La. Youths Help Erase North-South Bias

Rachel Thompson had never tasted shrimp in her native Louisiana, and Ronnie Emonet had never heard the wind moan through the pines in the hill country of his home state.

The two 16-year-olds represent the best hope for dismantling a wall of mistrust built generations ago between two cultures, said Carole Andrepont of Opelousas, who turned what started as a joke into a social experiment that worked.

Andrepont, a member of the Louisiana Tourism Board active in international youth exchange programs, jokingly told a friend one day: “If you want to have a real cultural exchange, have folks from north Louisiana come to south Louisiana. It’s like two different countries.”

Full Cup of Life

An almost visible line across the center of Louisiana separates the staid upstate Protestants from the Catholic Cajuns, who make time for work around a busy schedule of enjoying the full cup of life.

The Cajuns, descendants of French exiles from Nova Scotia, make up a third of the state’s population. Those of different ancestry who also live in south Louisiana have adopted the laid-back Cajun life style.

Former Gov. Edwin Edwards, the first French-speaking Catholic elected to the state’s highest office this century, says the division is more perception than anything else, but that “perception can be real.”

“The barrier exists in the minds of those who have not had the opportunity to visit one end of the state or the other,” he said, “but invariably, when they do, they come away with an amazement of how much in common they have.”

“The barrier is exaggerated but it’s there,” added Gov. Buddy Roemer, whose family plantation is not far from the Arkansas border in north Louisiana.

“A real factor has been a lack of quality transportation. It’s hard to get from upstate Shreveport to New Orleans. In fact, it’s easier to get from Shreveport to Dallas.”

Edwards and Roemer agree that an exchange program for Louisiana youths could eventually close the perceived culture gap.

The idea gnawed at Andrepont, and she mentioned it to Linda Graham, her Ruston counterpart, at a tourism meeting in Baton Rouge.

“I told her I had an idea about two cities having an exchange program, and the more we looked at it, the more we liked it,” she said. “We talked to our mayors, school officials and civic leaders. Now, we’ve done it.”

Students Swap Hometowns

In a recently ended two-week program, about 20 Ruston high school students spent a week in Opelousas and an equal number of the south Louisiana students stayed in Ruston.

The students stayed in the homes of host families who treated them like their own kids, Andrepont said.

The mayors and civic leaders also visited each other’s cities. Like the kids, they discovered that people everywhere are just folks and develop different views, depending on personalities and surroundings.

“The people are more free, more open down here,” said Rachel, who attends Ruston High School. “Up north we’re very polite, but down here. . . .

“I called my mom and said I was staying here another two weeks. She just laughed.”

“I like Ruston better than here,” said Telameckus Anderson, a junior at Opelousas High School. “They’re so nice. The hills are beautiful!”

“The family I stayed with made me feel like we were related,” said Emonet, a junior at Opelousas Catholic High.

No Language Barrier

Of the response to his Cajun accent, Emonet said: “The girls thought it was cute. I laughed at their drawls. We laughed with each other.”

Graham said she learned something important from her visit to southern Louisiana:

“I need to go home and loosen up a bit. We’re more conservative in Ruston, and we are organized. I find myself regimented to the point where I get a little bit irritated when everything doesn’t go just like clockwork.

“I learned to relax. I need to come down here about once a month.”

Andrepont, meanwhile, said that Cajuns can learn from other life styles, and perhaps find a middle ground.

“Everything we do is almost overdone,” she said. “When we eat, it’s a lot, and the best. If it’s seasoned, it’s highly seasoned. People who drink--they drink!”

Annual Exchange Planned

Graham and Andrepont said the two cities plan to make the exchange program an annual event, and to encourage other communities to do the same.

“I think this is going to be a state program,” Andrepont said. “We’ve got Church Point interested in finding a north Louisiana city for an exchange program. The governor is interested. We need to end the division in this state. The 40 youngsters in this program don’t have the old attitude anymore. It works.”

Roemer, the governor, said: “This is the first of several such programs that will happen over the next year. One of the issues in my campaign was the need for all of the state to pull together.”