colorism & creoles

After our class discussion about Andre and his family I began thinking about how hard it is to determine one's race or ethnicity just by looking at them. When people are unsure of someone's race or ethnicity they often ask the awkward question, "what are you?", as if that person is not human. Although I haven't experienced a lot of controversy over my race and ethnicity, I can imagine a lot of people from New Orleans have due to the existence of creole culture.

Creoles are defined in history textbooks as people of mixed ethnicities, usually with French or Spanish descent born in America. I thought that a creole had to be African-American, however, after researching about creoles, I found that many people consider creoles to be white creoles or black creoles. One's skin color, therefore, cannot really be used to determine if someone is a creole, which I assumed was the case.

It is very interesting to me to see who identifies as a creole. Here is a link to a news clip talking about creoles and cajuns in Louisiana on the 2010 census, I found it pretty interesting and informative in respect to how many people identify as a creole and cajun.

http://www.kplctv.com/global/Category.asp?C=151146&clipId=&topVideoCatNo=15054&topVideoCatNoB=145683&topVideoCatNoC=134198&topVideoCatNoD=128622&topVideoCatNoE=145685&autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=4588956&flvUri=&partnerclipid=