Sacatra

Sacatra was a term used in the French Colony of Saint-Domingue to describe the descendant of one black and one griffe parent,^[1] a person whose ancestry is 7⁄8ths black and 1⁄8th white. It was one of the many terms used in the colony's racial caste system to measure one's black blood.^[2]

The etymology of sacatra is uncertain; Félix Rodríguez González linked it to Spanish sacar 'take out' and atrás 'behind';^[3] thus, a sacatra is a slave who is not kept in the house or at the front as a lighter-skinned servant might be.

In fiction

• In the 1989 novel The Dancing Other, French author Suzanne Dracius mentions her main character finding "true friendship with a cheery sacatra girl with soft, caramel skin."^[4]
• Nalo Hopkinson's 2004 speculative fiction novel The Salt Roads begins with Georgine, an enslaved girl who gets pregnant by a white man, denying that her child is going to be "just mulatto. I’m griffonne, my mother was sacatra. The baby will be marabou."^[5]

See also

• Mulatto Haitians
• Quadroon
• Octoroon
• Affranchi
• Gens de couleur
• Afro-Haitians
• Marabou