A Breed Between: Racial Mediation in the Fiction of Ernest Ga

Abstract

By addressing Cajun-African American conflict in Of Love and Dust (1967) and A Gathering of Old Men (1983), Ernest Gaines emphasizes interdependence of and African American people in Louisiana while simultaneously acknowledging social structures that maintain concept of superiority. His fiction depicts complex racial hierarchy; Cajuns' white identity remains complicated to some degree because of popular notions of Cajuns as lower-class and, implicitly, less in minds of wealthy landowners and their African American workers. As such, Gaines places Cajun between Creole landowners and African American laborers. Situated socially between wealthy and working-class African Americans, Gaines portrays Cajuns as possible racial intermediaries who can be manipulated by whites to control blacks but who present some hope of racial mediation between whites and blacks. Simultaneously, Gaines's African American protagonists only realize their own individual worth in midst of Louisiana's racial conflict, but also realize individual humanity of their Cajun neighbors. This mutual understanding remains central to Gaines's ultimate message of racial mediation as key to achieving human equality and true manhood. In Louisiana, cultural and social categories are often complicated by interdependence and overlapping of various racial communities that deny simple boundaries. Although geographically part of Deep South, Louisiana includes its own unique racial and ethnic categories. As Barbara Ladd explains, Prior to Louisiana Purchase in 1803, racial classification in creole Deep South was much more complex than in Anglo Upper South, where status of mixed-blood child followed that of mother (21). This difference extended from fact that children of European colonists and African women constituted separate caste, as demonstrated by New Orleans's free persons of color population (21). Miscegenation complicated racial divisions and testified to their arbitrary nature all over South, but Louisiana society included legal and economic space for these intermediary figures, which further tested boundaries of difference. In this complex categorization, Cajuns also arose as racial intermediaries who fell between categories because of their history of difference and ridicule and because of their culturally-determined identity. One can better understand Louisiana's unique social stratification by defining certain terms, such as Creole and Cajun. Historically, Creole has shifted from referring to person born in colonial Louisiana, regardless of race, to racial signifier (Dormon, Creoles x). (1) While Creole has been used to refer to Louisiana colonists and to demarcate racial communities, Gaines uses term as class marker, referring to landowners. He explains how the big house of plantation was owned by Creoles, which in this context refers to white population of Creole descendants who are in positions of social and economic power (Gaudet and Wooton 228). (2) Cajuns present another example of social and cultural interdependence and complexity in Louisiana. Gaines explains that during his childhood people of quarters thought of Cajun as a who would give them hell on False River.... And anytime there was problem on river, and because so many of whites there were Cajun, it would always be 'that Cajun,' whether one them was involved or not (Gaudet and Wooton 83). Although definition of Cajun in Gaines's past generally included white, French-speaking people, history of how Cajuns came to form an ethnic community in Louisiana is much more complicated. Following 1755 expulsion from Acadia (current day Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island) by British governor Charles Lawrence, many Acadians searched for new homeland. …