At 09:55 AM 7/6/99 -0400, [email protected] wrote: >It was a description, I don't think this was derogatory, just a sign of the >times, today you are not black, or colored, or Negro, or mulatto, you are >African American. Those folks were Mulatto, the French planters around New >Orleans used the terms quadroon, and octoroon. As to it being used by the >"white" race, I think everyone had a word for people of other races as well >as themselves, white, black, red, yellow. I agree with Sandra. Also, mulattoes had higher status than blacks. Negro is a later term, as is "colored". Louisiana law has a history of being rather unique. As late as the 1970s, people with *any* known black ancestry who were born in Louisiana were listed as black on their birth certificates: this was eliminated following a legal case brought by a Louisiana woman (profiled on 60 Minutes) who was *very* upset that she was listed as black, though she had only 1/64 black ancestry. Elizabeth Whitaker