Talk:Cajuns

To the best of my knowledge, Mardi Gras isn't a traditional Catholic religious observance. It is a popular festival that precedes and culminates on the Tuesday (Mardi) before Ash Wednesday, which is a Catholic liturgical observance Oavaldezi (talk) 12:31, 11 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

It is absolutely traditionally Catholic. It may not be part of Catholic liturgy, but it is derived from traditions around Ash Wednesday and Lent. For comparison, all the neighboring regions are traditionally Protestant and traditionally do not observe Mardi Gras. On the other hand, Brazil's Carnival is quite similar to Mardi Gras. 67.250.75.102 (talk) 20:03, 16 November 2022 (UTC)Reply

I absolutely agree that Cajuns are a type of Creole, but this section seems disingenuous in presenting only historical quotes that support this view -- when one can find historical quotes saying Cajuns are not Creoles. (One contrary example, for instance: "a large element of the French population of the State [of Louisiana] are not creoles, but Acadians, or, as they call themselves and are generally called, 'Cajuns.'" Source: No author, "The 'Cajuns' of Louisiana," The Indianapolis Journal, January 28, 1898, page 7.)

My qualm, therefore, is not the assertion that Cajuns are Creoles, but rather that the article makes it seem as if there were in the past more of a consensus on this issue than actually existed. I would suggest tempering this section so that it doesn't oversimplify the matter. Skb8721 (talk) 20:19, 8 February 2023 (UTC)Reply

I more than agree. North8000 (talk) 20:27, 8 February 2023 (UTC)Reply

I don't agree at all that it's disengenous, and I think that you're being rather pedantic. The raison d'être of that section was originally to discuss the treatment of Acadians as Creoles, which there has been ample evidence to show that Acadians were indeed treated as Creoles. The idea that Cajuns were different to Creoles only began after the American Civil War, and there were many different reasons for this: one being the invading Federal Union soldiers' descriptions of Cajuns as "half-savage creatures" during the Civil War (read Yankee Autumn in Acadiana), the evolution of the usage of Cajun in Creole culture to do with class and status in the late 1800s, George Washington Cable's book where he made claims that Cajuns were completely separate from Creoles, and finally Henry Wadsworth Longfellow who made a romantic impression on the Acadian name through his book Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie; you'll find different nuanced understandings both from people who understood Creole culture then, and also from Anglo-Americans who spoke on it as an alien culture without much deeper investigation. Confusion was created after the Civil War about this term due to its multiple interpretations. What I want you to do for you to prove your "qualm" is to find quotes from before the American Civil War that specifically state that the Acadians born and natively raised in Louisiana were not indeed Creoles and not use just a quote from a random northern 1898 Indianapolis Newspaper. Aearthrise (talk) 21:51, 8 February 2023 (UTC)Reply

66,000 is an incredibly low number. I don't have access to the source cited, so I can't say why that's the assertion. I crunched the numbers before, and I think the issue is that the U.S. has multiple ethnic categories that Cajuns could reasonably fall into ("Acadian/Cajun", "French Canadian", and "French" are the obvious ones, maybe "Louisiana Creole" as well). IIRC, "Acadian/Cajun" was actually the least popular category, and summing them together, you'd get around a million in Louisiana, showing concentrations up to 60-70% in rural areas around Lafayette. I found my old notes here, chances are the numbers are a bit different for the 2020 census. 67.254.248.131 (talk) 20:25, 16 August 2024 (UTC)Reply

I believe that 66,000 figure only counts those who specifically wrote down "Cajun" on their census. I would imagine the vast majority of Cajuns simply checked 'white' and moved on. 2601:C0:CA7F:2910:EF9F:C4C:8B5C:11EB (talk) 01:56, 21 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

That may be true; I don't think US censuses would accurately reflect a more realistic number. One problem is that many people who consider themselves "Cajun" culturally aren't actually descended from Acadians. Carlstak (talk) 02:58, 21 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

I don't think that's true, a lot choose "French" over the other options. Check the stats in French_Americans#Demographics 2600:8807:2780:FE00:A5A5:1069:5E99:7B4C (talk) 00:55, 28 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

I found this figure from this page from the US Census that shows at least 82,000 people who stated Cajun alone for their ethnicity in the 2020 census. I agree that 66,000 is far too low considering what was mentioned regarding other potential self-identifiers. Census data would only be appropriate to me as a very low bound on a population estimate that could be much higher. ZuluMufasaTsu (talk) 22:51, 22 September 2024 (UTC)Reply