Support for Louisiana.

The state we're in is provided by.

Every day I go to work for Entergy.

I know customers are counting on me.

So Entergy is investing millions of dollars to keep the lights on and installing new technology to prevent outages before they happen.

Together, together, together.

We power life.

Additional support provided by the Fred Bea and Ruth Ziegler Foundation and the Ziegler Art Museum located in Jennings City Hall.

The museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for southwest Louisiana and the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

With support from viewers like you.

And the National Flood Insurance Program has just recently rolled out risk rating 2.0.

Is there a silver lining in the insurance cloud?

I would worry about politicians that just sat on their laurels and said, no, no, we're good.

This is.

Fine.

The Case For More Resilience.

We aim for hundreds of nurses, but we hope to get thousands of them.

Since LSU Health New Orleans on curbing the nursing shortage.

People were denied membership in organizations if their skin was darker than a brown paper bag.

Is colorism in Greek life fact or fiction?

Carbon capture is where we begin tonight.

The reason is because of a big announcement this week from Governor John Bel Edwards and executives from major global energy corporations.

A huge carbon capture plan, which they say is an unprecedented effort to dramatically reduce industrial CO2 emissions in the state.

The Exxon Mobil CF Industries and Interlink Midstream are the partners in this plan.

Industrial Scale Carbon Capture.

This is a divisive issue, though there are many climate researchers and environmentalists who say this expensive technology is not a solution toward zero net emission strategies.

Nonetheless, land owned by Exxon Mobil in Vermilion Parish will be the site of the underground storage of this project.

And now to other news making headlines across the state.

Pay raises and incentives are coming to Baton Rouge police.

PBR Meyer, President Sharon Weston, Broome and Police Chief Murphy Paul this week announced the plan.

Higher pay and incentives should help recruit and retain officers.

The incentives are in addition to the 13% across the board pay raise police will get money for.

The proposed incentives will come from the American Rescue Plan and the Metro Council needs to give final approval.

The former Avondale shipyards, where thousands of people once worked to build warships for the U.S. Navy, has now been relaunched as a new manufacturing hub called Avondale Global Gateway.

The governor joined officials from the Virginia based terminal operator that bought the site for $60 million in 2018.

It was rechristened this week for its new purpose.

And Home insurance has been the big story in Louisiana since the hurricanes of 2020 and 21.

And now some people who own homes in the state are facing dramatic, dramatic rate hikes in their home insurance from the insurer of last resort.

Louisiana Citizens Property is that insurer.

Jim Donelon, insurance commissioner, you're here with us to give us the latest.

And this has to be something that's kept you up at night, no question about it.

We have worked citizens down from 173,000 policies.

They're all time peak right after Katrina, Rita, to 35,000 policies.

When Laura hit Lake Charles two years ago and and that was a Herculean task and accomplishment.

It was down from 10% of our property was insured through citizens to one half of 1%.

We actually had to slow down the take out to maintain a infrastructure at citizens for the next big catastrophe, to even have this kind of last resort insurance is an important big deal.

The rate hikes, though, 63% for those impacted and that rate hike is driven in virtually entirely by the cost of reinsurance that citizens pays to reinsure their risk.

We don't have enough business in north Louisiana to just spread our coastal exposure across our state.

So we use the the insurer of last resort as all the insurers doing business in the state use the international reinsurance marketplace to spread our risk around the world, not just to North Louisiana.

There were nine insurance companies that went belly up, is that correct?

Seven with under umbrellas, two more that were part of the seven.

And then others just stopped doing the typical business that they do almost all in the aftermath of hurricanes.

Like the two we experienced the last two years, five insurers paid $23 billion for Laura in either damages, wind damage, not flood.

And that 23 billion was paid over 800,000 claims as a result of the four hurricanes during the past two hurricane seasons.

Will there be people who have to make a decision?

Do I get my medicine or do I have home insurance?

It's got to be difficult for some.

No question about it.

And the National Flood Insurance Program was has just recently rolled out risk waiting 2.0.

A whole new way of pricing flood insurance for property owners nationwide.

And The Advocate just trumpeted a study they did on the new system that says that that represents a 120% rate increase for the average flood insurance policyholders, 500,000 of them in Louisiana.

As a result of changing from the old system of pricing flood insurance to this new risk rating, 2.0 system.

Has this kept you busier than you've ever been, ever been?

It's indeed, it has been quite the challenge.

But I've seen this get through it before.

I know we're going to get through it again.

We have a plan.

It worked before.

It's going to work again.

So what steps have to take place for that plan?

You're speaking of our plan be implemented.

Let's talk, if I may, about some things we did in the legislature.

Yes.

I think going forward really make a difference.

Thankful for the work that was done.

They really were.

First of all, they did no harm, as with medical students.

That's the first goal of every legislative session.

Secondly, they did several things to improve our market, to make it more attractive to companies to come write insurance in Louisiana, because we need companies to come back.

So the way my job is to balance affordability with availability of insurance.

And the first thing we did, the most important bill in the session, Senator Joe Buie of of New Orleans, offered for us in that race the requirement of cash, cash and surplus that companies have to have in order to get a license from $3 million to $10 million.

We actually copied that.

Florida did it from 2 million to 15 about three or four years ago.

What that means is those owners of those companies will have more skin in the game when they go to the reinsurance market to buy reinsurance to protect their investment.

Ten, $10 million now and their policyholders from going through with the failed companies put those policyholders through.

You mentioned this before, these stronger companies coming in to take the place of those companies that couldn't make it.

What's the key to this?

Absolutely.

And one of those that failed I insured my home with I remember you said years ago.

That's right.

Ten years ago.

My premium went from a big national carrier, a thousand a month on my home.

We built in Metairie in 1975 to 400 a month.

If you stretch that over ten years, I've saved $75,000 in premiums while we're up while insured by this smaller company.

It's very complex.

It's very connected.

What else do you need to leave us with?

The latest thing that will happen next.

The most important thing for our recovery, which is the incentive program copied off of what we did in the aftermath of Katrina.

Rita offering grants to companies to come write property insurance in our state.

We appreciate what you've done.

I knew little about insurance, but you've taught me so much.

Just talking to you so much.

So, Jim, thank you for being here.

Glad to be with you, Andre.

Hard hit Florida is suffering through the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, but for the most part, not in the dark and with cool air.

That's far different from the days and months after Hurricanes Laura and Ida here.

Dr. Craig Green of Baton Rouge is an orthopedic surgeon and also a public service commissioner.

So I stopped by his office to talk about how recovery can look different here.

How can we do better?

That's a question Dr. Craig Green of Baton Rouge is asking all around the state in his role as one of Louisiana's public service commissioners.

My thought is, how do we move the needle?

And if you look at Louisiana, people in general were very resilient.

Now, if we could only take our resilience and put it into the grid, which is what I'm trying to do.

And, you know, what I've learned is there's a huge gap between idea and implementation.

And I think a lot of times in Louisiana, particularly the Public Service Commission, the commission, we them, whoever has been very reactive.

And what I'm trying to do is be visionary and proactive.

The three questions that grip us constantly are reliability, affordability and sustainability.

I think we should be good stewards of what we've been given to pass off to the next generation.

The second constant that we know will always be with us.

And one of those is hurricanes and electricity.

And electricity.

So if we look at what's the best possible scenario, if we had to start all over, I have probably be small, stackable nuclear and underground microgrids.

Well, that would be probably 100 times more expensive than what we have right now.

So the real challenge is what is the best possible that we could have in the most affordable bites over a period of time?

And that's not something you think about the day after a hurricane passes.

That's what you think about now.

Exactly.

And, you know, my one of my favorite comments or state quotes is good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment.

So we can look back at our own lessons learned and not assign blame, but say, how do we do better?

Look at what Florida has done.

And they have made changes so that we can't copy and paste everything.

But we can.

What lessons can we learn from them?

After multiple hurricanes pounded Florida in 2000, four and five, utility companies and their PSC made a proactive decision to harden their grid.

They invested billions into stronger poles, buried power lines and elevated substations.

They, however, right now they have 95% power restoration.

But that is something that people are not happy about right there.

That would be true about that.

But that's not good enough for them.

We may have had 40 or 50%, I'm thinking.

Right.

We would love 95%.

Yeah.

Now, granted.

The very hardest hit areas aren't back on line yet.

But those without is my Newt compared to what Louisianans experienced after Laura and Ida.

Human nature is to always want better.

And so I think that if they can look back and compare how they did to the early 2000s, it's a high fives.

And yet I would expect that they're doing similar to what we're doing now as even after 95% saying, how can we do better?

What ways can we do better?

I would worry about politicians that just sat on their laurels and said, No, no, we're good.

This is fine.

And also, if you do something the same way, you've always done.

It and it always fails after each storm.

Insanity.

Why would you do that?

Right.

And so the difference between storm blows through, you're knocked out, get back as soon as possible.

That's rebuild.

Now, a totally different subject is resiliency.

Resiliency is where Green is putting most of his focus.

Because he says if we're resilient, we're better off.

He is finding challenges, though, every step of the way.

I have opened a docket.

That's how we study things to assess what is Louisiana's plan for resiliency.

And guess what?

We don't have one.

And that may be why we do so poorly.

Green also believes Louisiana should set high standards and have companies meet them, not the other.

Way around by aggregate, where the poorest state in the union.

So and that's why we've also reached out like a clean a marina.

And I wrote a letter to the president saying, look, you print in 6 trillion, can we have £4 billion?

And if you're sending all this money, the Ukraine, you know, don't forget.

And if my thought is, if that were happening in New Jersey, I'd be fine with the federal government doing that.

That's why the federal government exists.

So we're turning over every rock and we invite the public to be part of this conversation, too, and be educated on it and know what's going on and and then have input to your leaders like myself and whoever your PSC elected official is.

My message to people is I'd be frustrated too, and I am frustrated, but I know that we have a lot of efforts going on that you're welcome to be a part of, to have every option on the table, to think, how could it be better?

And with those scenarios that we're testing, what are we not thinking of?

And the COVID 19 pandemic is widely blamed for creating our nation's nursing shortage.

But while it did exacerbate things, experts in the field have been sounding the alarm since 2010.

Hospitals coping with dwindling staff have begun brainstorming how to bring people back into the profession.

LSU Health New Orleans was granted $3 million to do just that.

The nursing shortage has been an issue for a while.

People have been bringing this up really since the pandemic started.

Why is there a nursing shortage?

There are so many factors related to why there's a nursing shortage.

I think the pandemic did exacerbate the shortage.

Burnout is is one of the number one reasons there was so much need at once and so many needs from multiple directions.

You know, nurses have families and they have their own needs as well as their patient needs.

So I think the shortage existed before the pandemic.

I know the shortage existed before the pandemic, but it was certainly exacerbated by the pandemic.

So burnout is a reason I mean, what about older nurses and people that just are leaving?

Is that also an issue?

It is definitely an issue.

Since the pandemic, we've had hundreds, if not thousands of nurses leave the bedside.

Some is related to retirement.

We did have some nurses come out of retirement to work and help, but some is related to retirement.

Some is related to just not having what they need mentally to to endure the secondary stress of caring for patients.

Secondary stress.

I'm pretty sure it was just way more difficult to carry that burden around, especially during that pandemic.

Very much.

Very much so.

LSU is trying to remedy it in a way.

How was that happen?

And can you tell me a little bit about this program?

The grant that we were fortunate to be awarded, we were awarded one out of ten in the nation is actually for Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas.

So Region six of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, it focuses on increasing a clinical faculty workforce.

So, you know, if we have a bedside nursing shortage, that faculty are even more in a need for workforce.

So we will be able to combat the clinical faculty shortage as well as the nursing shortage by developing and make it making it easy for them to support nurses entering the workforce.

All right.

So new nurses, that's where everything it's not necessarily keeping people in.

It's it's getting recruiting.

That's what it is.

It is recruiting.

We hope that it is retention as well.

The retention will be on the professional development side.

You know, we have we have data that tells us when nurses feel confident that they can do a certain job that they enjoy and are more satisfied with their job.

So we hope to help retain existing nurses.

Building their capacity to support teaching nurses and supporting nurses to stay at the bedside.

So I know you said that this is Region six, which is basically the southern part of the United States.

But in Louisiana, is there a specific place you guys are looking to fill nursing positions?

We are looking to fill in rural and underserved medically underserved areas.

You know, when you say a certain region, Louisiana has 95% of the state is considered medically underserved.

95% of the state.

So that includes rural and urban or suburban areas, far underserved and need nurses and need health care providers.

So, yes, a specific area, new underserved areas and also rural areas.

Wow.

So also big cities.

Is it possible that you guys are needing nurses right here in New Orleans?

Oh, absolutely.

We need nurses.

I mean, where I work, we cannot open beds because we don't have enough nursing staff.

So here, when is the program actually going to start taking off?

Are we in the beginning stages?

Where are we at?

We're in the beginning stages.

Within six months.

The program is is planned to be developed.

And we should be able to train nurses within 6 to 12 months to start that program.

Is there a specific number of nurses that you guys are looking for?

Yes, we we had the budget with the amount of money that we were awarded for the region.

So we we aim for hundreds of nurses, but we hope to get thousands of nurses.

Why should people enroll in this program?

Why be a nurse?

Oh, well, being a nurse is very rewarding that the options are unlimited.

I don't know if we have enough time to talk about why, but this program is for nurses who are already working.

And the benefit, the greatest benefit for joining this program is being equipped to teach, you know, in order to practice in a clinical profession, you must acquire certain skills and develop proficiency.

Well, not all of us are trained educators, although we are trained clinicians.

So this program will help to train clinicians, to become clinical educators and help nurses acquire skills, English proficiency.

All right.

So is there anything else about this program that people should know about?

People should know that all of the programing is completely free for nurses, that they will be stipend for their time and their effort and energy for developing this program.

As long as we are able to be funded and able to fund their stipends.

All right.

Well, thank you so much.

Thank you.

LSU Health New Orleans School of Nursing is one of only ten institutions awarded the grant by the US Department of Health and Human Services and colorism is a form of discrimination against darker skin tones.

It's an interracial issue that the black community has debated for centuries.

And this episode of Crossing Over Black Life.

Join me as I explore if colorism has been a problem in black organizations or if it's just a myth.

Have you ever been told you weren't good enough?

In a sense, colorism and textualism do that, and it's taught at a young age.

Dealing with discrimination of light skinned black versus skinned blacks.

Not only do I have to deal with what goes on the racism from ignorant people who are of other races, you have to deal with the poor mindset of people who are African-American.

What's good here?

What's better?

Why the term good and bad?

Well, the straighter better, so to say.

Is that what you think?

No, I don't think so, personally.

But that's what we've been programed to think.

We've debated these topics for centuries.

Who's prettier, who's smarter, who's better?

But the bottom line is, it hurts everyone.

I wouldn't mind being that color.

I feel I'm tortured in a way because of my daily issues of what I'm going through and what I'm trying to get it right.

Since I was a girl.

I've heard rumors about colorism and texture ism seeping its way into black Greek life.

I could never understand if it was fact or fiction.

But before I pick apart this debate, I wanted to make sure I understood the origin of colorism.

Why do we carry this burden around in the first place?

So can you define what colorism is?

Yes.

So colorism is discrimination that occurs based upon one skin tone and it happens within a particular racial group.

And so colorism can occur across groups or it can occur within a group.

So, for example, you could be someone who identifies as black and you could discriminate against folks who are darker skinned relative to folks who are lighter skinned.

Does it only exist and communities of color?

So definitely in communities of color, some might argue that it exists within the dominant racial group in America, which is white people, but it's not something that's necessarily unique to black people.

So the origin for African-Americans is pretty straightforward.

It goes all the way back to slavery.

Different skin tones started popping up in this time, and it complicated the black communities relationship with itself, especially in places like Louisiana, where there was a large mixed race population.

But how does that affect organizations like Black Life?

Is there any evidence showing that for black people, it was difficult to get into schools or, say, fraternities if their skin color wasn't acceptable?

I came across a book that Henry Louis Gates wrote, and the book was published in the mid 1990s, but he was in part reflecting on his experience as a student at Yale University.

I believe in the late 1960s.

And he talked about going to a party.

When he was heading into the party, there was a paper bag on the door, and if you were darker than a paper bag, you couldn't go to the party.

Here's where it gets kind of murky.

There are several accounts of people saying they've experienced exactly what Laurie is describing.

RG Kerr, a professor who specializes in functional intersectionality, says sororities at Howard University use things like the paper bag test to determine admission.

Those stories are even used in the plot of the Spike Lee movie School Daze.

Have no idea why, but yeah, when I say that, I why don't you talk about the other?

It may not be based on you.

But on the other side of that debate, some say there wasn't much evidence to support these claims at all.

One of the major criticisms that black fraternities and sororities have faced over time is elitism.

And a lot of that was manifested in the stories about the brown paper bag test, meaning people were denied membership in organizations if their skin was darker than a brown paper bag.

There are anecdotal stories about this happening and people have written about it, but there's really some conflict in terms of the research.

Colourism and elite ism are complicated topics, so I thought I'd meet with our expert in person for this one.

And somebody who's been to a lot of archives and looked at archival footage.

I've seen people much darker than me in those groups in the 1930s and forties.

So I think impacts that happen.

But in terms of that being a unilateral motive for those organizations, I mean, I can think about members of Phi Alpha that are really dark at the very beginning.

But for those organizations that did have those issues, I mean, were they primarily in the South?

Were they in the north?

Yeah.

I mean, it's a range of places.

I mean, I've heard stories about some of the colorism.

A place like Howard where that would happen D.C. and people decide where the DC is, the South and they go back and forth.

So just in different places.

But you have as much of that later on because when the HBCUs in the South became accredited in 1940s, the 1950s, they were really just trying to add members.

Just limited to a couple of places.

Yeah, it's just I think just very limited.

Like, I guess I personally think a lot has been made of that.

Probably too much has been made of it.

Because I think that was a main plot in school.

Yeah, that was one of the issues in terms of colorism.

And so like I said, that was issues different places.

But I mean, it could have been an issue who got certain roles in the church.

I mean, colorism played a role a lot of places and how people moved in society, they were able to do certain things.

They saw that.

The world is.

Excuse me.

Nobody told you to stand in the hall either.

Excuse me.

That's better.

This thing up.

So that's it.

Both points exist somewhere within the truth.

But isn't it a relief to know that we've grown past paper bag test and skin color admissions?

I'm relieved and I'm also hopeful.

And I think you should be too.

This episode is part of a special series called Crossing Over Black Greek Life.

We've got two more episodes airing this month on.

We look forward to it.

Great job.

Thank you very much.

And everyone.

That is our show for this week.

Remember, you can watch anything live any time, wherever you are with our live TBS app.

You can catch LBB News and Public Affairs shows as well as other Louisiana programs you've come to enjoy over the years.

And please like us on Facebook, Twitter, Tik-Tok, and on Instagram.

For everyone here at Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

I'm Andre Morelli.

And I'm crossing here.

So next time.

That's the state we're in.

Support for Louisiana.

The state we're in is provided by.

Every day I go to work for Entergy.

I know customers are counting on me.

So Entergy is investing millions of dollars to keep the lights on and installing new technology to prevent outages before they happen.

Together, together, together.

We power life.

Additional support provided by the Fred Bea and Ruth B Zeigler Foundation and the Zeigler Art Museum, located in Jennings City Hall.

The museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for Southwest Louisiana and the foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

With support from viewers like you.