| Speak White | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Pierre Falardeau Julien Poulin |
| Written by | Michèle Lalonde (poem) |
| Release date(s) | 1980 |
| Running time | Short: 6 min. |
| Country | Canada |
| Language | French |
Speak White is a French language poem composed by Québécois writer Michèle Lalonde in 1968. It was first recited in 1970 and was published in 1974 by Editions de l'Hexagone, Montreal. It denounced the poor situation of French-speakers in Quebec and takes the tone of a collective complaint against English-speaking Quebecers.[1][2] Her poem is not, however, directed solely or even primarily at English Canada, often citing British and American references such as Shakespeare, Keats, the Thames, the Potomac and Wall Street as its symbols of linguistic oppression.
In 1980, Speak White was made into a short motion picture by polemicists Pierre Falardeau and Julien Poulin, the six-minute film featured actress Marie Eykel reading Lalonde's poem. It was released by the National Film Board of Canada.[3]
Italian-Quebecer journalist playwright Marco Micone also wrote a poem in response called Speak What?, depicting allophone immigrants as the same oppressed class as the Québécois in Quebec, and calling for a more inclusive society.[4][5]
"Speak White" was an insult used by English-speaking Canadians against those who spoke other languages in public.[6][7] In his controversial Dictionnaire québécois-français,[8] Lionel Meney quotes a Maclean's article from 1963 that for "every twenty French Canadians you encounter in my house or yours, fifteen can affirm that they have been treated with the discreditable 'speak white'".
The earliest allegation of the slur was recorded in the Canadian Parliament of 1899 as Henri Bourassa was booed by English-speaking Members of Parliament while attempting to address the legislature in French against the engagement of the Dominion in the Second Boer War. André Laurendeau recorded anecdotal evidence in his 1963 journal during the Laurendeau-Dunton Commission that English Canadians would hurl the phrase at French Canadians outside Quebec, and speculated that it was borrowed from the Southern United States.[9] Anecdotal evidence also suggests that the phrase was used against immigrants.[7]
Although the expression has never been directly quoted and attributed to an individual, the expression continues to enter the public sphere in the course of rhetorical political debate.[10]