View source for Quadroon

{{short description|Historical racial classification}}
{{redirect|Quarteron|the French kickboxer |Patrice Quarteron}}
[[File:Castas 05morisca max.jpg|thumb|upright|1763 ''[[casta]]'' painting by [[Miguel Cabrera (painter)|Miguel Cabrera]] depicting a quadroon]]

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 [[list of ethnic groups of Africa|African]]/[[Aboriginal Australians|Aboriginal]] and three-quarters [[European peoples|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.<ref>{{cite book |last=Kottak|first=Conrad Phillip |chapter=Chapter 11: Ethnicity and Race |title=Mirror for Humanity a Concise Introduction to Cultural Anthropology |location=New York |publisher=[[McGraw Hill Education|McGraw-Hill]] |year=2009 |page=238 |isbn=}}</ref> The racial designations refer specifically to the number of full-blooded African [[ancestor]]s or equivalent, emphasizing the quantitative least, with quadroon signifying that a person has one-quarter black ancestry.

==Etymology==
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]].<ref>{{cite web | title=cuarterón, cuarterona | website=«Diccionario de la lengua española» - Edición del Tricentenario | url=https://dle.rae.es/cuarter%C3%B3n | language=es | access-date=April 6, 2024}}</ref>

==Racial classifications==
[[File:William Beckford; John Sawbridge; James Townsend by Richard Houston.jpg|thumb|[[James Townsend (British politician)|James Townsend]] (centre), who was an octoroon]]

Quadroon was used to designate a person of one-quarter African/[[Aboriginal Australians|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.<ref name="WoodWes" /> 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.<ref name="WoodWes">{{cite book |first1=Carter G. |last1=Woodson |author-link1=Carter G. Woodson |first2=Charles H. |last2=Wesley |author-link2=Charles H. Wesley |title=The Story of the Negro Retold |publisher=Wildside Press |date=May 2008 |page=44 |isbn=978-1-4344-7326-4 |url={{Google books |id=R_90Km6cmrsC |page=44 |plain-url=yes}} |quote=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.}}</ref> In some cases, it was used as a general term, for instance on [[United States census|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 {{frac|3|8}} to {{frac|5|8}} 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"<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0VAzAQAAMAAJ&pg=PR92-IA3 |title=Report on Population of the United States at the Eleventh Census, 1890 |date=1895 |publisher=Norman Ross Pub. |isbn=978-0-88354-446-4 |page=xciii |language=en}}</ref> so it was abandoned.

The term octoroon referred to a person with one-eighth African/Aboriginal ancestry;<ref>[http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=octoroon Princeton University WordNet Search: ''octoroon'']</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite EB1911|wstitle=Octoroon |volume=19 |pages=993–994}}</ref> 

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).<ref>{{cite web |url=https://msu.edu/~williss2/carpentier/part2/quadroons.html&ved=2ahUKEwi09Z-gg9fZAhUjwYMKHR_BDP4QFjABegQICBAB&usg=AOvVaw2_cyaDmu98woRGJOMkbEFj|title=Quadroons, Octoroons, Sacatra, and Griffe |first=Stuart |last=Willis |publisher=[[Michigan State University]]}}</ref>

The term ''mustefino'' refers to a person with one-sixteenth African ancestry.<ref name="WoodWes" /> The terms quintroon or ''hexadecaroon'' were also used.

In the [[French West Indies|French Antilles]], the following terms were used<ref>Frédéric Regent, ''Esclavage, métissage et liberté'', Grasset, 2004, p.14</ref><ref>Gérard Etienne, François Soeler, ''La femme noire dans le discours littéraire haïtien: éléments d'anthroposémiologie'', Balzac-Le Griot, 1998, p.27</ref><ref>Regent Frédéric, [https://www.cairn.info/revue-annales-de-demographie-historique-2011-2-page-69.htm « Structures familiales et stratégies matrimoniales des libres de couleur en Guadeloupe au XVIIIe siècle »], Annales de démographie historique 2/2011 (n° 122), p. 69–98</ref> during the 18th century:

{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-  style="text-align:center; background:#f0f0f0;"
||'''Black ancestry'''
||'''[[Saint-Domingue]]'''
||'''[[Guadeloupe]]/[[Martinique]]'''
|-
| 7/8||[[Sacatra]]||-
|-
| 3/4||Griffe||Capre
|-
| 5/8||[[Marabou (ethnicity)|Marabou]]||-
|-
| 1/2||[[Mulatto Haitians|Mulâtre]]||Mulâtre
|-
| 1/4||Quarteron||Métis
|-
| 1/8||Métis||Quarteron
|-
| 1/16||[[Mameluco|Mamelouk]]||Mamelouk
|-
| 1/32||Quarteronné||-
|-
| 1/64||Sang-mêlé||-
|}
In some countries in Latin America, the terms '''griffe''' or '''[[Sambo (racial term)|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.<ref name="WoodWes" />

==Depiction in media==
{{Main|White slave propaganda}}
In the period before the [[American Civil War]],  mixed-race slaves  with predominantly white features were depicted in [[White slave propaganda|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 (philosophy)|other]]", in order to further the [[abolition of slavery|abolition movement]].

==See also==
{{div col|small=no|colwidth=14em}}
* [[Afro-Latin American]]
* [[Anglo-Indian]]
* [[Indian South Africans]]
* [[Baster]]
* [[Casta]]
* [[Children of the plantation]]
* [[Coloured]]
* [[Discrimination based on skin color]] a.k.a. Colorism
* [[High yellow]]
* [[Miscegenation]]
* [[Mischling]]
* [[Morisco]]- Term for quadroons in Spanish colonies
* [[Multiracial]]
* [[One-drop rule]]
* [[Passing (racial identity)]]
* [[Racial hygiene]]
* [[Sacatra]]
* [[Sally Hemings]]

{{div col end}}

==References==
{{Reflist}}{{Multiethnicity}}{{African American topics}}{{Hispanic and Latino Americans navbox}}
{{Authority control}}
[[Category:African-American society]]
[[Category:Mulatto]]
[[Category:Multiracial affairs]]