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halfway up the scale, the Mulatto in its precise and original sense (which has since been extended), ex-
actly half and half; then the Quadroon, one-quarter; the Métis, or Octaroon (in French
Quarteronné
),
and sometimes the
Sangmêlé
, one-eighth; and, finally, some varieties of
Sangmêlés
and the
Mamélouc
,
one-sixteenth. It will be seen by this system, which is far more complicated than the sixteen quarterings
of
Hoffähigkeit
in former European courts, that
Maméloucs
and some varieties of
Sangmêlés
had only
one Negro great-great-grandparent, and fifteen who were pure white. Should two of them marry, the re-
mote Negro ancestors of their children and grandchildren become a smaller and smaller minority among
a growing army of white ones. And this, indeed, has been the tendency, with the result that a small quant-
ity of Haitians are no darker than Italians. They are inclined to form a slightly alien clique in the Haitian
world, and as in pre-Revolutionary times many of them were not only free and able to read and write, but
comparatively well off, they had a long start of their fellow-countrymen. Paris was often more a home
for them than Haiti, and, in a world that is so fiercely organized against the black race, it is hard to blame
those that tried to banish from their minds all memory of their African past. It is an attitude neither guilty
nor laudable: merely extremely human. For many of these, the inevitable home-coming, the confrontation
with the truth that had been locked away in the backs of their minds, was a painful event. Among many
Mulattoes and Negroes who have adopted exclusively European values, anything that reminds them of
Africa, like, for instance, the mention of Voodoo, causes extreme discomfort.
This attitude is in exact opposition to another section of the intelligentsia that derives all its pride and
inspiration from the idea of the African past, from the fact that they are the descendants of the warriors of
the forests of Guinea and of the revolted slaves that defeated the imperial armies of Europe. It often leads
to a form of intellectual isolationism, a most human distrust and repudiation of the values of the white
world by which they and their fellow-countrymen have been penalized for centuries; and this, in some
cases, develops, out of over-compensation, into an aggressive Negro Chauvinism; again, an understand-
able mental attitude, but no more agreeable in practice than other nationalisms. Many of the Mulatto in-
telligentsia belong themselves to this group and join in their derision and distrust of the half-sarcastically
termed Mulatto aristocracy of Pétionville. For the Mulattoes in Haitian history, in spite of great leaders
like Pétion, and any number of her rulers and legislators and intellectuals, have always had a bad press
and a reputation for instability and for a lack of concord with the ambitions and ideals of the Negro ma-
jority. In the early days of Haitian history this tension led several times to civil war. I suspect that, the
rest of the world being as it is, pale-skinned Haitians are secretly pleased at their pallor, whatever their
public statements may be. The great number of hairdressers that advertise
repassage des cheveux
—a sys-
tem for ironing the hair out flat—is significant. And, of course, lightness of skin is an advantage outside
Haiti. The result of all this is that being a Mulatto is personally a source of secret self-congratulation;
and socially or nationally, often a target for abuse, with a nuance in the abuse of something hybrid and
unpatriotic.
This internal contradiction, added to the already existing Mulatto dualism, is a hallucinating thought.
If the conflict is further embroiled by a spiritual tug-of-war between Catholicism and—through atavism,
or, with certain of the intelligentsia, through a conscious espousal on historical or nationalist-æsthetic
grounds—Voodoo, and if this is subdivided again into the ambivalence which is implicit in the Voodoo
psychosis, the mind begins to reel at the proliferation of mental complexities. This huge gamut of emo-
tions at war often seriously hinders normal contact between blacks and whites, in spite of the friendliest
intentions on both sides.
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