“Don’t call me a Cajun!”: race and representation in Louisiana’s Acadiana region

ABSTRACT

In southwestern Louisiana, the public sphere is dominated by the image of the Cajuns, presented as a hardy, likable people who have overcome significant obstacles since their arrival as Acadians in the late eighteenth century. Across the cultural region designated “Acadiana,” which comprises 22 counties, nearly 30% of the population is black (or Creole, mixed-race peoples generally identifying as black). Contributions of non-whites to the region’s history are usually not incorporated into the public historical narrative, and the erasure of these groups’ influences on the state’s cultural “gumbo” has profound symbolic and material consequences. Black/Creole residents note that much of their culture – primarily music and foodways – has been repackaged as Cajun or subsumed under the Cajun label and that they are unable to take advantage of the benefits that Creole-oriented tourism could bring to a region in which half of the counties are designated “black high poverty parishes.” Using mixed methods, including interviews, archival analysis, and census data, this paper explores the social, political, and economic consequences of the domination of Cajuns in the south Louisiana memorial and representational landscape and argues that commemorative silences in what Alderman et al. have called the “memorial arena” perpetuate a hegemonic social order.

KEYWORDS:

• Place naming
• African-American history
• Louisiana Creoles
• qualitative methods
• memorial arena
• memorial landscape
• Cajuns

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributors

Alexandra Giancarlo graduated with her PhD in Geography (2017) from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Her research focuses on the cultural identity and racial politics of Louisiana's rural Creole communities. Her research interests also include memory and representation, black history, and disability studies.

Notes

1. The complexity of the term “Creole,” both presently and historically, cannot be overstated. Though a more thorough discussion occurs later in the paper, note here that I employ the term “Creole” to mean those of mixed-race origins and French culture in southwestern Louisiana. This present-day usage (often, though not exclusively, as a synonym or addendum to “black” or “African American”) is in contrast to how the term was used for much of Louisiana’s history. Landry’s research on the Bayou Teche region illustrates these changes well. Before the twentieth century, “Creoles” could be white, black, or mixed-race and often had a common Latin culture. As the 1900s progressed, racial bifurcation into “Cajuns” (white identified) and “Creoles” (black or mixed-race identified) in the area occurred due to the collapse of the sugar plantation industry, the influx of Anglophone settlers, and the promulgation of Acadian identity (Landry 2015).

2. At Rutgers, a committee convened to research the history of the institution’s linkages to slavery and racism recommended in February 2017 renaming a walkway and apartment buildings for former slaves (Heyboer 2017). At the University of Texas at Austin, a statue of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, was removed from a prominent outdoor memorial to eventually be placed in the campus’ center for American history (Neuman 2015). Years of debate reached their culmination at Yale University in February 2017 as the institution decided to remove the name of slavery defender John C. Calhoun from one of its residential colleges (Jaschik 2017).

3. Iberville Parish: 49.8%, St. James: 50.6%, St. John the Baptist: 53.5%. All county level data: “Profile of General Population and Housing Characteristics: 2010, 2010 Demographic Profile Data. 2010 Census: U.S. Census Bureau.”

4. One respondent from Texas of Creole heritage was not included on the map.

5. Note that the changing meanings over time of the term “Creole” in Louisiana are the ongoing subject of scholarly debate. What I present here is an admittedly general overview that draws on the commonly accepted iconic sources (Dominguez and Trepanier in particular, though these perspectives are not without their limitations, the most significant of which is that Dominguez uses the New Orleans context).

6. Brasseaux notes that, in Evangeline Parish, today’s “Cajuns” actually descend from white Creoles who adopted the Cajun identity, in part, for tourism purposes. He adds that calling themselves “Creole” became unacceptable due to the contemporary association with those of mixed racial background (Brasseaux 2005).

7. One of the misinterpretations of the local cultural landscape that I encountered is the tendency of some scholars, past and present, to refer to Creoles as “black Cajuns.” While I do not doubt that, occasionally, individuals may identify in such a manner (after all, racial and cultural identity is a highly individualized process), in general,

black French-speakers clearly recognize the boundary distinctions separating them from Cajuns, and do not normally claim the status of ‘black Cajuns,’ some scholarly opinion to the contrary notwithstanding. ‘Creole’ is the term of virtually unanimous choice in designating their own ethnic status. (Dormon 1983, p. 78)

8. In broad terms, the historical distinction between those labeled “Acadian” and those labeled “Cajun” centered on class divisions between upwardly mobile Acadians (who, in the antebellum period, aspired to the status of their white Creole neighbors) and “low class” Cajuns. Relatedly, “A proseperous or educated Acadian is called a ‘Creole.’ An ignorant, or poor person, or a tacky person, even though Creole in origin, may be called a Cajun” (Saucier 1943, 102; cited in Trepanier 1991). Henry (1998) and Stanford (2016) suggest that most scholars pinpoint the introduction of the word “Cajun” to a Putnam’s Magazine article in 1879.

9. His definition of Acadiana included a smaller number of parishes than the label currently designates and focused on those parishes he believed to be most commonly associated with the label.

10. Eunice, Louisiana: 2012–2016 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates: U.S. Census Bureau.

11. ACS Demographic and Housing Estimates: Opelousas City, Louisiana. 2012–2016, American Community Survey. U.S. Census Bureau.

12. Poverty Status in the Past Twelve Months: Opelousas City, Louisiana. 2012–2016 American Community Survey. U.S. Census Bureau.

13. In fact, almost all of Louisiana’s nonmetro parishes qualify as black high poverty parishes (32/35). Black high poverty parishes: Acadia, Assumption, Avoyelles, Evangeline, Iberia, Iberville, Jefferson Davis, Pointe Coupee, St. Landry, St. Mary, Vermilion (Louisiana’s Rural Poverty [undated- 2000s]). The USDA defines black high poverty parishes as those where 1) over half of the poor population in this parish (county) is from this minority group, or 2) over half of the population in this area in non-Hispanic white, but the high poverty rate of the minority group pushes the overall rate over the 20% threshold (Beale 2015).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [grant number 767-2013-2595].