Noël 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.

“Most African American men who were born in the 1940s and ’50s are dead already,” the 76-year-old says, laughing matter-of-factly and shifting in his chair when he adds, “I was supposed to be dead a long time ago. I can’t wait another five years to write a memoir. It’s time to tell my story.”

Cazenave’s story starts long before he joined UConn’s sociology department 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.

It starts with understanding what it means to be Creole, he says – and Cazenave, despite his formative years in New Orleans, admits he was ignorant of what that meant for a long time.

He explains that his father’s family members tend to have a darker skin color than his mother’s, and with his own skin color following more the genetics of the Cazenaves, that made him stand out among his maternal relatives.

“I 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 ‘color prejudice,’ as some people would call it, within those kin,” he says.

That prompted an outright rejection of the Creole identity his mother’s 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.

“Creole 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,” he says. “For instance, I don’t buy groceries. I make groceries. Only if you’re from New Orleans are you going to understand that.”

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.

These days, instead of referring to memory to retell his tale, Cazenave thumbs through the pages of his soon-to-be-released memoir, “Cazenave Eyes: Memories of Racism and Racism Studies,” titled from a term a student once used to express the trepidation of not being fully attentive in class. This spring, it’ll be available for free as a PDF by emailing him or visiting his faculty page.

Finding Healing from Trauma

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, “Joy and Pain,” to illustrate the need for balance between emotions.

“Living a full live doesn’t mean you go around having just positive emotions,” he says. “Emotions have functions. They’re all there for a reason. They serve physiological, psychological, and social functions.

“Without anger, there would be very little social change in this world. Without fear, people would not mobilize and take care of themselves,” Cazenave continues. “I feel all kinds of emotions and what people call happiness and joy is just one part of it.”

What he doesn’t feel, though, is that he’s a helpless victim of the discrimination, and oftentimes blatant racism, he’s experienced. They’re part of what has shaped his rebellious spirit.

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.

“Part of my reason for writing a memoir is healing from this trauma,” he says. “I want people to read it and ask, ‘Is this just stuff that happened to Cazenave a long time ago or is it still happening every day to us?’”

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’s hoping his story serves as a rallying cry for others to examine the hardships they’ve encountered and put pen to paper to write them down, no matter their age.

“One of the good things about having trauma is that it makes it easier to write a memoir,” he shares. “You 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’re going to remember those emotions and it will be easier for you to write.”

After a recent talk at Yale University, Cazenave says an audience member contacted him to share that finally she felt “validated, seen, and sane” after hearing Cazenave’s life story.

“That is important,” Cazenave says, “because if you’re experiencing this stuff and you’re the only African American person there, then oftentimes you’re going to ask, ‘What’s wrong with me?’ Well, I’ll tell you, ‘There’s nothing wrong with you.’

“This memoir is a continuation of my efforts to make the world better and to make UConn better, because UConn has a lot of potential,” he says. “The 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.”