Categories: Descriptors, Language

“What he look like?”
We’ve all heard this question in some way in the US in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Usually, folks will respond by comparing the subject with someone famous: “he on the order of Marc Morial.”

Not everyone knows who Marc Morial is, though.
So, then folks find other people to compare the subject to, until arriving at a figure with whom everyone in the conversation is familiar. 

God! It takes so much energy to go through all of that.
There are useful terms that English-speakers use, but they are so taboo, that they’re only used behind closed doors, or only in the company of people who racially identify the same. They usually will respond something along these lines: “he’s bright but black” or “he look Mexican, but is black” or even “he’s a light-skinned black man.”

In Louisiana, physical descriptors, like in other parts of the Latin Americas–but unlike in British North America–were legalized. Let me clarify. There is neither an article in the French Code Noir nor in the Spanish Siete Partidas in colonial Louisiana legal codes. But, there are glossaries in the sacramental books for slaves and free people of color at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis in New Orleans, and at St. Martin de Tours Catholic Church in St. Martinville, Louisiana. St. Louis Church was the second oldest Catholic church established in French colonial Louisiana, in 1727. And, St. Martin de Tours Church was the first established in all of southwest Louisiana, in 1765.

What’s significant about Catholic churches using Latin descriptors for people? Well, during the colonial period, there was no real separation between church and state; laws the church promulgated were recognized as quasi (or, even total) legal instruments, and vice versa.

And so, we begin to see Latin descriptors appear in civil records; even after 1803, when, depending on your perspective, Louisiana was abandoned or sold to the United States. At Marksville, in Avoyelles Parish, in 1863, included in the succession of the late Eugénie Roy, widow of Joseph Gauthier, were: two nègres named Marcellin and Jean Willis; two négresses named Pauline and Clarisse; one négrillonne named Eulalie; two mulâtres named Zénon and Léon, the mulâtresse Marcéline; as well as several griffes (Hilaire, Évariste, Odon, and Gervais). Descriptors were used popularly after 1803, too. In 1869, at Convent, in St. James Parish, the editor of Le Louisianais, one of the local parish papers, included in the paper’s edition, chapter thirty of a “short” story entitled “Le Gaulois en Amérique” (Trans: The Frenchman in America). The story was set during the days of slavery, featuring a commandant described as griffe, and a slave described as nègre. [1]

You’re probably thinking: this was only used in the context of slavery. Well, history shows otherwise. People continue to use them in Louisiana today, even if most of the terms have been reduced to a handful, due to contact with speakers of English. Here are some examples of their usage in the legal and popular context in the 20th century. In 1909, a Louisiana statute, called the Gay-Shattuck Law, permitted “griffes, mulattoes, quadroons, and others” to fraternize whites in liquor establishments in the state. At neighboring Lafayette, the Lafayette Advertiser wrote, in 1912, “[o]n the afternoon of Oct. 25, 1911, a large colored man (a griffe) came to my residence and gave me Fifty Dollars …” [2]

What do these terms mean? Well, up until now, a majority of scholars have relied on Médéric Louis Élie Moreau de St-Méry’s 1797 elaborate blood quantum charts of people of color on the island of Saint-Domingue (today’s Haiti). And, most of those scholars have not been culturally Creole, which prevented them from knowing if (and, how) the terms are used by the people. You’re probably thinking: this guy is making this stuff up.

One day in April 2011, when I was visiting New Iberia (I live in England), I was sitting with my Uncle Chuck, who was gravely ill from cancer ravaging his body. And, we started talking about why he did not speak Creole. He started explaining how the people in Morbihan (a faubourg of New Iberia) do not speak Creole, and he couldn’t recall many speaking Creole there when he was a kid, either (he was born in 1937). “In Loreauville and Belle-Place,” he continued, “now, those people, they still can’t speak English,” he said authoritatively. He went on to speak of specific families in those two locales who, in 2011, still spoke Creole. “Now you see the Bastiens, that’s all those people know.” He started chuckling, remembering that a relative of his would make fun of the Bastien and Bourda families (who intermarried) and called them “grif.” I nearly hit the ceiling in utter disbelief. I had never heard it used in English. “What does he call them,” I asked. He said, “they’re mulattoes, but they’re dark-skinned with fine hair.” And, the exact way he described the Bourda and Bastien families, who I know personally, is the exact same way that we use the term grif in Louisiana Creole and griffe in Louisiana French.

It then dawned on me that scholars have lacked the contexts in which these terms would be used, and since it’s not obvious to outsiders (and locals would likely not use them with an outsider), that this would explain the constant regurgitation of Anglo-American racializing/quanitifying of “blood mixtures.” That’s not really what Creole descriptors are, though, and not how they’re used by Creoles themselves. No one I have met in 34 years in Louisiana who speaks French and Creole uses these terms to measure a person’s purported admixture. Besides, the way that we use them in Latin Louisiana is virtually the same as how they are still used throughout the larger Latin Americas. You can learn how they’re used in Creole, French, Spanish and Portuguese south of the border by clicking here and also this video covers specific nations. There are more details about how the terms are used in Louisiana here, too.

So, to demonstrate what these descriptors mean in a modern context, I have created this infographic below. It shows the phenotypes and the corresponding physical descriptor in Louisiana Creole language. I need to clarify, though, that although most of the faces are of Louisiana Creoles, most of these people do not call themselves the term that we’d describe them with. Some of them will like spew venom for seeing such terms used to describe them because this suggests “racism” in the Anglo-American sense. And, that right there is the very root of why they are taboo in English; America’s obsession with race. ¹Sighs Anyway, Louisiana Creoles are highly diverse, physically, and we’ve terms to describe each complexion and hair type. We may as well celebrate the diversity, rather than allow Americans to shun our culture and make us believe that we all look the same. We don’t all look the same, and ignoring diversity does everyone a disservice by creating complexes of all sorts (e.g. people with light skin shuddering when someone tells them they’ve beautiful skin, for instance). Long live human diversity! For now, our culture continues to be lost in translation and suffers constant assault from English-speakers. One day things may change.

Click the image to enlarge in another window.
From there, if you hover your cursor over the image, you can enlarge further to better see the corresponding terms in English and the physical features of the person.
You will also be able to download the image by right-clicking on your mouse or keypad.

Endnotes

1.  “Succession of Eugénie Roy, veuve Joseph Gauthier,” The Avoyelles Pelican, 24 January 1863, p 2; “Le Gaulois en Amérique,” Le Louisianais, 23 January 1869, p 1.

2.  “Mixed Bloods Are Not Negroes And May Mingle With Whites,” St. Martin Weekly Messenger, 30 April 1910; “$50 Notice $50,” The Lafayette Advertiser, p 1.