Colorism and life opportunities during Slavery #5 The imbalance in relations

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What difference did it make in one’s life to be a free or enslaved non-mixed black, mixed-race black, « mulatto » or light mixed-race person in the Caribbean in the 18th century?

In the first post, I explained the context in which colorism developed, in other words, a colonialist context based on slavery, from which emerged color prejudice, a racist system that segregated and discriminated against black people. I’ve also clarified the words I’m going to use to analyze the impact of colorism on life opportunities.

In posts 2, 3 and 4, I took a closer look at the impact of colorism on people reduced to the status of slaves. This time, in posts 5 and 6, I focus on the repercussions of colorism on free people of color. I approach this from a statistical angle, which sometimes makes things a little indigestible to read (the statistical passages are shifted to the margins), but it also serves as a reminder that we’re not talking about an anecdotal phenomenon. The prevalence of colorism is measurable in 18th-century society.

This week, we continue our series on colorism with episode 5. I’m going to talk about social relationships through demographics, spouse selection and passing.

The imbalance in relations: demographics of the free people of color, and colorism.

In the first post, I wrote that it was essentially relationships between white men and non-white women that gave rise to the mixed-race population. I think I need to go back in more detail to the socio-demographic component of Martinique in the 18th century, in particular free people of color and white people, because this partly explains the impacts of colorism on free people of color.

Free people of color were in the minority throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, but their numbers continued to grow, particularly in comparison with the white population.

In 1700, there were officially 507 free people of color for 6567 white people, 993 for 9106 in 1719, 1693 for 16071 in 1742. The latter date corresponds to the peak of the white population, which then stagnated at between 10 and 12,000; on the other hand, the free population of color continued to grow. In 1788, there were 4851 free people of color for 10603 white people, and there were 71438 enslaved people on the island. In the 19th century, since 1816, free people of color have outnumbered white people.

Let’s go back to 1788. While the balance of the sexes was more or less respected among both white and free of color children, we can see that this was not the case for adults. White women were outnumbered by white men, and at the same time, there was a major imbalance among free people of color, with twice as many women as men! This disproportion between free men and women of color can be explained in part by the fact that white masters emancipated more sexual partners (and their children). Dessalles, a white Creole and member of the Sovereign Council of Martinique, thought that « emancipation should not be granted in any way, because it should not be permitted in a polite government to reward vice: now, the hope of freedom almost always engages negresses to lend themselves to the weaknesses of their masters; these hopes excite them to libertinism; and it is odious that such a vile cause should be that of their felicity ».
[l’affranchissement ne doit être accordé d’aucune manière, parce qu’il ne doit pas être permis dans un gouvernement policé de récompenser le vice : or, l’espoir de la liberté engage presque toujours les négresses à se prêter aux faiblesses de leurs maîtres ; ces espoirs les excitent au libertinage ; et il est odieux qu’une cause aussi vile soit celle de leur félicité]

Table of the free population of Martinique according to the 1788 census

	White man	White woman	Free man of color	Free woman of color
Adults	3339	2197	764	1538
boys/girls +12 years	1438	1669	506	581
boys/girls -12 years	987	969	722	697
domestics	4		43
All	5768	4835	2035	2816

The 1788 census separates whites from free people of color. For each socio-racial class, a distinction is made between men, women, widows, children over and under 12 years of age, as well as domestic servants counted separately; for white men, we must also add overseers [régisseur, économe], refiners, surgeons, clerks and workers, for a total of 755 men counted separately. In the above table, for ease of comparison, I have added women and widows together, and men with a particular function to the more general category. I have left out domestic servants, as their sex is not specified, and have arbitrarily left them in the men’s column.

If we look at the composition of free people of color, for boys and girls under 12, we had 722 and 697 children respectively, which is fairly balanced; the same goes for the over 12 age group, with 506 and 581 young people respectively. However, when we look at the adults, there were 1,538 free women and 764 free men of color! The imbalance was particularly significant. Comparatively, in the white population, women were 2197 for 3339 men.

Imbalance in relationships: when a free person of color was lighter-skinned, she or he was less constrained in their choice of partner.

The gender imbalance has consequences for the partners who are potentially accessible to each other. I won’t go into the details of legitimate versus illegitimate socially acceptable or accepted versus taboo relationships for all categories of the population. However, I will focus on what this demographic situation meant for free women and men of color.

Although rarely officially recognized, relationships between free women of color and white men are indirectly visible in baptismal certificates. Indeed, by studying the ethno-racial mentions attributed to children in relation to those attributed to their mothers, we can guess at the existence of a white father.

In my thesis database, 862 baptisms of free children of color mention both an ethno-racial category for the baptized child and for his or her mother. In 43% of cases, the category is the same, in 53% of cases the child is lighter than the mother, and in only 4% of cases the child is darker. Furthermore, with this same sample, children, whether non-mixed black or mixed-race black represent only 11% of births, 40% are perceived as « mulattoes » and 49% belong to the light mixed-race category.

The figure of 53% of children being lighter than their mothers is of little value in itself, because designating a person according to his or her supposed generation of mixed race is a cultural construct which, whatever Moreau de Saint Mery’s attempts, has no scientific basis. What was noted, for example, in the case of a child born of a « mestive » and a « mulatto »? There was no word for it in Martinique. So, the mention could just as easily be to inform of a generation of mixed race relation as to designate skin color and other phenotypic traits (hair texture, shape of lips or nose…). This number is therefore simply a trend indicator. In any case, you can see that only 4% of children were described as darker than their mother; this is proportionally very low compared to the 53% of cases where the child was lighter than the mother. This points to specific strategies for choosing a partner. In other words, free women of color preferred lighter-skinned men or men of the same skin tone as themselves, to the detriment of darker-skinned men. My graduate work shows that free men of color had little choice, especially when it came to marriage (which, let’s not forget, was not just a matter of pure sentiment, especially in those days!) Gender and « color » are intertwined here.

How can we explain the fact that people perceived as non-mixed black are on average more restricted in their choice of partner or type of relationship?

In a system of racist and patriarchal domination, black women had a strong interest in maintaining a relationship with white men. If these women were enslaved, they could hope to be better cared for (food, clothing…) and eventually gain freedom for themselves and/or any children born of the relationship. Likewise, if these women were free, they could hope to improve their living conditions and enable their colored offspring to rise socially. Women therefore had every interest in choosing a lighter partner, or at least one of the same skin tone, in order to improve or maintain the benefits attached to light skin in this colonial society.

Marriage between white men and free women of color was not legally forbidden in the French Caribbean in the 18th century, but neither was it socially accepted, and it was even sanctioned both because of the socio-economic stakes involved and because of color prejudice. This type of relationship was thus rarely able to lead to the respectability of marriage. Even so, it gave women, whether mistresses or concubines, the hope of a better future for their children born to a white father. Because of the social control exercised over white women (and their low numbers compared to white men), men of color were not able to participate in a similar process.

In a colonial society that offered little autonomy or room for maneuver to free people of color, this situation gave rise to strategies of skin whitening through interracial relationships and, in its extreme outcome, strategies of passing through free women of color. In other words, in a slow intergenerational process, women whose genealogical studies showed they had black ancestors were classified as white, even though society at the time had a vocabulary for stigmatizing their origin. I won’t go into detail on this point, which corresponds to the central theme of my thesis, but I will summarize the main points. It could be said that passing was, in a way, a way of escaping from color prejudice, of no longer being subjected to discriminatory legislation. The light color skin was an essential, but not sufficient, element for access; assimilation to the white class required a slow process of managing the biological capital associated with a situation perceived as honorable. To do so, women had to forge well-chosen alliances, value certain networks and abandon others to benefit from the esteem of notables, and own property that conferred a certain social position. The lighter a person’s skin, the more he or she could hope to transgress the color barrier to escape the dishonor attached to the class of free people of color by joining the dominant class.

All articles of the series Colorism and life opportunities during Slavery

#1 Skin color and mixed race in the 18th century
#2 Differentiated access to freedom
#3 Inequality of opportunities at work
#4 Values tainted by prejudice
#5 The imbalance in relations
#6 Capital disparity

French Bibliography

Pierre-Louis, Jessica. Les Libres de couleur face au préjugé : franchir la barrière de couleur à la Martinique aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, thèse de doctorat d’Histoire, AIHP-GEODE EA 929, juin 2015 à l’U.A.G.
et Les Amérindiens, les libres de couleur et les « assimilés » à Basse-Pointe, au Macouba et au Prêcheur, 1665-1774, Master, 2009.

Archives

Manioc
la base de données « Esclavage en Martinique ».
Archives territoriales de Martinique : recensements 1788, 5mi89
Pierre-François-Régis Dessalles, Les annales du Conseil souverain, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 332.
( autre hypothèse : comme les enfants naissent du statut de la mère, il peut-être aussi stratégiquement plus valable d’affranchir une femme pour les libres de couleur ? !!!)

Iconography