Alastor is Creole & not necessarily a mixed biracial
Sorry, this is a pet peeve of mine, especially as a mixed person and one from a background where these distinctions are more easily recognised. I hope more people get that Creole =/= mixed race as we understand it today. Alastor couldddd be “mixed race”, as in the biracial product of two diversely monoracially identified parents, but he most likely is straight up Louisiana Creole or even Black mixed with Creole, given the race relations of his region and era.
Louisiana Creole, like South African Coloured, like ‘Latino’/Moreno (the racialised collective thought of as Mestizo, ‘Pardo’ & f.k.a. ‘Mulato’), is an ethnic group of multigenerationally multi-racially mixed people. Because of caste systems, these groups had their own status/esteem in society, and in such as in the cases of many French & Spanish colonies and South Africa – their own communities.
Jim Crow was based on the ‘one-drop rule’ (one drop of African blood = Black), meaning that Creoles of Colour were politically umbrellaed with the rest of the African diaspora. During slavery in Louisiana, Creoles of Colour had a notable slaver class, for example. This kind of nuanced caste system, more akin to elsewhere in the colonial Americas was made literally “black and white” by the Anglo-American policy of Jim Crow.
In Louisiana particularly, Jim Crow was a change from Code Noir, the French laws around interracial relations. Just to paint the picture, in 1803, America takes Louisiana, formerly French colony, from a few decades of Spanish rule. Jim Crow laws come around in response to the abolition of slavery in the late 19th century to maintain white supremacy. Between the Americanisation of Louisiana and the codification of Jim Crow, attitudes and policies shift over the decades from the attitude of tiered racialised hierarchy to a binary racialised hierarchy. Slavery, of course, does the bulk of the segregation until abolition.
Within this code, while relations between black men and white women (very charged topic, to this day) were forbidden, white men still did take on black/black-mixed women as common wives (not legal). There were customs around it, called plaçage. And these relationships would result in the children of these relationships being born free, which as I understand it, is the main foundation of this Creoles of Colour becoming a distinct ethnic group from say, the children of slavers assaulting their slaves, and those children being born into slavery anyway. So Creoles had a lot of legal privileges that black slaves did not, most commonly intermarried amongst themselves, continuing a free Creole lineage, and did so freely.
Under Spanish rule, race relations in Louisiana were more flexible, as was the case in other Spanish colonies. But you have to remember that culture is a very powerful thing, so it’s not suddenly off to the races. However, black people getting bought out of or buying themselves out of slavery into freedom was more common, and this growing black community were able to do business and such. And interracial marriage was legal.
By the 1810s, that’s all done and dusted. The American way is anti-miscegenation. The American way is separate. And one day they tack on “but equal” to doll it up, but that’s obviously never been the reality.
So coming to Jim Crow, unlike during South African apartheid where Coloureds were treated as a distinct category, Creoles of Colour were classed as Black.
Alastor was born in Jim Crow and died in it. Most likely, there hasn’t been a white person in his family in generations. Legally, there wouldn’t be. But with this rundown, I hope you get what I mean when I say whether or not that’s the case would have absolutely no bearing on him being Creole.
As always, headcanon what you like, but I keep seeing this idea that Alastor’s relationship with his parents MUST be dictated by a racial complex. The reality is that he very likely is not the child of a monoracial white person. Creole to the bone or part black & part Creole are most likely.
But that doesn’t mean he has to have a good relationship with his father or have a present father; he can have fatherless behaviour/energy on his own merits hahahahaha
I’ve done some research to fill in my blanks here, I didn’t know all this off the dome, and I encourage everyone to do their own!!! I probably fucked something up as always hahahaha. But the coat of my island’s national arms says “out of many, one people”, and it’s something that really goes for all the African diaspora ethnic groups in the Americas. Our ethnicities are made distinct by our history, we have our own communities and cultures. And as someone who is also individually biracial/bi-ethnic on top of that, it really is not the same experience whatsoever 😅
There are similarities between us, but we’re different, like siblings from the same mother. That’s why Africa is the ‘motherland’ 🤎
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