The revolution inverted colonial racial hierarchies in everyday petition language

Evidence

“What citoyenne can claim to have, as she has, accepted only the caresses of those similar to her?” Jolicoeur powerfully reversed the common hierarchy of racial terms by calling himself “black” and dismissing the term citoyen de couleur. And he based the claim that Zaïre was qualified for freedom by highlighting her refusal to participate in interracial sex, which he presented as ubiquitous in the old world of the colony. Her loyalty to her race became proof of her “wisdom” and “virtue.” — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 523

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing later: how did free men of color reconcile owning slaves with advancing anti-slavery and anti-colonial claims under the Revolution’s own egalitarian vocabulary?
• XREF: connects to: the MOC “The Word Is a Fence: Language as Battleground, Property, and Partition”