Quadroon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Quadroon, octoroon and, more rarely, quintroon were historically racial categories of hypodescent used in Latin America and parts of the 19th century Southern United States, particularly Louisiana. The terms were also used in Australia to refer to people of mixed Aboriginal and European ancestry.
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[edit] Various terms
"Quadroon" is someone of one-quarter black ancestry or of one-quarter white ancestry. A quadroon has a biracial parent (black and white) and one white or black parent. In other words, the person has [family unit] one black grandparent and white grandparent [the mothers' or Fathers parents] and one [family unit] that is either white or black grandparents.
"Octoroon" means a person of fourth-generation black ancestry.
"Quintroon" is a rarely used term that means a person of fifth-generation black ancestry. A quintroon has one parent who is an octoroon and one white parent. "Hexadecaroon" is an even less common term to describe a person of fifth-generation black ancestry. Mestee or mestif (mestiffe) was also used for a person with less than one-eighth black ancestry.
[edit] Culture and law
This racial classification differed somewhat from the "one-drop theory" current in most of the United States, in that it recognized a higher social status for black-descended people by degree of majority white ancestry. Nevertheless, people of minority black ancestry in these cultures were still heavily discriminated against and often subject to slavery.
In the United States, the Jim Crow laws generally followed the "one-drop theory"; hence the case of Homer Plessy, a Louisiana man of one-eighth black ancestry who was prevented from sitting in a railroad car reserved for whites.
By the later 20th century, these terms had almost totally faded from use, being generally considered obsolete.
[edit] In literature
- The Quadroon - a novel by Thomas Mayne Reid, written in 1856.
- Pontellier's nurse, from the novel The Awakening by Kate Chopin, is a quadroon
