Many do not know what a Cajun is or how it is defined, I saw this posted on the Delphi board and thought this woud be a good article to help that question somewhat. I studied a semester under Dr. Brasseaux, in my opinion there is no person more knowledgeable of Cajun history and culture.

<a href='http://www.herald.ns.ca/stories/2004/07/27/fNovaScotia111.raw.html' target='_blank'>http://www.herald.ns.ca/stories/2004/07/27...tia111.raw.html</a>


Acadia's Louisiana descendants fought against discrimination
By SUSAN BRADLEY / Staff Reporter

LAFAYETTE, La. - For nearly a century, Acadian descendants in Louisiana were victims of deeply ingrained discrimination.

Carl Brasseaux, director of Louisiana studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, is a Cajun who remembers only too well the kind of stigma attached to his culture.

"Beginning in the 1850s and continuing forward to the post-World War Two era, the term Cajun meant French-speaking white trash," he said in an interview in his office at the university.

Cajuns were commonly considered to be "backward, ignorant and stupid - illiterate swamp dwellers."

In a social hierarchy topped by white Europeans, Cajuns were on the bottom rung of white society, one level above free coloured people, Brasseaux said.

After their expulsion from Canada, Acadians settled in the wetlands and prairies of southern Louisiana, creating tightly knit communities whose people were isolated first by geography and later by language and custom.

Even after railways and highways connected the communities with the rest of Louisiana and the United States, the French-speaking Catholics were slow to assimilate, Brasseaux said.

Language was one obstacle, he said.

Cajun children often started school speaking only French, resulting in punishment by school officials and ridicule from other students.

"People who went through that process came through with a great deal of self-loathing," said Brasseaux, who started school in 1957 at a time when speaking French was severely discouraged.

And that stigma has not entirely disappeared.

A Lafayette high school football coach, now in his 30s, recalled being ribbed about being Cajun right up until university.

"Stuff like did I have webbed feet from living in the swamp and remarks about having to swim to catch the school bus."

It wasn't until the 1960s that there was a backlash, following on the coattails of the civil rights movement.

A new generation of Cajuns woke up to find that assimilation had grown to the point where their culture was in danger of extinction.

The process accelerated as Cajun men left their communities to fight in the two world wars and took jobs as oil fields during the boom.

But in 1968, the Council of Development of French in Louisiana was created to keep the language alive.

A resurgence of interest in Cajun music and food helped the cultural revival.

In the late 1960s, most people had not heard of Cajuns or their music, but that changed when popular Louisiana bands started playing folk festivals around the continent and overseas.

That was followed by a fascination with spicy Cajun recipes developed by Louisiana chef K-Paul Prudhomme, who promoted his cookbooks and regional dishes far and wide.

By the late 1980s, most people in the U.S. and Western Europe had directly experienced some form of Cajun culture, and today the culture continues to bask in the hip glow of an international fascination with all things Cajun, and a growing fascination with Acadians as well.

Celebrities such as Anne Murray, Celine Dion, Madonna and Roch Voisine like to talk about their Acadian heritage.

Cajun musicians such Zachary Richard, Michael Doucet, Beausoleil and The Balfa Toujours Band are in high demand, constantly touring and recording.

The sound also comes from non-Cajun bands hooked on the energetic accordion/fiddle/harmonica/washboard rhythms, such as Louisiana Jane of Saskatchewan, Canada's only all-female Cajun/zydeco band; Cajun Aces of the United Kingdom; the Bayou BonBons of Denmark; and the Cajun Hurricane with their "Cajun/zydeco from the Arctic Bayous of Sweden."

However, Cajun chic hasn't completely eliminated derogatory remarks.

Lafayette lawyer Warren Perrin's hackles rise when he hears someone use the word "*******."

Perrin, who is also president of the French council, regularly dashes off warning letters to those who insult and degrade Cajun culture.

He remembers smarting from racial slurs and says it was "necessary ... to become militant, as the African Americans did," to stop what had become systemic discrimination.

He comes from a long line of Broussards, "three of my four grandmothers are Broussards, one grandpa was Broussard and I married a Broussard" and proudly traces his heritage back to Acadian resistance fighter Beausoleil Broussard. Perrin will speak about his famous ancestor at le Congrés mondial acadien 2004 in Nova Scotia this summer.

Speaking from his small branch office in Erath, La., also the site of his beloved Acadian Museum, Perrin described how he ran off the producers of the Simple Life, a reality show starring Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie, which makes people in rural communities look like bumpkins.

"When they came to interview down here, they got a letter from me that said 'We'll be watching.' And they're not here."

Anyone who tries to insult or ridicule Cajuns can expect to receive a letter containing a section of the Civil Rights Act detailing a lawsuit called Roach vs. Dresser Industries.

In 1980, Calvin Roach, a nuclear engineer at the Three Mile Island plant in New York State, went to court to force his employer and fellow workers from referring to him as "a *******." He won the case.

"It was the first and only suit filed by a Cajun," Perrin said, adding the case centred on defining "national identity."

"For the first time, the court had to figure out what constituted an ethnic minority. The judge found that Mr. Roach was a member of the Acadian people and although they were never an independent country, they had acquired a national identity.

"That is very powerful."

The case also allowed Perrin to slap down the Associated Press for an article describing a Baton Rouge-born man arrested on terrorism charges as "the Cajun Taliban." The man, of Arabic parents, had no Cajun blood.

"I rushed to my office and faxed a letter immediately to AP. When I cited civil rights - they got it. It was bad reporting. Whoever did that was trying to be cute."

Perrin said while Acadians in Atlantic Canada did not suffer the type of severe discrimination as Cajuns, they struggled against ethnic prejudice.

"The first time I went to New Brunswick, I could not believe it, wearing Acadian pin, T-shirt and hat and (my Acadian friend) said 'Warren, you're either going to be insulted or we're going to get in a fistfight.' I took off my hat and my pin and low-keyed it." Perrin was with a law professor from the University of New Brunswick at the time.

"Ten years later, everything's different now, they're proud to be Acadian. But there was still a lot of tension back then."