In the colonial societies of the Americas and Australia, a quadroon or quarteron (in the United Kingdom, the term quarter-caste is used) was a person with one-quarter African/Aboriginal and three-quarters European ancestry. Similar classifications were octoroon for one-eighth black (Latin root octo-, means "eight") and quintroon for one-sixteenth black.
Governments of the time sometimes incorporated the terms in law, defining rights and restrictions. The use of such terminology is a characteristic of hypodescent, which is the practice within a society of assigning children of mixed unions to the ethnic group which the dominant group perceives as being subordinate. [1] The racial designations refer specifically to the number of full-blooded African ancestors or equivalent, emphasizing the quantitative least, with quadroon signifying that a person has one-quarter black ancestry.
The word quadroon was borrowed from the French quarteron and the Spanish cuarterón, both of which have their root in the Latin quartus, meaning "a quarter".
Similarly, the Spanish cognate cuarterón is used to describe cuarterón de mulato or morisco (someone whose racial origin is three-quarters white and one-quarter black) and cuarterón de mestizo or castizo , (someone whose racial origin is three-quarters white and one-quarter Amerindian), especially in Caribbean South America. [2]
Quadroon was used to designate a person of one-quarter African/Aboriginal ancestry, that is equivalent to one biracial parent (African/Aboriginal and Caucasian) and one white or European parent; in other words, the equivalent of one African/Aboriginal grandparent and three White or European grandparents. [3] In some countries in Latin America, which had a variety of terms for racial groups, some terms for quadroons were morisco or chino, see casta . Terceroon was a term synonymous with quadroon, derived from being three generations of descent from an African ancestor, counting the ancestor as the first generation.
The term mulatto was used to designate a person who was biracial, with one fully black parent and one fully white parent, or a person whose parents are both mulatto. [3] In some cases, it was used as a general term, for instance on U.S. census classifications, to refer to all persons of mixed race, without regard for proportion of ancestries. The only time a more specific classification was utilized was in the 1890 Census, which counted almost a million mulattoes (defined as ⅜ to ⅝ white), over 100,000 quadroons and slightly under 70,000 octaroons among 7,5 million Black people; however, the Census Bureau concluded from the experience that this kind of distinction is unreliable and "of little value" [4] so it was abandoned.
The term octoroon referred to a person with one-eighth African/Aboriginal ancestry; [5] that is, someone with family heritage equivalent to one biracial grandparent; in other words, one African great-grandparent and seven European great-grandparents. An example was Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. Octoroon was applied to a limited extent in Australia for those of one-eighth Aboriginal ancestry, as the government implemented assimilation policies on the Stolen Generations. The term mustee was also used to refer to a person with one-eighth African ancestry. [6]
The term sacatra was used to refer to one who was seven-eighths black or African and one-eighth white or European (i.e. an individual with one black and one griffe parent, or one white great-grandparent). [7]
The term mustefino refers to a person with one-sixteenth African ancestry. [3] The terms quintroon or hexadecaroon were also used.
In the French Antilles, the following terms were used [8] [9] [10] during the 18th century:
| Black ancestry | Saint-Domingue | Guadeloupe/Martinique |
| 7/8 | Sacatra | - |
| 3/4 | Griffe | Capre |
| 5/8 | Marabou | - |
| 1/2 | Mulâtre | Mulâtre |
| 1/4 | Quarteron | Métis |
| 1/8 | Métis | Quarteron |
| 1/16 | Mamelouk | Mamelouk |
| 1/32 | Quarteronné | - |
| 1/64 | Sang-mêlé | - |
In some countries in Latin America, the terms griffe or sambo were sometimes used for an individual of three-quarters black parentage, i.e. the child of a mulatto parent and a fully black parent. [3]
In the period before the American Civil War, mixed-race slaves with predominantly white features were depicted in photos and other media to show whites that some slaves were visually indistinguishable from themselves, thus preventing them from seeing slaves as an ethnic "other", in order to further the abolition movement.
Black is a racialized classification of people, usually a political and skin color-based category for specific populations with a mid- to dark brown complexion. Not all people considered "black" have dark skin; in certain countries, often in socially based systems of racial classification in the Western world, the term "black" is used to describe persons who are perceived as dark-skinned compared to other populations. It is most commonly used for people of sub-Saharan African ancestry, Indigenous Australians and Melanesians, though it has been applied in many contexts to other groups, and is no indicator of any close ancestral relationship whatsoever. Indigenous African societies do not use the term black as a racial identity outside of influences brought by Western cultures.
Mulatto is a racial classification that refers to people of mixed African and European ancestry only. When speaking or writing about a singular woman in English, the word is mulatta. The use of this term began in the United States of America shortly after the Atlantic Slave Trade began and its use was widespread, derogatory and disrespectful. After the post Civil Rights Era, the term is now considered to be both outdated and offensive in America. In other Anglophone countries such as the British Isles, the Caribbean, and English and Dutch-speaking West Indian countries, the word mulatto is still used. The use of this word does not have the same negative associations found among English speakers. Among Latinos in both the US and Latin America, the word is used in every day speech and its meaning is a source of racial and ethnic pride. In four of the Latin-based languages, the default, masculine word ends with the letter "o" and is written as follows: Spanish and Portuguese – mulato; Italian – mulatto. The French equivalent is mulâtre. In English, the masculine plural is written as mulattoes while in Spanish and Portuguese it is mulatos. The masculine plural in Italian is mulatti and in French it is mulâtres. The feminine plurals are: English – mulattas; Spanish and Portuguese – mulatas; Italian – mulatte; French – mulâtresses.
The terms multiracial people refer to people who are of multiple races, and the terms multi-ethnic people refer to people who are of more than one ethnicities. A variety of terms have been used both historically and presently for multiracial people in a variety of contexts, including multiethnic, polyethnic, occasionally bi-ethnic, Métis, Muwallad, Melezi, Coloured, Dougla, half-caste, ʻafakasi, mestizo, mutt, Melungeon, quadroon, octoroon, sambo/zambo, Eurasian, hapa, hāfu, Garifuna, pardo, and Gurans. A number of these once-acceptable terms are now considered offensive, in addition to those that were initially coined for pejorative use.
Half-caste is a term used for individuals of multiracial descent. The word caste is borrowed from the Portuguese or Spanish word casta, meaning race. Terms such as half-caste, caste, quarter-caste and mix-breed were used by colonial officials in the British Empire during their classification of indigenous populations, and in Australia used during the Australian government's pursuit of a policy of assimilation. In Latin America, the equivalent term for half-castes was Cholo and Zambo. Some people now consider the term offensive.
Zambo or Sambu is a racial term historically used in the Spanish Empire to refer to people of mixed Amerindian and African ancestry. Occasionally in the 21st century, the term is used in the Americas to refer to persons who are of mixed African and Native American ancestry.
The one-drop rule was a legal principle of racial classification that was prominent in the 20th-century United States. It asserted that any person with even one ancestor of African ancestry is considered black. It is an example of hypodescent, the automatic assignment of children of a mixed union between different socioeconomic or ethnic groups to the group with the lower status, regardless of proportion of ancestry in different groups.
Casta is a term which means "lineage" in Spanish and Portuguese and has historically been used as a racial and social identifier. In the context of the Spanish Empire in the Americas, the term also refers to a now-discredited 20th-century theoretical framework which postulated that colonial society operated under a hierarchical race-based "caste system". From the outset, colonial Spanish America resulted in widespread intermarriage: unions of Spaniards, indigenous people, and Africans. Basic mixed-race categories that appeared in official colonial documentation were mestizo, generally offspring of a Spaniard and an Indigenous person; and mulatto, offspring of a Spaniard and an African. A plethora of terms were used for people with mixed Spanish, Indigenous, and African ancestry in 18th-century casta paintings, but they are not known to have been widely used officially or unofficially in the Spanish Empire.
Castizo was a racial category used in 18th-century Spanish America to refer to people who were three-quarters Spanish by descent and one-quarter Amerindian. The category of castizo was widely recognized by the 18th century in colonial Mexico and was a standard category portrayed in eighteenth-century casta paintings.
Hyperdescent is the practice of classifying a child of mixed race ancestry in the more socially dominant of the parents' races.
In societies that regard some races or ethnic groups of people as dominant or superior and others as subordinate or inferior, hypodescent refers to the automatic assignment of children of a mixed union to the subordinate group. The opposite practice is hyperdescent, in which children are assigned to the race that is considered dominant or superior.
The tragic mulatto is a stereotypical fictional character that appeared in American literature during the 19th and 20th centuries, starting in 1837. The "tragic mulatto" is a stereotypical mixed-race person, who is assumed to be depressed, or even suicidal, because they fail to completely fit into the "white world" or the "black world". As such, the "tragic mulatto" is depicted as the victim of the society that is divided by race, where there is no place for one who is neither completely "black" nor "white".
Partus sequitur ventrem was a legal doctrine passed in colonial Virginia in 1662 and other English crown colonies in the Americas which defined the legal status of children born there; the doctrine mandated that children of enslaved mothers would inherit the legal status of their mothers. As such, children of enslaved women would be born into slavery. The legal doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem was derived from Roman civil law, specifically the portions concerning slavery and personal property (chattels), as well as the common law of personal property; analogous legislation existed in other civilizations including Medieval Egypt in Africa and Korea in Asia.
The Octoroon is a play by Dion Boucicault that opened in 1859 at The Winter Garden Theatre, New York City. Extremely popular, the play was kept running continuously for years by seven road companies. Among antebellum melodramas, it was considered second in popularity only to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). Both were anti-slavery works.
The Dominickers are a small biracial or triracial ethnic group that was once centered in the Florida Panhandle county of Holmes, in a corner of the southern part of the county west of the Choctawhatchee River, near the town of Ponce de Leon. The group was classified in 1950 as one of the "reputed Indian-White-Negro racial isolates of the Eastern United States" by the United States Census Bureau.
Racial passing occurred when a person who was categorized as black - their Race in the United States of America, sought to be accepted or perceived ("passes") as a member of another racial group, usually white. Historically, the term has been used primarily in the United States to describe a black person, especially a Mulatto person who assimilated into the white majority to escape the legal and social conventions of racial segregation and discrimination. In the Antebellum South, passing as white was a temporary disguise used as a means of escaping slavery.
Marabou is a term of Haitian origin denoting Haitians of multiracial ancestry. The term comes originally from the African Marabouts. Marabous are mainly descended from intermingling between Africans, Europeans and Taino but may also have Indian and Chinese ancestry.
Multiracial Americans, also known as Mixed Americans, are Americans who have mixed ancestry of two or more races. The term may also include Americans of mixed-race ancestry who self-identify with just one group culturally and socially. In the 2020 United States census, 33.8 million individuals or 10.2% of the population, self-identified as multiracial. There is evidence that an accounting by genetic ancestry would produce a higher number.
Washing the EthiopianWhite is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 393 in the Perry Index. The fable is only found in Greek sources and, applied to the impossibility of changing character, became proverbial at an early date. It was given greater currency in Europe during the Renaissance by being included in emblem books and then entered popular culture. There it was often used to reinforce outright racist attitudes.
In the former Portuguese and Spanish colonies in the Americas, pardos are triracial descendants of Europeans, Indigenous Americans and Africans.
Sacatra was a term used in the French Colony of Saint-Domingue to describe the descendant of one black and one griffe parent, a person whose ancestry is 7⁄8ths black and 1⁄8th white. It was one of the many terms used in the colony's racial caste system to measure one's black blood.
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