Colonial racial taxonomy mapped animal coloring onto mixed-race offspring.

Evidence

That the mix of Indian with black produces a “wolf” as offspring has to do both with the thought that the wolf is imagined to be a hybrid animal, a mix of the dog and cat families, and with the reddish-black coloring of the animal. Similarly with “coyote,” where the coloring references a yellowish-gray skin hue, and “chino” (derivative from “Chinois”), the shading of whom is taken to be yellow-brown. Cambujo, by contrast, is considered swarthy and dark-skinned, resulting from the darkening mix of black and deepened red. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1103

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to how racial categories in other colonial systems (one-drop rule, casta system generally) worked through animal and color metaphor.
• SEED: A taxonomy of racial ‘animalization’ could drive an essay on how naming systems encode dehumanization in modern bureaucratic language too.