Sacatra
Sacatra was a term used in the French Colony of Saint-Domingue to describe the descendant of one black and one griffe parent, a person whose ancestry is black and white. It was one of the many terms used in the colony's racial caste system to measure one's black blood.
The etymology of sacatra is uncertain; Félix Rodríguez González linked it to Spanish sacar and atrás ; 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."
- 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."