Colonial census records institutionalized invented hierarchies among free people of color.

Evidence

Skin color played a role in determining status as well, and many free people of color, like whites, differentiated between those with different degrees of European ancestry. Such distinctions were eventually institutionalized in the colony; the census of 1782 divided free people of color into two categories: “gens de couleur, mulâtres, etc.,” who had European ancestry; and “free blacks,” who did not. The latter were likely to have been freed in their lifetimes rather than born of free parents. Some writers then and since have drawn sharp distinctions between these two groups, but in reality the differences were blurred: there were many slaves of mixed ancestry who had been freed, and second-generation free people who had no European ancestry. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 248

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader pattern of colonial categorization and racial codification that later chapters of this same book will trace into the Revolution.