport, so keep doing it.