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Given that whites have decided who is "black" has been decided by whites for centuries, it's a pretty difficult equation. But, it's a great indicator of the grip that racism still holds in this country. On a further note, there are undoubtedly plenty of "whites" walking around today who don't realize that under those classifications they would be considered "black". And, if unfortunate enough to live in the ante-bellum south, could have been sold into slavery - as many were.
From Wikipedia:
Quadroon, octoroon and, more rarely, quintroon were historically racial categories of hypodescent used in Latin America and parts of the 19th century Southern United States, particularly Louisiana. Quadroon (from the Spanish cuarterón "quarter") denoted someone of one quarter black ancestry: a person with three white grandparents and one black grandparent. Likewise, octoroon denoted a person of one eighth black ancestry, and quintroon (quint- here implying "fifth generation") or, less commonly, hexadecaroon described a person of one sixteenth black ancestry. The terms were also used in Australia to refer to people of mixed Aboriginal and European ancestry.
This cultural classification differed somewhat from the "one-drop theory" current in most of the United States, in that it recognized a higher social status for black-descended persons by degree of majority white ancestry. Nevertheless, persons of minority black ancestry in these cultures were still heavily discriminated against and often subject to slavery.
In the United States, the Jim Crow laws generally followed the "one-drop theory"; hence the case of Homer Plessy, a Louisiana man of one-eighth black ancestry.
By the latter 20th century, these terms had almost totally faded from use, being generally considered racist and obsolete.
Famous quadroons and octoroons
A number of notable people might have been described as quadroons, or might have been had they lived in a time or culture where such words were current. These include the French writer Alexandre Dumas, père, the Brazilian writer Joaquim Machado de Assis, actress Carol Channing, singer Mariah Carey, the NCAA Florida Gator champion Joakim Noah, Wentworth Miller, Patrick Francis Healy, Vin Diesel, Cassie, and Sally Hemings. Famous octoroons include Alexandre Dumas, fils, Henriette DeLille, Aleksandr Pushkin, Homer Plessy, and Peter Ustinov.
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