Influx of evacuees creates culture clash in Baton Rouge

BATON ROUGE, La. – Chillin' on the levee by the Mississippi River on a sunny Monday morning, Nutty and Slim Nine and Doughboy, Jr., admitted that they are already homesick for New Orleans.

"This ain't like the city, where everybody got a nickname that everybody knows you by," said Nutty, 18, whose tattooed nickname was spelled out in two-inch high block letters between his right shoulder and elbow. "I'm trying to get back home — back to the N.O."

"I don't like the curfew here," said Doughboy, Jr., 16. "And I don't like the police. They make grown people stay inside at night."

"We got gangs — 'Catch, Catch, Get A Little Bit', 'Suicide', a bunch of others," said Slim Nine, 20. "And we know the police crew. People here just don't understand us. New Orleans is a fun city." They did not want to give their full names because "people might be after us."

While not typical of the thousands relocated here from New Orleans, they do reflect part of an emerging culture clash in this normally unhurried Southern college town and state capital that in a week has become the largest city in Louisiana with a parish-wide population that may triple to 1 million.

A local news report quoted a Realtor telling of rich refugees from the Big Easy bringing suitcases of cash and buying houses on the spot. There are no rooms to rent anywhere in any price range. Families have taken in kinfolks who have no plans to leave. Suddenly there are traffic jams and lines of cars at gas stations. There's been a run on guns and tear gas by wary residents.

"It's totally related" to the influx of refugees from New Orleans, said Geralynn Prince of Securitas Security Systems, an agency that has many "immediate openings" for security guards.

"We need three or four times as many" as usual, said Prince, whose business supplies armed guards for retail stores and supply warehouses. "We'll take all the qualified people we can hire."

The feared outbreak of crime has not occurred. But unease was dramatically illustrated last Wednesday when a fight broke out at the River Center, the downtown convention center across from the levee. About 5,500 refugees are being housed there, making it the largest shelter in Louisiana.

After the fight, Baton Rouge Mayor-President Melvin L. "Kip" Holden beefed up the police presence and blasted the state for sending "New Orleans thugs" for his city to house.

"We do not want to inherit the looting and all of the other foolishness that went on in New Orleans," Holden told reporters. "We do not want to inherit that breed that seeks to prey on other people."

Located about 80 miles up Interstate-10 from New Orleans, Baton Rouge is dramatically different from New Orleans. The population of New Orleans is about two-thirds African American, compared to about half in Baton Rouge. The median household income in Baton Rouge is $30,308, compared to $27,137 in New Orleans, according to the Census Bureau. One in three people in Baton Rouge graduated from college, compared to one in four in New Orleans.

The differences between the neighboring cities are more dramatic than the statistics show, said James Wilson Jr., assistant director of the Center for Louisiana Studies at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette.

While the Big Easy is known for the French Quarter, Mardi Gras, great restaurants and letting the good times roll, the city's populace is actually separated at the extremes. Baton Rouge is largely middle class.

"In New Orleans, especially in the place that's really inundated with floodwater, it's dominated by rich and poor," Wilson told the St. Petersburg Times. "Baton Rouge is pretty much your all-American city, or at least your all-American Southern city,"

The changes are likely to escalate.

"Everyone is settling in here realizing that they're not going anywhere," said Jason Golden, a Red Cross official at the River Center refugee shelter. Already children have registered with education officials and will begin attending Baton Rouge public schools this week, he said.

"Baton Rouge is now the largest city in Louisiana, and it's going to be for quite a while, if not permanently," said Walter Monsour, administrator of the city-parish government, last week. "Is this going to mean a different way of life here? Absolutely."

On the levee, Nutty and Slim Nine and Doughboy, Jr., are hoping he's right.

"I'm not used to this," said Nutty. "In the N.O., something be happening all the time."

Bob Dart may be e-mailed at bobdart(at)coxnews.com