Saint-Domingue’s racial hierarchy was internally contradictory and internally divided.

Evidence

Over the eighteenth century, law, economy, and discourse worked together to produce a set of racist practices that, once in place, appeared to many as both natural and permanent. Yet this system of racial hierarchy, which most whites saw as necessary for the survival of the colony, was saturated with contradictions and dangerous fissures. Many free people of color, particularly those who were slave owners, looked down not only on slaves but also on poorer whites. Some free people of color referred to white soldiers derisively as “white negroes,” thus insulting both groups at once. 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. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 248

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the wider picture of colonial caste systems as unstable constructs rather than natural orders, echoing how rigid racial categories were produced by law and discourse.