As a child, I couldn’t fully conceptualize the significance of Mardi Gras. I was too young to separate regal pomp and circumstance from the nostalgic historical layered beneath it, even as cultural music stirred from Black bands in the streets. What I felt instead was a war between dark and light, my body trembling, and my eyes witnessing what I wanted to unsee.
The sinister Klan masks.
The white menace behind ugly, grueling smiles.
I remember them.
Those smiles represented everything wrong with America! Before I even had the language to name the hatered brewing into my coming-of-age wisdom, I felt the anger behind the mask.
I remember white men laughing as they threw urine on Black children, cruelty mixed into their celebratory high. I remember float riders leaning forward, stretching toys and trinkets toward a sea of Black children, only to snatch them back at the last second, enjoying the pain they inflicted. I remember our tiny, chocolate-skinned hands crushed beneath the weight of white feet, sharp and satisfying to icy, piercing blue eyes.
This year, we saw a Tucks krewe-member riding with a stony gaze, even as his hands deliberately dangled Black dolls, their necks wrapped with beads—a Carnival lynching. How do I know that he wasn’t just using the beads as a mechanism to hand children a new doll? Because I have seen these performances all my life.
Racism. Bigotry. White illusion of supremacy.
These words were spoken in hushed tones in the tidy living room of my childhood home. I was too young to make the full connection, but I understood enough to know that some adults were cold-hearted creatures. Mardi Gras was the greatest reveal.
And still—I loved the bands.
The Black bands. The bands enriched my little spirit, sprinkling whimsical musical joy into the air.
Band members stomping with high knees and electric energy. Drums and horns carrying ancestral flavor in every note, music that felt personal, heavenly. For a moment, the sound made me forget the Klansmen on the floats. But evil always returns. I would be catapulted back into hatred. Another float would slowly make its way down the littered New Orleans streets, carrying another group of masked men. The same racist playbook continued, dismissing Black children and throwing teddy bears, footballs, jump ropes, spinning tops, marbles, and glass beads to adults, while pretending that we were all invisible.
What I couldn’t understand then was my parents, how they allowed my siblings and me to partake in this foolery. Year after year, they brought us back to racist Mardi Gras. My mother loved the festivities, shared space in a place that rejected Black children. Why?
I was too young to understand that it was about the music, the joyous collection of the bands lifting our spirits. It was about community. Sharing space with individuals that didn’t regard our humanity included supporting the children marching in school bands and auxiliary teams. Kenneth Cutno, who shares my experience, states, “For Black New Orleanians, Mardi Gras was about joy and resistance.”
Every Mardi Gras season in New Orleans, my mother prepared soulful fixings, sandwiches wrapped in aluminum foil, fried chicken, potato salad, caramel popcorn, and hearty macaroni and cheese. The cold Chek cold drinks were placed in the freezer overnight, so it would still be cold, almost sloshy for us to drink. Before the sun opened its eyes, our family settled on Canal Street, waiting for Zulu to pass. Sometimes we didn’t have a car, so we rode the bus, hauling bags of seasoned and spiced dishes prepared the night before. Sometimes, my siblings and I walked with my parents to St. Bernard Parish to attend a parade, and there we received harsher treatment. The hard ‘N’ word would be tossed around so casually, and the White parade goers were just as cruel as the elaborate krewes, questioning our existence, and informing us that we didn’t belong “down here.”
The air around us always carried a thick fog of oppression as we waited for the parade to begin.
We came to celebrate Mardi Gras.
But our celebration came with traditional and historical humiliation and harm. Harm intentionally done to children.
Tourists saw glitter, elaborate costumes, decorated floats, and music.
Black families carried another reality, navigating hostility, enduring slights, absorbing quiet acts of cruelty.
The integration of Mardi Gras was mandated by a 1991 city ordinance, effective in 1992, requiring all parading krewes to remove racist exclusion policies. Some krewes quit parading in response. As if equality were poisonous. As if fairness were a foreign concept. Racism didn’t disappear—it simply learned how to dress itself up.
And yes, we celebrated anyway. Because how dare white racism dictate whether Black people celebrate the beauty of joy.
Mardi Gras in New Orleans is layered in racist history, and many krewes rarely admit their bigotry, but it is loud and continuous. On Canal Street, so-called elites parade false royalty, waving pageantry steeped in hatred. Kings dressed in elaborate costumes with hearts small and hollow. Bedazzled bullies. Glittery goons. Jeweled jackasses. Flashy, pretentious princes—how can you flaunt grandeur and still have the soul of a jester?
After every bead tossed, after every dubloon flung from hollow-hearted hands, the crown of hatred still gleams.
Mardi Gras does not protect Black children or Black people—it exposes clownish kings and demented dukes. Long after beads, broken liquor bottles, and trash are swept from New Orleans’ pothole streets, the stench of racism remains.
Mardi Gras is a sick, repetitive, royally refined tradition of harm-recycled year after year.
And those ladders blocking everyone’s view?
Ignant. Selfish.
Knock them all down.
Nikki Byrd is a native of New Orleans and a poet.
