Why Are Franco-Americans So Invisible?

“Why are we so invisible?” I've heard this question wherever Franco-Americans gather, be it through my social media contacts, at conferences, or at my occasional speaking engagements. The history of Franco-Americans is all but left out of the historical accounts on both sides of the border. It couldn’t be more missing among the history of U.S. ethnic groups. And it is largely unknown in Québec.

For example, Maine is among the top three Francophone states but this fact is all but unknown outside its borders and to a large degree within them. I received an e-mail from a mover and shaker from that state who wanted to discuss the “lack of diversity” in Maine. When I responded that about one-quarter of the state was Franco-American/Acadian, and suggested that people with a unique linguistic and cultural heritage counted toward the diversity in the state, the conversation came to a screeching halt. A group that reflects the actual cultural diversity of the region has been subsumed into whiteness. They’re “non-Hispanic White” per the U.S. Census and therefore do not count towards diversity in 2016.

Our long history throughout North America is connected with various narratives of U.S. history: the “French-And Indian War,” the War of 1812, Westward expansion, Industrialization, Nativism, the story of the Roman Catholic Church in the USA, etc. Any one of these narratives should include either Franco-Americans or our Canadien and Acadien forbears. With the exception of the “French-And Indian War” narrative, where they figure as bitter enemies, they’re almost completely missing.

For example, one-third of the participants in the Lewis & Clark expedition were Francophones but one never hears of this. Sometimes they’re mentioned as a faceless, nameless herd: “the French voyageurs.” The fact is, Lewis & Clark couldn’t have managed without them.

The invisibility extends, in fact, to a history wider than the Franco-Americans in the Northeast USA. The cloak of invisibility falls over all of the descendants of the former Nouvelle-France. I use this term Nouvelle-France in the sense in which it embraces the entirety of the former 17th and 18th c. French sphere of influence in North America including l’Acadie, le Canada (both the St. Lawrence valley and the Great Lakes region) and la Louisiane (the territory roughly corresponding to the USA’s Louisiana Purchase south of the Great Lakes).

If one totals up these descendants of Nouvelle-France on both sides of the border they number some 20 million people. It’s hard to hide a population of 20 million under one's hat but so far the writers of history, beyond specialists in certain areas or topics, have performed the disappearing act.

There must be reasons for this invisibilty. Yes, our population tends to be localized in the Northeast, the Great Lakes region, the Gulf Coast and a few other pockets. But other groups, such as Scandinavians in the upper Midwest, were also localized without becoming invisible. I don’t accept the explanation that this invisibility “just happened.” This is not an explanation.

How We Became Invisible

There are several reasons why I believe that the story of the Northeastern USA's Franco-Americans has become invisible.

1) We are associated today with Canada and therefore beneath the notice of most Americans.
The term most often used to describe us in American English is "French-Canadian" and both sides of this hyphen present obstacles in the minds of many Americans. Québécois of a nationalist bent make a distinction between Québec and Canada but that's a finesse of which most Americans are unaware. A "French-Canadian" is simply a type of Canadian for them.

To most Americans, Canada is the USA’s little brother: the USA can beat him up and fail to take him seriously, but they would defend him if a bully from another neighborhood came along. Most Americans are ignorant as to the geography and history of Canada. A current, photogenic Prime Minister notwithstanding, Canada represents little more than clichés about beer, hockey and people who say “eh.” When a presidential candidate arrives on the scene who scares one party or another the “I’ll move to Canada!” drumbeat begins, but most of that talk is fatuous.

This attitude, that Canada is nothing more than the 51^st state, explains why I was laughed at by an (East) Indian-American when I suggested that one could emigrate from Canada. “That doesn’t count!” she laughed.

“It counted enough,” I answered, “when the Ku Klux Klan burned the ‘French-Canadian’ school in Leominster, Massachusetts in the 1920s. They were quite sure that we were ‘other’ enough to count back then.”

“Wow, I didn’t know about that,” she said quietly.

“No one does,” I replied.

2) Our Canadien/Acadien ancestors were in North America long before the United States and today’s Canada existed. 
This complicates matters because historians, thinking in terms of today’s political geography, want to tell the story of the USA or the story of Canada. But our people’s tale does not fit neatly into that geography. They settled large parts of the USA before it was the USA, as the numerous French place names throughout the USA’s midsection testify: Detroit, Des Moines, Vincennes, Terre Haute, Des Plaines, St. Louis, New Orleans to name just a few.

The English speakers who write the histories of the USA and Canada write them from the standpoint of today’s national borders. They write about these countries as separate entities while in fact the histories and populations of the two countries are intertwined.

For example, there were large and important exchanges of population originating from both sides of the border:

• The Acadians deported and scattered among the 13 colonies in the 1750s.
• The Loyalists escaping the nascent USA who settled in what is now Ontario and other future Canadian provinces in the Revolutionary War period and who were instrumental in the founding of English-Canada.
• The Creoles of Louisiana whose homes were bought by the Americans in the Louisiana Purchase (including the descendants of the aforementioned Acadians who ended up there).
• The Acadians in Northern Maine who became Americans when the Webster-Ashburton Treaty settled the USA’s Northeastern border in the 1840s. (Hint to the geography challenged: there’s territory east of Maine; not everything east of Maine is Atlantic Ocean.)
• The Canadiens and Acadiens who came in droves to the USA in the 1840-1930 period and whose descendants number some 10-12 million U.S. citizens today.

Since the story is told as two separate nations – either as Canadian History or as U.S. History – these interconnections are missed. North of the border, the need to emphasize a common Canadian nationhood, always a fragile construct, does not favor the story of a Franco-Canadien nation that crosses existing borders. While in the USA, the history of “French-Canadians” seems to be the history of a foreign country.

3) We do not fit into the existing narratives of U.S. settlement history.

The established narratives are as follows:

a)     Native Americans/First Nations – the original human inhabitants of this continent. The majority of Americans tend to know little about them but increasingly feel they ought to.

b)     Jamestown/Plymouth Rock – by this I mean the history of the 13 British colonies before and during the American Revolution. These colonies included a range of ethnic groups such as the Dutch, Germans, and Scots-Irish but this is generally told as an English history.

c)     Ellis Island – this is my shorthand for 19th-early 20th c. emigration from Europe, both before and after Ellis Island was established, including emigrants from Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Jewish populations from Russia and Eastern Europe and other peoples from many lands too numerous to mention.

d)     People of Color – this frame has emerged relatively recently in its current form. This narrative includes the African slaves who were brought to these shores forcibly. It includes the Hispanic peoples either those who settled parts of the USA before it was the USA, or those who entered the country from points south. It also includes East Asian immigration, mainly although not exclusively to the West. It also includes many other more recent emigrants from non-European countries. Native Americans are sometimes brought into the people of color narrative. Native Hawaiians and Native Alaskans might fit into this narrative but, sadly, their story is largely invisible as well.

There is simply no room for Franco-Americans in these narratives. Although many have First Nations ancestors, they don’t fit precisely into that narrative. They were the bitter opponents of the Jamestown/Plymouth Rock bunch. There was no Ellis Island, no Statue of Liberty to greet them when and where they crossed the border. They’re not people of color either.

When certain allowable, accepted narratives have been established, what doesn’t fit into these schemes becomes invisible.

4) Our national character.

The notion of a “national character” is old-fashioned but in fact culture exists. There is a difference between a generalization and a stereotype, and there are fair generalizations that can be made about coherent cultural groups. And generally speaking, the culture of the Franco-North American populations has emphasized tenacity, reliance on our own, and a certain insular quality. 

The anthropologist Horace Miner, studying a rural Québec parish in the 1930s, noted that someone from the next parish over was regarded almost as a foreigner. This tendency to fragment into smaller (and frequently squabbling) units has discouraged a telling of the story in its proper breadth. The history of Franco-Americans, when it has been told, tends to be parochial, i.e. the story of Woonsocket Francos, or of Maine Acadians, or even of individual families.

The national character also emphasizes humility, another old-fashioned notion. This anachronism is heard again and again in Franco-American conferences. A Maine Acadian wrote to me, “We were taught that you don’t speak well of yourself. You let others speak well of you.” In the USA of Donald Trump and Kanye West, this trait is radically counter-cultural. If we don’t speak our piece then who will speak it for us?

Raising a Franco Ruckus

In her book Moving Beyond Duality, psychologist Dorothy Riddle posits that making people invisible is a form of depersonalization. I’ve been told in no uncertain terms that my family’s and my entire people’s experience is insignificant and beneath notice and that I should forget all about identifying as a Franco-American. The message here is, “People don’t know about you because you don’t count.” 

Addressed to any other ethnic group this notion would be insulting at the very least. It’s the invisibility, whether it’s our own doing or someone else’s or some combination of the two, that makes statements like this socially acceptable. In fact, the converse is true: we haven't counted in the eyes of the wider culture because the story has remained untold.

I’m tired of being called a “quiet presence.” I’m tired of blending into a pale, beige background labeled “non-Hispanic White.” It's un-Franco-American to do so, but perhaps it’s high time we raised what one of us called “a Franco ruckus.” Let the ruckus commence!

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