Quote:
Originally Posted by iheartthed
Regarding "Black" people from the colonies being mixed, the same is true of Black Americans. Likely all black Americans alive today who are descendants of U.S. slaves have some degree of European ancestry.
|
It's nothing comparable to the Black and Creole populations of the former British and French sugar islands. Here again, there was a very big difference between the US and the British/French. In the British/French colonies, the male colonists often had Black concubines, and mixed children were very numerous (often they formed a free Creole population). In the US, the separation between Black slaves and White masters was stricter, there were less Black concubines and less mixed children. White people were much more numerous than in the British and French colonies of the Caribbeans, so they had plenty of White female "supply", and didn't need Black concubines.
And it shows in the population. In the Caribbeans, you see all shades of colors, from very white to very black, and lots of people are café au lait (i.e. in between black and white), whereas in the US the Black Americans have a much more "black" skin color.
Here at a festival in a primary school in Martinique, you can see the range of skin colors of the mothers, from very black to café au lait (I don't know whether the White woman is a native Martiniquan or a Metropolitan Frenchwoman, but there do exist native White Martiniquans, descending from White planters).
In general, talking about former French colonies, the Martniquans tend to be "whiter" than the Guadeloupeans, who are themselves "whiter" than the Haitians (the Haitians have the darkest skins, in a large measure because the White and mixed populations of Haiti were either exterminated or forced to flee during and after the Haitian Revolution; a few mixed people have remained in Haiti, and they usually make up the upper society, although many have left in the past 20 years due to the awful situation of Haiti).
This is in Guadeloupe, at the St Joseph de Cluny private Catholic school, in Pointe-à-Pitre. Some of these kids would definitely be considered "mixed races" in the US.
Threaded Mode