SOPHIA JOSEPH

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Four Hundred Years Post-Code Noir and Las Castas the Impact of Colonialism on Latine Race and Identity Still Remains

My mother doesn’t consider herself Latina. Several shades lighter than myself with loose black curls, my mother is the pinnacle of mixed-race Haitian identity. She is the legacy of Code Noir, a racial caste system that worked to subjugate those who were not landowning whites, and the fact that she does not consider herself Latina is proof that four hundred years later, the system still works.