Thoughts on Cajuns and "Whiteness"

This essay is one of five in which I address current issues in Cajun and Creole studies. The other essays can be found here.

I wrote these works not only as a historian, but as someone who identifies as both a Cajun and a Creole. As I note in one of these essays, “[M]any of my ancestors were Creoles of French heritage. My own family tree abounds with tell-tale Creole surnames: de la Morandière, Soileau, de la Pointe, Fuselier de la Claire, Brignac, Bordelon, de Livaudais, and others. . . . As such, I could, if I chose to do so (and sometimes I do), identify as Creole — doubly so because Cajuns themselves are to begin with a kind of Creole.”

I trust those with whom I express disagreement will accept this critique in the collegial spirit it is intended.

I thank Dr. Barry Jean Ancelet, Dr. David Cheramie, Dr. Phebe Hayes, independent researcher Don Arceneaux, and former CODOFIL president Warren A. Perrin for proofing the below essay. Thanks also to Dr. John Mack Faragher for proofing endnote six.

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In a recent essay I noted the understandable trend among some scholars and activists to reclaim what is Creole from the overweening, often misapplied blanket term Cajun. In another recent essay I examined the much less explicable trend of asserting, despite evidence to the contrary, that the word Cajun — and indeed the entire Cajun ethnic group — appeared only in the late 20th century.

"Cajun sugarcane farmer with daughter,
near New Iberia, Louisiana,"
Russell Lee, photographer (1938)
(Source: Library of Congress)

Another questionable claim, found recently in both academic and more journalistic or bloggish sources, concerns the "whiteness"(1) of the Cajun people. In short, some writers claim that Cajuns were not considered "white" until the 20th century and even, according to some, until the late 20th century.(2)

Historical evidence, however, does not bear out this statement, which is often presented axiomatically, with little or no primary-source documentation, as if a self-evident truth.

Granted, the historical record does contain at least a few references suggesting a certain non-white quality to the Cajun people. In 1860, for example, a widely printed newspaper article noted of the Cajuns (called "Acadians" in the piece), "[They] are a strange clannish people, resembling much in appearance and habits, the race of Gipsies [sic]." Then, in 1922, a Cajun surnamed Pitre sued a man for slander who supposedly called him "a damned dirty low-down 'Cadian' — pronouncing it 'Cajan' — and a damned half-breed n*****." This, however, is not so strong an example as it may at first seem, because the defendant convinced a judge that he had not hurled the racial epithet at the Cajun plaintiff — who described himself in court as "of the Caucasian race, of Acadian descent" — but rather at a black messenger sent on behalf of the Cajun plaintive.(3)

Pitre v. Sacker,
in The Southern Reporter (1922)

Another questionable example dates from 1945, when a book reviewer described a novel's fictional characters as "a poverty-stricken population of poor whites and cajuns [sic]" — arguably suggesting Cajuns were something other than "poor whites." (Perhaps poor non-whites?) There is also the occasional reference to Cajuns as non-whites that can be traced to a simple lack of cultural understanding. For instance, in 1897 an Iowan visiting south Louisiana noted, "[T]he natives, a mixture of Negro and Mexican, are called 'Cajuns' (Acadians)." (Even so, this is not so egregious an error as one by a mid-20th-century author who traced the Cajuns' ethnicity to Christian disciples in first-century Armenia!)(4)

Decorah (Iowa) 
Public Opinion (1897)

Found more frequently, however, are references to Cajuns as separated from the mass of white people not by race, but by class. In 1866, for instance, a writer for Harper's described Cajuns as "the descendants of Canadian French settlers in Louisiana; and by dint of intermarriage [with each other] they have succeeded in getting pretty well down in the social scale. Without energy, education, or ambition, they are good representatives of the white trash." This negative classist view persisted into the modern era, when, for example, United Artists re-released a 1956 motion picture set among hostile Cajuns under the new title Poor White Trash. Again, this trend reflects a perceived class distinction, not a racial one, between Cajuns and other whites.(5)

Ad for the Cajun-themed movie Poor White Trash,
originally released under the title Bayou (1956 & 1961).

Turning from class back to the original issue of race: despite rare and iffy exceptions, the general trend is that others have overwhelmingly viewed Cajuns as "white." In fact, the historical record indicates that Cajuns have been considered "white" since well into the 19th-century, when their Acadian ancestors and other ethnic groups coalesced in south Louisiana to become the Cajuns.(6)

I find this unsurprising because the Cajuns' ancestors hailed primarily from Europe (mainly France, but also Germany, Spain, and elsewhere on the continent) and because Cajuns — according to commonly held standards persisting over time — "looked white" and, for all practical purposes, were "white." (At this point it is worth noting that race is increasingly viewed as an outmoded concept, one unsupported by biology or other scientific fields. This is, however, problematic for historians because, even if the idea of race is bankrupt, the concept nevertheless remains an extremely strong catalyst in historical events.)(7)

I base my assertions about Cajun "whiteness" on evidence like that found in the below list of historical references. This list makes no pretense of completeness: there are no doubt many more historical references to Cajuns as "white" remaining to be found.

Some of the below sources express negative views of Cajuns as well as overtly racist sentiments about African Americans. This unpleasant fact, however, has no bearing on the issue at hand: those benighted sources, like the more innocuous ones, nonetheless viewed Cajuns as "white." Indeed, I find it interesting that the racist sources, instead of rejecting the perhaps suspect Roman Catholic, French-speaking Cajuns as something other than "white," actually embraced them as "white." (Likewise, I believe it speaks volumes that, as historian Carl A. Brasseaux has noted of the racist White League chapters formed in postbellum south Louisiana, "Acadians [Cajuns] constituted a disproportionately large percentage of their memberships." This prompts the question, "If Cajuns were not viewed as 'white' until recently, why, then, did so many belong to this 19th-century white supremacist group?")(8)

Brasseaux's 
Acadian to Cajun (1992)

Here is the list of supporting evidence for Cajun "whiteness":

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"They proposed to hang the whole settlement because a colored man living there once killed a white Acadian [Cajun]." ~ "The Vigilantes of Vermilion," New Orleans Republican, reprinted in The Opelousas Journal, 21 November 1873, p. 2.

Clarksville (Tenn.)
Weekly Chronicle (1884)

"The Acadians are all white . . . [and] are still a strong reminder of the old Norman stock of which they come. . . ." ~ "The Acadians," New York Telegram, reprinted in Clarksville (Tenn.) Weekly Chronicle, 3 May 1884, p. 4.

Albert, The House of Bondage (1890).

"Who were these 'Cadien patrollers, Uncle Stephen?' 'Why, child, they were the meanest things in creation; they were poor, low down white folks. . . .'" ~ Octavia Victoria Rogers Albert, The House of Bondage; Or, Charlotte Brooks and Other Slaves [fictional work] (New York: Hunt & Eaton, 1890), p. 106. 

"Nearly all the white folks who trudged along the highway were Acadians. . . . and it is strange indeed to hear that we must not call them 'Cajuns to their faces. . . ." ~ Julian Ralph, "Acadians at Home," Harper's Magazine, reprinted in The Indianapolis Journal, 3 November 1893, p. 2.

Ralph, "Acadians at Home," 
Harper's (1893)

"It is a race war rather than a political fight that is now waging in St. Landry Parish in Louisiana. It is between the Acadians . . . and the negro [sic]. . . . [N]ine-tenths of the white people are Acadians, descendants of the unfortunate French settlers of Nova Scotia. They have no use for the negro, and the national [natural?] antipathy between the two races is very strong." ~ No title, Waterbury (Conn.) Evening Democrat, 17 April 1896, p. 2.

Waterbury (Conn.)
Evening Democrat (1896)

"[A]mong these white men, and forming a large portion of them, are the descendants of the Acadians who were transported from Nova Scotia to Louisiana. . . ." ~ The Sunday at Home 45 (1897), p. 408.

"But many of the best white families in Louisiana, especially the descendants of the old Acadians, keep their ancient simplicity and are unable to read." ~ "The Negro's Ballot," The (Phoenix) Arizona Republican, 22 January 1898, p. 2.

"The third class of white colonists were the Acadians, or, as they are popularly called in Louisiana today, 'Cagans.'" ~ "Whites in the Majority," The (Washington, D.C.) Times, 12 August 1901, p. 3. [Note: by "third class" the author does not mean "inferior"; he means Cajuns are by chance the third group of white Louisianians discussed in his article.]

"[T]he Acadians in Louisiana are about the most prolific white people on the globe." ~ No title, The Colfax (Wash.) Gazette, 13 September 1901, p. 4.

Colfax (Wash.) Gazette (1901)

"[Y]our Cajan will give a lazy ha ha, where any other white man would swear. . . ." ~ E. H. Lancaster, "The Wooing of Angela" [fictional work], The Coalville (Utah) Times, 5 December 1902, p. 3.

"[T]he negroes [sic] are being crowded out of work on the sugar plantations by white labor, such as Acadians. . . ." ~ "Negro's Critical Position in the Industrial World," The (Raleigh, N.C.) News & Observer, 7 December 1902, Section One, p. 11.

"Then there are the 'Cajuns,' white people, the descendants of the Acadians. . . ." ~ "Louisiana Sugar: Statement of Joe B. Chaffe, Representing the American Cane Growers' Association," Senate Documents, 67th Congress, 2nd Session, 1921-1922, Vol. 5, Part 3 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1922), p. 2308.

Senate Documents (1922)

"The whites, transported by separate barges, were Acadian farming families, chattering among themselves in a thick, unfamiliar French dialect." ~ Will Irwin, "Except for War, America Knows No Destruction Equal to That of Flood, Writes Noted Author," New Britain (Conn.) Herald, 17 May 1927, Sec. 2, p. 21.

"A majority of the white tenants are 'Cajuns.' These Cajuns are trustworthy, but as a rule are illiterate." ~ Sherrod De Floy Morehead, Merchant Credit to Farmers in Louisiana (Russellville, [Ark.?]: privately printed, 1929), p. 16.

"One of the films in the making is a story of the Cajuns, a little known group of primitive whites." ~ "Out Where the Movies Begin," (Washington, D.C.) Evening Star, 24 May 1933, p. B-12.

(Washington, D.C.) Evening Star (1933)

"[The Creoles] often had a word for the poorer Cajuns: 'Canaille!' — that was their way of saying poor-white trash." ~ Shields McIlwaine, The Southern Poor-White from Lubberland to Tobacco Road (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1939), p. 143.

"[T]he Cajuns, the Louisiana poor white descendants of Longfellow's Acadians. . . ." ~ The Journal of Negro History 34 (1949), p. 123.

Notes

(1) In this essay I use the term "whiteness" to mean "a set of characteristics and experiences generally associated with being a member of the white race and having white skin." Although I am primarily interested in this basic definition, the term "whiteness" can also refer, for example, to "the way that white people, their customs, culture, and beliefs operate as the standard by which all other groups are compared" and "a historically contingent and socially constructed racial category, once defined . . . by privilege and power. . . ." among other, similar definitions. Nicki Lisa Cole, "The Definition of Whiteness in American Society," ThoughtCo.com, 8 November 2019, https://www.thoughtco.com/whiteness-definition-3026743, accessed 22 November 2020; "Whiteness," National Museum of African American History and Culture/Smithsonian Institution, https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/whiteness, accessed 22 November 2020; Teresa J. Guess, "The Social Construction of Whiteness: Racism by Intent, Racism by Consequence," Critical Sociology 32 (July 2006), p. 667, per https://www.cwu.edu/diversity/sites/cts.cwu.edu.diversity/files/documents/constructingwhiteness.pdf, accessed 22 November 2020.

At the risk of seeming to construct a “straw man” argument, I choose neither to identify nor quote the sources to which I take exception and that prompted me to write this essay. Although that practice would be requisite for an academic publication, and would in some ways strengthen my assertions, I nevertheless do not wish this discussion to involve personalities, but, rather, only issues of substance and actual historical evidence.

(2) The word Cajun is used in this essay to refer solely to the so-named people of south Louisiana and a small portion of east Texas, not to the identically named persons of different heritage who inhabit part of Alabama and who have been described in modern scholarship as "not entirely White, Black, or Indian but [who] constitute a triracial community somewhat reproductively isolated and inbred." See W. S. Pollitzer et al., "The Cajuns of Southern Alabama: Morphology and Serology," American Journal of Physical Anthropology 47 (July 1977): pp. 1-6; the quote is from the abstract of this article found on the website of the National Library of Medicine, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/888930/, accessed 19 November 2020.

(3) "Acadians in Louisiana," The [Baltimore, Md.] Daily Exchange, 19 October 1860, p. 1; Pitre v. Sacker, 23 June 1922, Louisiana Supreme Court, No. 23387 (151 La. 1079, 92 So. 705 [1922]), cited in Louisiana Reports, Vol. 151 (St. Paul: West Publishing, 1922), p. 1079.

(4) "A Lion in the Streets" [book review], (Washington, D.C.) Evening Star, 10 June 1945, p. C-3; Mrs. Geo. P. Bent, "From Sunny Climes," Decorah (Iowa) Public Opinion, 16 March 1897, p. 1; André Cajun [pseudonym], Why Louisiana Has. . . (New Orleans: Harmanson, 1947), pp. 16-21. This volume reads, "The story of the class, or group of people in Louisiana known as 'Cajuns'[,] began the hour St. Bartholomew, a disciple [of Jesus], gave up the ghost. The location of this sad event was the ancient land of Armenia. . . ." The author goes on to state that over roughly 1,700 years a group of persecuted Christians migrated from Armenia to France, Nova Scotia, and, finally, Louisiana, where they became the Cajuns.

André Cajun's
Why Louisiana Has. . . (1947)

(5) Shane K. Bernard, The Cajuns: Americanization of a People (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003), pp. xvii, 121. In this 2003 book I note that Cajuns were known to be reviled by local blacks as "Acadian n*****s," which would appear to be a prime example of labeling Cajuns as non-whites. On closer examination, however, I see that the original 19th-century quote states, "the n******, when they want to express contempt for one of their own race, call him [a fellow black person] an Acadian n*****." In other words, this pejorative was used as a black-on-black insult, not as an expression of Cajun non-whiteness. See A. R. W. [Alfred Rudolph Waud], "Acadians of Louisiana," Harper's Weekly, 20 October 1866, p. 670.

(6) One researcher has questioned the "whiteness" of the original Acadian exiles arriving in Louisiana, noting esteemed Yale historian John Mack Faragher's examination, in his 2006 book A Great and Noble Scheme, of "métissage" — the intermarriage of French settlers in Acadie with the indigenous Míkmaq. While it is true that Acadians and Míkmaq often produced métis offspring, it is important to avoid exaggerating the extent of this interracial mixing. Métissage played a more important role in Acadia's early history, when French male colonists turned to Native American women for companionship because of a lack of female colonists. This trend, however, became less common with the arrival of additional French women and entire French families, as well as with the coming of French priests who discouraged interracial dalliances. As Faragher himself notes, "métissage declined as colonists spent more time farming and less time trading [with Native Americans]. It was replaced by the recruitment of wayfaring Europeans." Faragher also states that while in some ways the Acadians and Míkmaq were "brothers," it was nonetheless the case that "Acadians and Míkmaq maintained separate identities and separate communities. . . ." By the 1730s, Faragher observes, "Acadians and Míkmaq were no longer as close as they once had been. Métissage was increasingly rare, and the [Roman Catholic] missionary Pierre Maillard pursued a course that kept natives separate from [colonial] inhabitants." In short, while Acadians and Míkmaq were interrelated, Faragher does not go so far as to assert that the Acadians had ceased to be primarily of European extract or, for that matter, ceased to be considered by others as "white." As a French-language Louisiana newspaper, Le Louisianais, therefore stated in 1873, "Rappellons nous donc les Acadiens. Ils étaient blancs, pauvres, honnêtes et robustes. . . ." — "Let us thus remember the Acadians. They were white, poor, honest and robust" [emphasis added]. See John Mack Faragher, A Great and Noble Scheme: The Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French Acadians from Their American Homeland (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006), pp. 63, 160, 203; "Local," Le Louisianais (Covent, La.), 15 February 1873, p. 1.

Faragher's A Great
and Noble Scheme (2006)

(7) See for example Elizabeth Kolbert, "There's No Scientific Basis for Race — It's a Made-Up Label," National Geographic, 12 March 2018, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/04/race-genetics-science-africa/#clos, accessed 19 November 2020; Megan Gannon, "Race Is a Social Construct, Scientists Argue," Scientific American, 5 February 2016, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/race-is-a-social-construct-scientists-argue/, accessed 19 November 2020; Melissa Rice, "Evolution and Race: Biologically, Race is No Longer an Issue, Scientific Panel Agrees," Cornell Chronicle, 11 February 2009, https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2009/02/experts-biologically-race-no-longer-issue, accessed 19 November 2020; "Executive Summary: AAPA Statement on Race and Racism," American Association of Physical Anthropologists, ca. 27 March 2019, https://physanth.org/about/position-statements/aapa-statement-race-and-racism-2019/, accessed 19 November 2020.

(8) Carl A. Brasseaux, Acadian to Cajun: Transformation of a People, 1803-1877 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1992), 144.

A Fiction Interlude: My Short Story "The Phrenologist"

Although I am a historian, and thus write non-fiction, I'm pleased to announce that one of my works of fiction, a short story titled "The Phrenologist," appears in the new anthology Southern Gothic: New Tales of the South (New Salon Press, available for Kindle and other digital formats from Amazon.com).

Nathan Mark Phillips provided
artwork for my story and
others in the anthology.
(Courtesy Mark Nathan Phillips)

I wrote this short story in 1987, when I was twenty, and I recently took it out, revised it, and submitted it for publication. I know the story may offhand sound racially offensive, but it is actually a condemnation of racism, as well as of anti-intellectualism in general (even more so when it parades as scholarship).

In the late 1980s this story won me a spot in the creative writing class of African-American author Ernest J. Gaines (The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, A Gathering of Old Men, and other works.)

I excerpt the story here:

The Phrenologist

by Shane K. Bernard 

I have noticed for a long time that those who deny the intellectual importance of the volume of the brain have, in general, small heads.” 

— M. de Jouvencel, “Discussion on the Brain,” Bulletin of the Paris Anthropological Society, 1861

Doctor Pierre Maturin, a son of France, hailed from a family that for generations had produced noted physicians. He earned his degrees from the Sorbonne and the fashionable university at Edinburgh. He subsequently returned to Paris to practice as a surgeon, but, finding the competition discouraging, sailed to New Orleans in the summer of 1850, where he established himself as a general practitioner. He set up his office on the corner of Chartres and Conti, in a small stucco building adjacent to the Slave Exchange. This proved a fortunate site for the young physician, for prospective buyers often sought his services as a medical examiner of slaves. One soon found the following advertisement in the local newspapers:

SLAVEHOLDERS! PROTECT YOUR INVESTMENTS! Owners or buyers wishing to ensure the health of laborers will do well by contacting me at 444 Rue Chartres. — Dr. P. Maturin

Maturin shortly distinguished himself as a specialist in the examination and treatment of slaves, and his new-found affluence gave him much leisure time to occupy as he pleased. This he employed in furthering his knowledge of medicine and physiology, and through his reading and correspondence he developed an interest in the budding field of craniometry, especially in regard to its function in determining mental capacity. “I have begun to accrue a collection of skulls,” he informed a colleague in France, “and will soon commence research on the current question of brain size and its relation to intelligence . . . what has become the new science of ‘phrenology.’”

Phrenology was a pseudoscience popular
in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
(Source: Lexicolatry.com)

Maturin’s prime phrenological interests were of a racial nature, formulated through observations made during his months as a medical examiner of the black race. As he wrote to his colleague, “I have found it to be a peculiar characteristic of the craniofacial structure of the Negro, that the jaw is much larger than that of the average white man, and that the back of the cranium — that part we call the occiput — is much more extensive in the darker race. It is my supposition that such anatomical distinctions, especially that of the skull, have a direct correlation to the obviously inferior intelligence of the Negro.”

He started his phrenological inquiry by devising and calibrating a special pair of calipers, which he wielded to measure, record, and tabulate the sizes of the twenty-two skulls in his collection. He realized that so sparse a number of crania would hardly provide enough data for his research, so he began to include such measurements as part of every medical examination. This system worked well, because heads of the living were easier to borrow than those of the dead, and nearly as accurate to evaluate.

The science book that inspired
my short story.

Maturin soon possessed a voluminous index of the cranial measurements of all his recent patients. Unfortunately, he had neglected to gather similar measurements for whites, whom he intended to use as his criteria. Maturin now subjugated every white client and acquaintance to his silver calipers, that he might, as he told them, “record for posterity the size of their splendid crania” and simultaneously advance his vital scientific inquiry. After six months, he had indexed three hundred fifty white crania, nearly equal to the number of crania he had previously measured of the black race.

When all the recorded sizes had been averaged, Maturin discovered to his disbelief no apparent difference between the sizes of black and white crania. He informed an acquaintance, “My method of measurement must be at fault, else the figures should have reflected what is plainly the truth. I have decided to abandon the caliper method and, instead, to employ a more direct means of determining the size of the brain once held — I write ‘once held,’ mind you, because my new method of direct measurement demands that I return to the use of skulls.”

To the same acquaintance he described this “new method of direct measurement”: “I have found a more accurate and simpler method, which I call ‘internal evaluation,’ the only fault of which lies in the need for a multitude of skulls. This method consists of filling each individual cranium through the hole at the base of the occiput — this hole we call the foramen magnum — with a medium, which is then emptied into a calibrated vessel. This reveals the volume of the cranium and, therefore, the exact size of the brain it once contained.”

He added, “I have experimented of late with a variety of media, these ranging from water to molasses to mustard seed. But I have found the most reliable medium to be lead shot, particularly of the size called ‘BB,’ which is one-eighth-inch in diameter. Using this medium during trial measurements, the results never varied greater than one-one hundredths of a cubic inch no matter how many times I repeated the experiment. I might add that lead shot does not leak through small fractures as water is apt to do, is not so thick as to remain inside the cranium as molasses, and does not flatten like mustard seed. It is in my opinion the ideal medium.” . . . 

Again, you can purchase the entire short story, and those of other contributors, at Amazon.com.