I have a love hate relationship with my home state of Louisiana. We used to joke that the state motto should be, “Thank God for Mississippi!” because on any good list you’d find Louisiana on the bottom (right on top of Mississippi) and on any list of bad we were right on top. Not much has changed in the intervening decades.
The poverty rate in Louisiana is double that of the national average. The state is also the incarceration capitol of the entire world with over two thirds of the people in prisons there on drug related or nonviolent charges. The state is second highest for gun deaths and several of her cities including the three largest; New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Shreveport lead the country in violent crime rates with New Orleans having been named murder capitol of the US on more than one occasion. It has one of the highest rates of sexually transmitted infections in America, including a large number of people with HIV/AIDS. The schools, the infrastructure, the healthcare, the air quality- all rank below the national average. New Orleans even has boil water advisories!
It’s even worse if you are Black in Louisiana. Black people make up about one third of the State’s population. Forty-seven percent of Black children in Louisiana live at or below the poverty level, ten percent higher than the already miserable national average. Sixty-six percent of the prison population is Black. The median income for Black families in Louisiana is half that of white families. Areas near, and even in, Black neighborhoods are more likely to be zoned for toxic industry.
I haven’t even begun to discuss the withering heat and humidity of the summers, the increasingly common hurricanes and tornadoes, the disappearing coastline, the fact that everything from the ants to the snakes to the politicians is venomous, and don’t get me started on the disease ridden mosquitoes. Yet this state, the state of Louisiana, the state I have just described, consistently ranks as one of the happiest states in the Union with no less than six of her, our, cities holding top ten spots on happiest people indices. So…wtf?
Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash
Louisianians are a passionate and joyous people who value family and having a good time. The state has a wealth of traditions centered around food and music. The hottest part of the year gives us warm, sultry nights and the coldest part of the year generally has enough bright, sunny days that seasonal affective disorder is just something we read about in the paper. We take advantage of this weather by organizing a slew of outdoor events. From state fairs and football games to Mardi Gras, the biggest free party in the world, in Louisiana there is always something to celebrate and celebrate we do.
There is a festival for just about everything. Especially anything edible. And the parades! Once you’ve been to a parade in Louisiana you’ll be spoiled for the experience anywhere else. All this revelry is liberally fueled with plenty of booze and some of the best food in the world. We’ve got pure Cajun country victuals, the highfalutin international mix of Creole cuisines, and the more recent Vietnamese and Latin American influences- it’s hard to find the bad.
Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash
A big part of all that partying is the sharing. It’s not at all uncommon for people to invite strangers and passersby to the boil. It’s not just sharing crawfish and beer. Louisiana has a high rate of philanthropy, often volunteerism or donations through one’s church. Speaking of churches there are about a dozen within a one mile radius of my house. Louisianians have faith. Or, I should say, have faiths. Even the atheists get together at least once a month. Because in Louisiana it’s all about community.
In Louisiana we love a colorful character. As the saying goes throughout the South: Unlike our Northern cousins we don’t hide our crazy relatives in the attic. We sit with ’em on the front porch. I think this is one reason that the arts in Louisiana have always been vibrant. New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz, which is the grandmother of most modern American music including good ol’ rock ‘n’ roll. Throughout Louisiana people embrace our musical heritage. Free concerts featuring everything from swamp pop to the most extreme of alternative can be found all over the state, especially in New Orleans. Many of the other arts: painting, pottery, theater, dance, and the written word, to name a few, are also well supported in Louisiana.
Now, all this awesomeness does not discount the horrors noted above. But it does help understand how people can be passionate about, loyal to, and most of all happy in a place that, from the outside can seem less than desirable. More, it illustrates that just because the people in a place are happy it doesn’t mean that the place itself is happy. So, when my husband got the job in Denmark requiring us to move from the happiest state in America to the happiest country in the world I didn’t expect a land of rainbows and unicorns.
Photo by