No\u00ebl Cazenave looks at the fraternity line paddle hanging over the desk in his chockablock full home office. Of the 15 brothers named on it, only six are still alive.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost African American men who were born in the 1940s and \u201950s are dead already,\u201d the 76-year-old says, laughing matter-of-factly and shifting in his chair when he adds, \u201cI was supposed to be dead a long time ago. I can\u2019t wait another five years to write a memoir. It\u2019s time to tell my story.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cazenave\u2019s story starts long before he joined UConn\u2019s sociology department<\/a> in 1991, long before he started teaching racism studies, even long before he as a 9-year-old boy challenged a white psychologist on an intelligence test.<\/p>\n It starts with understanding what it means to be Creole, he says \u2013 and Cazenave, despite his formative years in New Orleans, admits he was ignorant of what that meant for a long time.<\/p>\n He explains that his father\u2019s family members tend to have a darker skin color than his mother\u2019s, and with his own skin color following more the genetics of the Cazenaves, that made him stand out among his maternal relatives.<\/p>\n \u201cI first became aware of racism within my own maternal kin. We were so segregated at that time that we had very few interactions with so-called white people, so I dealt with a lot of internalized white racism or \u2018color prejudice,\u2019 as some people would call it, within those kin,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n That prompted an outright rejection of the Creole identity his mother\u2019s kinfolk held dear – that is, until realizing that being Creole had nothing to do with race or ethnicity and that the Cazenaves had deeper roots in its culture than the aunts, uncles, and cousins on the other side.<\/p>\n \u201cCreole refers to the non-solely Indigenous people who lived in Louisiana before large numbers of Anglos came to Louisiana from the North. It refers to that very rich and dynamic culture that centers on food, music, and the way people talk,\u201d he says. \u201cFor instance, I don\u2019t buy<\/em> groceries. I make<\/em> groceries. Only if you\u2019re from New Orleans are you going to understand that.\u201d<\/p>\n When asked to tell his story of growing up in the Jim Crow South this is where Cazenave starts – with the discrimination he endured as a young boy and with admission to Dillard University where he started to find himself.<\/p>\n These days, instead of referring to memory to retell his tale, Cazenave thumbs through the pages of his soon-to-be-released memoir, \u201cCazenave Eyes: Memories of Racism and Racism Studies,\u201d titled from a term a student once used to express the trepidation of not being fully attentive in class. This spring, it\u2019ll be available for free as a PDF by emailing him<\/a> or visiting his faculty page<\/a>.<\/p>\n Cazenave is a practicing Buddhist, someone who meditates daily and admits to feeling and thinking more deeply than most. Each semester, he plays for the students in his Social Construction of Happiness class the Frankie Beverly and Maze song, \u201cJoy and Pain,\u201d to illustrate the need for balance between emotions.<\/p>\n \u201cLiving a full live doesn\u2019t mean you go around having just positive emotions,\u201d he says. \u201cEmotions have functions. They\u2019re all there for a reason. They serve physiological, psychological, and social functions.<\/p>\n \u201cWithout anger, there would be very little social change in this world. Without fear, people would not mobilize and take care of themselves,\u201d Cazenave continues. \u201cI feel all kinds of emotions and what people call happiness and joy is just one part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n What he doesn\u2019t feel, though, is that he\u2019s a helpless victim of the discrimination, and oftentimes blatant racism, he\u2019s experienced. They\u2019re part of what has shaped his rebellious spirit.<\/p>\n African Americans have enjoyed a measure of civil rights only in his lifetime, Cazenave says, describing New Orleans in the 1950s as governed by the authoritarian rule of Jim Crow. That was painful for him and generations of Black sons and daughters until and even during the Civil Rights Movement.<\/p>\n \u201cPart of my reason for writing a memoir is healing from this trauma,\u201d he says. \u201cI want people to read it and ask, \u2018Is this just stuff that happened to Cazenave a long time ago or is it still happening every day to us?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The answer, he says, is that while it may not be as overt as it was seven decades ago, racism still is an everyday occurrence. Thus, he\u2019s hoping his story serves as a rallying cry for others to examine the hardships they\u2019ve encountered and put pen to paper to write them down, no matter their age.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the good things about having trauma is that it makes it easier to write a memoir,\u201d he shares. \u201cYou have to have memories of important things, and when you experience trauma, you have those memories. Trauma, by definition, is emotions that you cannot properly digest, so you\u2019re going to remember those emotions and it will be easier for you to write.\u201d<\/p>\n After a recent talk at Yale University, Cazenave says an audience member contacted him to share that finally she felt \u201cvalidated, seen, and sane\u201d after hearing Cazenave\u2019s life story.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is important,\u201d Cazenave says, \u201cbecause if you\u2019re experiencing this stuff and you\u2019re the only African American person there, then oftentimes you\u2019re going to ask, \u2018What\u2019s wrong with me?\u2019 Well, I\u2019ll tell you, \u2018There\u2019s nothing wrong with you.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cThis memoir is a continuation of my efforts to make the world better and to make UConn better, because UConn has a lot of potential,\u201d he says. \u201cThe reason I have pushed harder at UConn on these issues is because I can. UConn allows me to push, and if as an institution we can do more, we have an obligation to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" No\u00ebl Cazenave says he became aware of racism within his own family, as the aunts, uncles, and cousins on his mother’s side often treated him differently because his skin color was darker than theirs<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":226174,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2226,2460,2649,2624,2431,2235,2306],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2368],"class_list":["post-226130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clas","category-faculty","category-blue-pride","category-blue","category-sociology","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-voices"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-11 07:12:31","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226130"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":226147,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226130\/revisions\/226147"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/226174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226130"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=226130"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=226130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Finding Healing from Trauma<\/strong><\/h4>\n