Episode 6 Dr. Kenna Franklin - ”Shreveport-Bossier: My City, My Community, My Home”

Dr. Kenna Franklin, Assistant Provost of Diversity, Inclusion and Community Engagement, sits down with Jeffrey Goodman, Director of Marketing and Development with the YMCA of Northwest Louisiana, to answer the following questions:

 

0:58 1. I read that you have been on the faculty at LSUS since 1990 and it made me think of a comment I recently heard. We recently conducted a panel discussion at the Y and someone made the comment that she had moved away for 17 years and that when she moved back in 2008, she couldn’t believe how many great strides we had made in a number of different areas of our community.

 

Yet from her perspective, the one area we had made no progress at all was with regards to our unity. From your perspective, have we made progress here with race relations in the 32 years since you have been at LSUS?

 

9:08 2. As I was doing my research on you, I came across something called the “Bi-Racial Undergraduate Learning Experience” that took place in 1993. Can you explain a little about what this course was?

 

17:37 3. I heard you reference a digital library the university has begun to compile as part of its Diversity, Inclusion, and Community Engagement program. Can you talk a little about it? What is it and how can one access it?

 

30:14 4. Arthur Ashe, the great tennis player once was quoted as saying, “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”

 

This quote seems to line up with much of what I have read about you and the way you think about and see the world. Can you talk a little about that?

 

32:54 5. I am embarrassed to admit that it was not until recently that I first heard the following to describe Shreveport, “when a majority becomes a minority.” Are there cities around the country where the white majority became a minority that Shreveport can use as examples of how to effectively navigate and manage this transition?