In the colonial societies of theAmericas andAustralia, aquadroon orquarteron (in the United Kingdom, the termquarter-caste is used) was a person with one-quarterAfrican/Aboriginal and three-quartersEuropean ancestry. Similar classifications wereoctoroon for one-eighth black (Latin rootocto-, means "eight") andquintroon 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 ofhypodescent, 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 Africanancestors or equivalent, emphasizing the quantitative least, with quadroon signifying that a person has one-quarter black ancestry.
The wordquadroon was borrowed from the Frenchquarteron and the Spanishcuarterón, both of which have their root in the Latinquartus, meaning "a quarter".
Similarly, the Spanishcognatecuarterón is used to describecuarterón de mulato ormorisco (someone whose racial origin is three-quarters white and one-quarter black) andcuarterón de mestizo orcastizo, (someone whose racial origin is three-quarters white and one-quarterAmerindian), especially inCaribbean South America.[2]
Quadroon was used to designate a person of one-quarter African/Aboriginal ancestry, that is equivalent to onebiracial 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 weremorisco orchino, seecasta.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 termmulatto 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 onU.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 the1890 Census, which counted almost a million mulattoes (defined as3⁄8 to5⁄8 white), over 100,000 quadroons and slightly under 70,000 octaroons among 7,5 million Black people; however, theCensus 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 Africangreat-grandparent and seven European great-grandparents. An example was Russian poetAlexander Pushkin. Octoroon was applied to a limited extent in Australia for those of one-eighth Aboriginal ancestry, as the government implemented assimilation policies on theStolen Generations. The termmustee was also used to refer to a person with one-eighth African ancestry.[6]
The termsacatra 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 onegriffe parent, or one white great-grandparent).[7]
The termmustefino refers to a person with one-sixteenth African ancestry.[3] The terms quintroon orhexadecaroon were also used.
In theFrench 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 termsgriffe orsambo 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 theAmerican Civil War, mixed-race slaves with predominantly white features were depicted inphotos 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 theabolition movement.
The mulatto was the offspring of a white and a black person; the sambo of a mulatto and a black. From the mulatto and a white came the quadroon and from the quadroon and a white the mustee. The child of a mustee and a white person was called the mustefino.
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