Not just another synonym

NEW ORLEANS -- Cajuns have long learned to cope with being stereotyped as backward swamp-dwelling caricatures, but phrases coined by national news media outlets this week got their Tabasco-laden blood boiling.

The words "Cajun Taliban" and "Ragin' Cajun" were used by ABC Radio and Time magazine in reference to Yasser Esam Hamdi, the second alleged American Taliban. Hamdi was born in Baton Rouge to Saudi Arabian parents.

"This guy is not a Cajun simply by virtue of being born in Louisiana," said Shane Bernard, a historian and archivist for the McIlhenny Company, which makes Tabasco sauce.

"Cajuns are a federally recognized ethnic group. The federal courts have declared us an ethnic group. The U.S. Census Bureau counts us as an ethnic group," Bernard said.

The phrases also irked Barry Ancelet, an expert on Cajun culture and head of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette's modern languages department.

"It offends my sensibilities as a human being because it represents a remarkably uninformed, ignorant journalist," he said.

The university also happens to hold a trademark on the name "Ragin' Cajun".

"We've contacted Time and requested they no longer use that term," UL-Lafayette spokeswoman Julie Simon-Dronet said Thursday.

A spokeswoman for Time said she would have to research the issue in question before commenting.

Bernard phoned ABC Radio in New York City and explained to an assistant that Cajun was not simply a geographic synonym to be substituted for anyone from Louisiana.

Bernard said the assistant apologized and the network, which by this time had received a deluge of calls from South Louisiana, said it would stop using the phrase.

Ancelet and Bernard both agreed that the journalists didn't mean to offend anyone; they just didn't know better.

"What people outside the state don't know about us could fill a book," Ancelet said.