Politics in Haiti > Forum

Defacto skin color problem in Haitian society

Agent-x - July 2 2012, 4:25 PM

According to stylebistro-com LEAH GORDON; 'Caste' the 9 degrees of skin color By evep on July 1, 2012 From trouvaillesdujour-blogspot-com, Moreau de St Mery created a surreal taxonomy of race classifying the skin color of the colony's population in Haiti

In 'Caste' the London-based photographer Leah Gordon takes the viewer in 18th century colonial Haiti.

Her new photographic series investigates the practice of the grading from black to white of skin color, referred to as Caste.

A measuring system - which moves through black to white in nine degrees - was developed by a French colonialist living in Haiti during the slave plantation period.

Moreau de St Mery created a surreal taxonomy of race classifying the skin color of the colony's population, where white, or Blanche was inevitably socially superior to black, or Noir. Using names borrowed from mythology, natural history and bestial miscegenation, St Mery classified nine degrees of shading, from pure black to 1/8 white, and 7/8 black and so on through Socatra, Griffe, Marabou, Mul

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