Speak White

"Speak White" is a French-language poem written by Canadian poet Michèle Lalonde in 1968, and condemns the linguistic, cultural, and economic exploitation and oppression of French-speaking Canadians, especially the Québécois, by the English language and Anglo-American culture. The poem was first published in issue 15 of the magazine Socialisme in 1968. It was later published in 1974 by Quebec publisher L'Héxagone, and was recited by Lalonde during the 1968 performance Chansons et poèmes de résistance (Songs and Poems of the Resistance) in support of the imprisoned Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) leaders Pierre Vallières and Charles Gagnon, and again at the 1970 cultural event Nuit de la poésie (Night of Poetry) in Montréal. Responses to Lalonde's work include a 1980 short film of the same name by directors Pierre Falardeau and Julien Poulin, a number of reinterpretations, and "Speak What," a 1989 political poem by Marco Micone.

Derogatory use of the expression "speak white"
The first known instance of derogatory use of the phrase "speak white" against French-speaking Canadians occurred on October 12, 1889 at the Canadian House of Commons, when member of the Canadian Liberal party Henri Bourassa was booed by English-speaking members of the parliament and shouted at to "Speak White!" while speaking French during debates on Canada's engagement in the Second Boer War. The Dictionnaire québécois-français has an entry from a November 2, 1963 Maclean’s article: “for every twenty French Canadians you encounter in my house or yours, fifteen can affirm that they have been treated to the discreditable ‘speak white.’”

"In the course of this Canadian tour I realized that the expression “speak white”, by which certain English Canadians mean that we are to switch to English at once, is always current in our country. Whatever their background, they exist and there are many of them.

You have even had to admit their existence in the very heart of Quebec since, for every twenty French Canadians you encounter in my house or yours, fifteen can affirm that they have been treated to the discreditable “speak white.”

I had already received such an order in Montreal, but the same I jumped when a very chic English woman in Vancouver frightened me with it because I had inadvertently addressed them in my own language.

I should add that the lady asked me in these exact words: “Do you speak white?” — and that she didn’t understand why I replied curtly in English, “No, I don’t,” or why I walked out on the spot.

I could cite names, examples and places, even in Montreal, where this odious phrase is still thrown in our faces by English Canadians. (p. 56)"

On March 7, 2007, journalist Larry Zolf published an article called "Speak White" on CBC News Online, giving anecdotal evidence of Canadian immigrants being told to "speak white" by hostile English-speaking Canadians. In the same article, Zolf also criticizes then-Liberal Party candidate Stéphane Dion, wanting to tell him to "speaking white" for Dion's "mangling the English language," and citing his lack of English proficiency as the reason for the candidate's unpopularity with English-speaking Canadian voters.

Reading and writing the poem
Written in October 1968, the activist poem "Speak White" by Quebec poet Michèle Lalonde references the expression's derogatory use against French-speaking Canadians, and the work as a whole rejects the imposition of the English language and Anglo-American culture, and denounces the political and economic oppression of the French language and those who speak it. The poem was intended to be read on stage by Canadian comedian Michelle Rossignol during a show entitled Chansons et poèmes de la Résistance (Songs and poems of the resistance), but it was Michele Lalonde who finally recited the poem. The show, which brought together artists including Robert Charlebois, Yvon Deschamps, et Gaston Miron, was organized to support the cause of Pierre Vallières and Charles Gagnon, who had just been imprisoned for their activities within the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ). Both the written poem and its performance were a part of the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, a cultural movement celebrating French-Canadian language, culture, and identity.

Following the example of the Nègres blancs d'Amérique by Pierre Vallières, Speak White equates the racism endured by Black Americans and the colonization that colonized people were subjected to by colonial empires, to the linguistic discrimination experienced by French-speaking Quebeckers. These two texts are commonly thought to be a part of a movement by nationalist intellectuals to appropriate négritude (movement and usage as a term). Additionally, Lalonde had remarked in a 1968 interview that “language here is equivalent to color for the Black American. The French Language, it is our Black color!”

The Front de libération du Québec (FLQ)'s proximity with revolutionary and anticolonial movements in Cuba, South America, Palestine, and Algeria, as well as with the Black Panthers in the United States, illustrates the extent to which Quebec nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s claimed to be a part of a global anti-imperialist movement, of which négritude was one of many faces.