More semantic drift?

[Wilson Gray]

Or just plain ignorance?

Stacy Schiff, a reviewer for the NYTBR, describes a character in a
novel that she is reviewing as:

"... green-eyed, coffee-colored Clara, the ... octoroon ..."

"Green-eyed octoroon"? Of course. *Coffee*-colored _octoroon_"?!!! Is
the author crazy?!!! (I assume that the description used by the
reviewer is based upon one that the author pulled out his ass.) A
"coffee-colored" octoroon is a genetic impossibility, not to mention
that such a black person can not be distinguished from a white person
by the casual eyeball. Indeed, mere mulattos, such as your humble
correspondent's late grandmother, have been mistaken for white. E.g.,
railroad conductors - a position that could be held only by a white
man, in those days - used to try to seat her in a white coach.

Back in the day, a Louisiana couple were refused a marriage license
when the usual pre-nuptial examination of birth records by the health
department revealed that both the bride and the groom, though both
were scions of families that lived as whites, were of too-recent
African ancestry. Records revealed that the groom-to-be was of
one-sixteenth sub-Saharan African ancestry and that the bride-to-be
was of one-eighth sub-Saharan African ancestry. In other words, she
was, like "coffee-colored" Clara, an octoroon.

The groom-to-be's African ancestry was sufficiently distant that he
could legally live in Louisiana either as a white person or as a black
person. However, such was not the case for his betrothed, since an
octoroon is, by legal definition, a Negro. Hence, they could get
married only if the man chose to define himself as "colored" instead
of as "white."

The news story ended at this point. But, I assume that they probably
went to some Northern state to get married, in the same way that a
Saint Louis friend of mine went to Illinois to marry her Scottish
beau, back in the 'Sixties.

OTOH, this author's lack of miscegenetic knowledge is a good thing.
Once upon a time, no one would have made such an egregious error,
since everyone was directly or indirectly taught the descriptions of
the people named by the various color charts.

-Wilson
--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
                                              -Sam'l Clemens

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