France created separate legal categories for mixed-race Africans to reinforce colonial hierarchy

Evidence

Confronted with this “Mendelian law,” colonial officials in the 192o’s could imagine only one possible outcome of continued metissage. Spurned by the country he or she most identified with, the metis was likely to revolt against it. The long-term solution to this problem, as we have seen, was for a variety of experts to recommend an end to metissage altogether, through French endogamy. The short-term solution was to regulate the legal status of existing metis. Dakar was no stranger to the debates. In 1930, the Government General issued its first decree ever specifying when mixed-bloods of unknown parentage could become citizens. While this legislation was no more liberal than that affecting other African subjects, the mere fact that metis were considered worthy of a decree of their own simply because they had one white parent confirms that new barriers were being established between Africans and French, particularly as the latter began contesting French rule in a dramatically changed colonial, national, and international context. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 600

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: how a ‘one drop’ legal logic operated in French colonial law despite France’s universalist rhetoric, versus how it operated in American Jim Crow.