Isiah Warner first visited the University in 1962, but when he came back more than 20 years later to apply for a faculty position he said very little had changed in terms of race relations.
Warner, vice chancellor of chemistry, spoke Wednesday night at the Wesley Foundation on Chimes Street to an audience of predominantly white students about the need for open dialogue on campus between different races in order to foster tolerance of unfamiliar cultures.
“It doesn’t happen often enough on LSU’s campus,” Warner said. “I’ve been to a large public university, Texas A&M, and I’ve been to a large private university, Emory, and [LSU has] a lot more racial problems.”
Warner said he was born and raised in Louisiana and witnessed the University’s integration. He said he chose not to go to LSU because he did not want to be a “martyr,” so he pursued his education at Southern University.
“LSU was segregated,” Warner said. “There are some people who don’t want me to talk about the past, but it’s my past, and I’m not going to not talk about it because it makes some people feel uncomfortable.”
Warner said when LSU was first integrated racial tensions were high, but more than 40 years later not enough has been done to ease those tensions.
“Nothing has been done,” Warner said. “There was racism then, and there is racism now.”
Warner said Baton Rouge public school systems are the base of the problem because they are still largely segregated.
He said the Baton Rouge population is about 50 percent black, but the public school system is comprised of 76 percent black students.
Warner created a program called LA-STEM for science, technology, engineering and mathematics to “increase the number of under-represented students receiving Ph.D.s” by offering academic support, mentoring and financial aid.
Lemroy Culbert, electrical engineering sophomore and LA-STEM participant, said he went to a high school that was 99 percent black.
He said when he got to LSU it was a “culture shock” because he could feel racial tension he had never before experienced.
He said his experience with the program and time at LSU has shown him “that just because you don’t understand other people doesn’t mean you can’t try.”
Rev. Shawn Anglim said the Wesley Foundation has been making efforts to reach out to different black organizations around the community to bring more diversity into the ministry.
“We recognize that 99 percent of our ministry is white,” Anglim said. “If we don’t do something deliberate to change that, then why should we expect anything to change?”
Anglim said the ministry has made efforts by sending students to participate in the Martin Luther King Jr. Committee, to listen to black speakers at Baton Rouge Community College and inviting Collins Phillips, who recently had charges dropped against him for violations of the University Student Code of Conduct related to Confederate flag protests, to speak to the ministry next week.
 
Contact Rebekah Allen at [email protected]