#The common consensus among even some historians that “oh Cajuns are white Creoles aren’t” really kills me

[ciderjacks]

Will be saying this till I die that CREOLE DOES NOT MEAN BLACK/MIXED/NATIVE AND CAJUN DOES NOT MEAN YT ‼️‼️ Cajuns are a subset of Louisiana Creole (so all Cajuns are Creoles, not all Creoles are Cajuns. For the sake of this post though if I say “creoles” I mean non-Cajun Creoles) and the only difference between them is that Cajuns were typically dirt poor and lived in the bayou, while Creoles were typically wealthier and lived in the city and urban areas. There are black Cajuns, biracial Cajuns, and iirc nearly half of all Cajuns are native. There are also white Creoles. Cajun isn’t just “Creole but white” it’s a whole culture and community involving a lot of different ethnicities, and is very intertwined with southern indigenous cultures because of the proximity of the communities. The racial divide between Cajuns vs Creoles was caused by the sudden influx of white supremacy when Louisiana became U.S. territory- prior to that, black Creoles were legally considered white, and had all the privileges and power as a white person. (This is not to say it was some race-blind utopia, slavery was absolutely still a thing and in fact some wealthy Creoles owned slaves. Colorism was also a thing among Creoles. Your proximity to whiteness was largely dependant on your wealth and status.)

When the Louisiana purchase happened, American racism was then introduced to Creole and Cajun communities, and it tore through them really terribly. Subsequently, bc of a lot of shit, black/mixed people were categorized as Creoles, and so white people were categorized as Cajuns.

(This didn’t really stop the hatred of Cajuns and Cajun communities from white americans however, a mix of Cajuns being largely native and Cajuns being poor people who lived in the Bayou made them unpopular among “polite” white american society. Though it was harder to enforce any oppressive hate against them because the Cajuns were extremely isolated in the Bayou, tight knit, and had a reputation for being “dangerous” towards those who tried to come for them.)