Colonial color hierarchies assigned privilege by proximity to European whiteness

Evidence

Coloreds or “mulattos” serve as an intermediary racial and cultural bridge between the European and African poles in Caribbean Creole social construction. They are historical products of an imposed rationality of difference in colonial racial representation and practice. White males institutionalized this rationality through the exercise of gender and racial privilege over black female slaves. In turn, the offspring of these miscegenous unions were assigned positions of privilege over the black Creoles in the color/class hierarchy of colonial society. The allocation of Creole privilege was directly related to racial and cultural manifestations of the degree of separation from an African past. It was related, also, to the extent of demonstrated cultural and phenotypical similarity with the European. Creole privilege came with considerable access to cultural and economic capital. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3223

Where whites are mainly sojourning rulers, their numbers are usually relatively small. Ordinarily “home” is in Europe or America, and they seldom set their roots in the area. Here there is little hope of developing a significant white population. The white man’s principal need is not a home but a satisfied and exploitable people to develop the resources of the country. This ruling class adopts a policy of “cooperation”; and, other things being equal, favors are distributed to the mixed-bloods on the basis of their apparent degrees of whiteness among the people of color. Degrees of color tend to become a determinant of status in a continuous social-class gradient, with whites at its upper reaches … the lighter the complexion, the greater the economic and social opportunities. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 852

Categorization

• XREF: Directly echoes the colorism literature (e.g. Hunter) and the classic Caribbean stratification work on pigmentocracy; also parallels the mulatto category discussions in Latin American racial formation scholarship. — connects to: Divide-and-rule fragmented the colonized while whiteness unified the colonizers — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1481; Threatened privilege drove Dutch colonists into a homogenizing white Afrikaner identity — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1382; The white race is defined by skin privilege shared across class lines
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that the ‘imposed rationality of difference’ weaponized gender and racial privilege over enslaved women to produce an entire intermediary class is a dense structural insight about how racial hierarchy reproduces itself materially, not just symbolically.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3223; Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 852