“Louisiana Creole and Creole Culture” 
Town Branch p. 288
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zeHnZL6Ksw

SPEAKER 1: The Creoles of Louisiana come in every skin tone. Today, Creole can include people of languages in Louisiana, Haiti, and other Caribbean islands, Africa, Brazil, the Indian Ocean, and beyond. 

MELVIN CAESAR: Creole is a mixture of people, which, it comes more from the African side of the world.

SPEAKER 1: And the Caribbean, right?

MELVIN CAESAR: And the Caribbean, all of that. 

SPEAKER 1: Melvin Caesar is a Creole preservationist and one of the founders of Creole, Inc., a local organization dedicated to preserving the Creole heritage. Caesar says historians cite one of the earliest meanings of Creole as the first generation born in the Americas that includes people of French, Spanish, and African descent.

Here in Southwest Louisiana, the Cajuns and the Creoles have coexisted for hundreds of years. In fact, folks tend to stay here, stay around family, but the further you get away from Louisiana, the more confusing it becomes for people who aren’t from here to distinguish between the two cultures. In fact, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose - the more things change, the more they stay the same. 

MELVIN CAESAR: Very embracing culture, um, we definitely believe in the golden rule, we help people because we gonna get it back.

SPEAKER 1: Caesar describes Creole mainly as French-speaking African Americans, descendants of slaves and free people of color. He says, they are the creators of Zydeco music, who also made important contributions to local cuisine, like gumbo from the African influence, herbs and spices from the Spanish, Native American, and Caribbean cultures, and sauces inspired from Europe. He said Creoles learned how to make do with scraps of food, like dressing up rice with organ meats and calling it rice dressing. 

MELVIN CAESAR: They had the boudin and the cracklin and the smoking and the scraping of the pig and the killing of the chicken, making the gumbo and all of the men and the women of the community would get together, so it was a big feast at the time. Now it used to be cheap meat, just like boudin and cracklin used to be cheap, now it’s expensive.

SPEAKER 1: When asked how he describes what is Cajun and what is Creole

MELVIN CAESAR: If you leave Louisiana, we’re all Cajuns, and we’re not all Cajun.

SPEAKER 1: That’s not fair.

MELVIN CAESAR: And we’re not all Cajun, so when we leave Louisiana, we should be Creole, and that’s a firm belief that I have, just like Buckwheat said, “I’m not Cajun, I’m Creole.”