In and around the southern city of New Orleans, Louisiana, this Tuesday isn’t just any Tuesday. It’s Mardi Gras, the culmination of a weeks-long celebratory season known as Carnival.
It’s a season steeped in history and full of lively music, colorful costumes, decadent food and copious amounts of drink. But for many it’s also a season increasingly dedicated to showing off the diversity of cultures that call the Crescent City home.
L.J. Goldstein remembers being wowed by how that diversity was expressed during his first Mardi Gras in mid-February 1994. Having moved to New Orleans less than a year earlier, he wandered the crowded streets of the French Quarter and stumbled upon the raucous parade of the Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club, the city’s largest predominantly African American Carnival organization.
“There were brass bands and a screaming crowd,” Goldstein told VOA, “And hundreds of African Americans parading while wearing blackface, Afro wigs, grass skirts and handing out spears and coconuts. I had never seen anything like it before!
“But it didn’t end there,” he added. “A Klezmer band [musical tradition of the Ashkenazi Jews of Central Europe] came parading down another street and joined Zulu with 20 revelers of their own. I hopped into the procession and followed it to the end, and it was a divine, cross-cultural experience for me.”
The satirical nature of Zulu, which used blackface and other elements many would find offensive in any context other than Mardi Gras, poked fun at the way Black culture has historically been stereotyped by white people. The experience captured Goldstein’s imagination.
“It inspired me to create something of my own,” he said.
Thus was born Krewe du Jieux, now participating in its 27th Carnival season. The krewe is committed to deflating racist stereotypes that have historically been aimed at Jewish people by mocking and reappropriating them in farcical ways. During their parade, Krewe du Jieux hands out decorated bagels to onlookers and showcases masks with exaggerated physical features.
But the krewe is also an example of how the city’s many cultures are attempting to assert themselves in what was historically a predominantly white, Christian celebration.
It’s a shift that many, like Goldstein, feel is welcome and important.
“When I moved to Louisiana, it was one of the most blatant, in-your-face Jew-hating places I’d ever been in my entire life,” he said. “There are people in Krewe du Jieux who told me they’ve actually met folks who believed Jews have horns! It’s my hope that by taking part in the season with exaggeration and humor, it will humanize us, debunk stereotypes and ultimately bring acceptance and parity.”
Historic and enduring segregation
Mardi Gras, which is French for “Fat Tuesday,” has its roots in Christianity. It is the culmination of Carnival season — which begins each year on Jan. 6, the 12th day after Christmas, known as King's Day, in New Orleans and closes with the arrival of Lent on Ash Wednesday. It is believed to have been first celebrated in the Americas in 1699 when French settlers were exploring territory that would eventually become part of Louisiana.
But it took more than 150 years before the Carnival season that New Orleans enjoys today began to take shape in 1857. That was the year the Mistick Krewe of Comus created one of the city’s first Mardi Gras parades.
Although New Orleans is a majority-Black city, for years residents of color were excluded from Mardi Gras, forbidden from wearing masks and attending balls with white revelers.
Even as African Americans founded parading organizations of their own in the early 20th century, such as Zulu or the Baby Dolls — famous for their colorful satin skirts, bloomers and garters, white and Black traditions remained segregated to opposite neighborhoods of the city.
“The first Baby Dolls were said to have been prostitutes,” explained Anita Oubre, founder of The Mahogany Blue Baby Dolls. “Marginalized women weren’t allowed to participate in Mardi Gras, but these fierce and defiant women were the first to begin the process of integrating the season.
“Legend says they wore short skirts, carried razors in their bra to protect themselves, smoked cigars and danced their way into Carnival,” Oubre continued. “We keep the tradition of those brave women going today.”
Black and white Mardi Gras traditions remained largely separate for much of the 20th century. Despite a city ordinance passed in 1992 that aimed to integrate popular Mardi Gras krewes, many acknowledge an informal segregation of Carnival season persists.
The cost of participating is one barrier to creating more diversity during Carnival season, said Liz Granite, a member of the Krewe of Feijao, a walking krewe that was founded to add elements of the Brazilian Carnival tradition into New Orleans Mardi Gras.
“There are many costs to producing a parade, and it’s standard for krewe members to pay dues,” Granite told VOA. “But who can and can’t afford these dues? In a city where nearly one quarter of residents live before the poverty line, that’s excluding a lot of people.”
Striving toward a more inclusive Mardi Gras
A new generation of New Orleanians hopes to knock down some of those barriers, however.
“We think every predominantly white krewe — including our own — must take representation seriously and commit to better community engagement practices,” Granite said.
Her Krewe of Feijao, for example, offers a sliding scale for people to pay what they can afford. They also waive dues for members who are willing to donate their time to community service projects.
New Orleanians striving for a more diverse and inclusive Carnival season acknowledge there is still a long way to go, but they also point to examples of progress.
Several Black Mardi Gras traditions are experiencing a revival, and women in The Mahogany Baby Dolls accepted an invitation to march in a parade that includes, among many other groups, Krewe du Jieux and a Mexican parade organization, Krewe of Mayahuel.
Immigrant participation
Some varieties of the city’s famed king cakes — eaten during Mardi Gras with a hidden plastic babydoll hidden inside — are made by immigrants to the city.
“We’re the first people to put guava and cream cheese in our king cake because those are flavors we love from back home,” said Jose Castillo, who moved to New Orleans in the 1980s and owns the Honduran bakery Norma’s Sweets.
“It’s a marriage of the traditions of our old home and our new home, and when we see New Orleanians waiting in line to buy one it makes us proud and makes us feel like we’re really a part of this city — like what we do is appreciated here.”
This year also marks the founding of several new parading groups such as the South Asian-inspired Krewe da Bhan Gras and the Vietnamese Krewe of Mung Beans.
Krewe of Mung Beans founder Thuc Nguyen said she’d seen stereotypes of Vietnamese culture during parades, but never an actual Vietnamese krewe. She noted that approximately 90% of the new group is made of women.
“It’s important because people have done unimaginably horrible things to Asian women after they dehumanized us,” Nguyen said. “They say all Asians look the same, or they internalize these ‘me love you long time’ stereotypes from Hollywood movies. But now we’re going to be able to show our city our uniqueness through our red and gold clothing, and through our individually decorated non la [conical hats].
“Our personalities will be on full display,” Nguyen added, “and that’s important at the city’s largest cultural event — to have all kinds of people visible, acknowledged, and respected.”
