Color,Culture, The Truth

As you know I'm from the big N.O. I have recently received emails telling me that New Olreaneans do not share the same culture if they are a different color. Before I give you my opinion on it, lets review the history of my city and its cultural history. New Orleans is way older than America. It was in Spanish territory taken by the French. They established a base culture there. Due to the fact that the English settled much of the East coast as well as states like Georgia, the Carolina's, and eventually took over Mississippi, and Alabama, you can imagine that Louisiana was quite different and still is today. But, its overall culture is hardly composed of one culture. After the french had it for a while, the Spanish busted in and took it from them. They were there for generations . Spanish and french culture intertwined as french and Spanish couples got married. They created an entirely new culture, but it doesn't stop there. Because of the French's an especially the Spanish's laid back and extremely hospitable attitudes, New Orleans had a huge population of free Africans living there . Some were escaped slaves, but most were just free men, living in equality with the majority of the lighter people. So these Spanish-French peoples children took a look at those black chicks and black men and said to them selves "damn black people are sexy!" and you and I both know how the french and Spanish people are about romance and passion. So they married the African people, and they bred for generations upon generations. Their children Now had a completely new culture composed of french, Spanish, and African influences. These people were so constant and consistently had the same blood mixtures, and a really rich culture, that they were recognised as their own ethnicity. They were called Creoles. Treme (pronounced tre-may) was a large neighborhood in new Orleans at this time. It was bursting with creoles, and a few free Africans and escaped slaves. But get this, a lot of them actually had their own plantations. Take that you Anglo Saxon Brits (ha ha)!!!. Now some times a rich french person or Spanish person would "own" slaves, which, while wrong, was not a tenth as bad as being a British slave. They really didn't "own" them in practice, just on paper really. It is recorded that the very few slave owners would allow their slaves to live in little houses of their own. They, unlike the slaves of the British, were most of the time allowed to keep their original culture, cook their native food for themselves, play their native music, hold their own festivals, marry, and keep their children. The Creoles and Spanish ( who at this time own the city), were not whip crazy. This is how they kept their slaves: they were fair and hospitable to them, what idiot is going to run away from a good guy only to be caught and used by a Brit? They supplied them with food, which was not given them if they did not work. What idiot runs away from his only food source. A lot of times, they wound up freeing them. Although slavery of any kind is deeply wrong, what the slaves there had was really the equivalent of a job. They work, get their food, and go home to their own culture and way of life. But, it didn't stay their culture for long. Were they taken down by being forced to hide their culture. No. Its simply, the creole people started to think that they were sexy, and had kids with them. than it just fused into one culture. Keep in mind that New Orleans city was mostly creole people and Spanish people with some french people still left. But no matter what nationality you are, if you grow up in a culture, that's your culture. So they pretty much all shared a common way of life. So Napoleons came into power over in France, and the crazy little bastard stormed into new Orleans and took over it. After being satisfied that he was the boss, he pretty much let things run as they usually did down there. The creole people once again mixed with the pure french people, and their children's culture was a little more french influenced. The french had always been friendly with the Indians (or anybody they deem sexy for that matter), and this whole time their was Native American culture being mixed with these creoles. So now that they were more french, more mixing with the Indians! So after a long while, Napoleon sold the Louisiana territory to Jefferson. Meanwhile, the bitches, I mean British, were kicking the french Acadians out of Canada. They migrated to Louisiana, barely south and west of the New Orleans area, and settled. Escaped slaves from the other states were still going on. Those slaves ran away to New Orleans but hid in the swamp area because now that the U.S. ran the place they could be recaptured. Plus, they wanted to fish. So occasionally the sex crazy french, met the exotic Africans, and sha-bam, you know the rest. The Acadians also mixed heavily with the Native American Indians, so they created their own new culture. The highly mixed language of the Acadians offspring lead them to drop the A in Acadian, and smash the D and I together to form a J. CAJUN! SO over the years Creoles and Cajuns mixed a little, and although considered different ethnicities, they posses a lot of the same nationalities in their family tree, but the creoles still were more highly mixed than the Cajuns, who were still fairly new and therefore mostly french in bloodline. So there was bit of a culture difference. Over the years there was also a huge Caribbean influence on New Orleans culture because, yep, that's right, the creoles found them sexy too, and as a port city, New Orleans had its fair share of Caribbean islanders. So as time went by Europeans would move there. and while those recent Europeans still give off that little bit of twang from their European country, due to environment and breeding, their base culture is still that of the creoles and Cajuns. Its kind of like a doughnut. you can have different toppings but its always got that doughnut under it. The Europeans just retain enough of their culture to make different toppings on the main creole cultural doughnut. You see? same with the Africans that migrated there. So yes people in New Orleans in fact do share the same culture regardless of color. Another thing i would like to point out is that creoles came in different colors, because children are unique and inherit a unique and random set of traits from their parents. Some were caramel, some where while, bege, and some were brown, a few of them were almost dark. SO yes, we all may have different toppings to our doughnut, but our main culture their, our doughnut, is the same regardless of what color we are. No I'm not saying that all races of people have the same culture, I'm saying that in New Orleans we share a culture most of us are rooted way back to where the creoles began. Highly mixed neighborhoods are an environment where people share a way of life. I have experienced, and know for a fact, that whether your skin is brown or creamy, if you live in N.O. the majority of the time you share a culture, have the same type of upbrinigng, common mannerisms( none of this acting black/white like Ive witnessed in so many other parts of the country), and similar traditions and religious beliefs, not to mention the same types of food and social rules. To me this adds up to a culture and if you share most of these things then yes, you do share a culture. So you weird racist people who are sending me that bull, first of all I feel sorry for you that you come from a segregated culture, and secondly unless you were raised in the Big Easy you don't know what your talking about. That's all I'm gonna say.