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Almost any Caucasian women could play similar roles

posted 14 years ago by jeffyoung1
3 replies | jump to latest

Go back and read race history in the United States and you'll learn that women who were 7/8th's Caucasian and 1/8th African were indistinguishable from full Caucasian women; called, 'octoroons', an archaic term, considered offensive today. 3/4th Caucasian and 1/4th African women were called, 'quadroons'. Many years ago, an Afro-American colleague gave me a quick race history lesson about this. He claimed that in the old Deep South, in places like rip-roaring, fun-time, Sodom and Gomorrah - New Orleans - slave owners deliberately 'bred' such women in what sounds to me a creepy version of eugenics twisted in with animal husbandry cross-breeding. Evidently, the old white plantation slave owners discovered this per chance after interbreeding with their slaves and then their sons or other white men interbreeding with the mulatto offspring of the first interbreeding. If you're already offended and disgusted, don't blame me or call me racist... I'm just giving you all here a lesson in the dark side of American history.

The late, prolific and talented Afro-American oil painting master, Archibald J. Motley, Jr., wrote that octoroon women could be fair-complexioned, blue-eyed blondes.

I remember the horror movie, CANDYMAN 2, where the blue-eyed, blonde heroine, learns that the insane, vengeful revenant, Candyman - formerly a black man in life - is her ancestor, making her either an octoroon or more white, called, a hexadecaroon. Back in 2002 I met a young, white woman who nonchalantly told me her ethnic background which included four or five different Caucasian ethnic backgrounds and then, Afro-American. I would have never known had she not told me. Heck, she could have made the whole thing up.

My point is, almost any Caucasian actress could play the role of a octoroon. For a quadroon, perhaps a brunette, dark-eyed beauty would be best. Examples of brunette, dark-eyed white women - not necessarily part black - include the late Natalie Wood, Selma Blair, Sela Ward, and Jennifer Connelly. Only the most fairest of Caucasians, like the pale-skinned, redheads of Scotland and Ireland could not convincingly play such a role.

I once met this dude in which I can honestly say that it would have been not totally accurate to describe him as black, neither, white. He had brown skin, on the lighter side. His curly hair was a mixed pigment of light brown with reddish and yellowish highlights. His eyes were an unmistakable, green. If I were a movie director wanting to film a science fiction movie in the futuristic United States, I would hire this guy in a heartbeat, to demonstrate the possiblity of continued interracial mixing.

[–] Stonez890 14 years ago

I agree with everything you said and was aware of most of this, Sara Jane wasn't an octoroon though which I'm sure you're aware of. If her pops was white, (and i think he was just light-skinned, not white), she'd probably look a little darker. That was somewhat distracting for me, good movie though.

[–] manage-932-700755 10 years ago

You can read a lot about octoroons and quadroons, etc. in the Falconhurst series of books dealing wiht slavwery in the old South.

[–] ClassicMovieholic 10 years ago

You're not wrong, and I do understand what you're saying. If anything, the popular obliviousness of "White" America to the color diversity in ethnic and multi-ethnic communities such as the Black and Latino communities (and, indeed, the presence of non-european ancestry in many White-identified people) is racist and naive.

But what I don't understand is this: What's the point of such an assertion? Sure, almost any white caucasian woman could play such a role...but so could almost any light black woman with features more associated with caucasians, or multiethnic/biracial woman whose features tended more toward the caucasian side. By your logic, you might just as well say "Many octoroons could play Scarlett O'Hara" or other distinctly White-identified parts. Considering the overwhelming availability of parts for young white actresses over black or multi-ethnic actresses, isn't it still better to cast an actress who is part black...provided she is capable of the part? The best actress should be cast regardless of race, but if two actresses are equally qualified, seems to me it's best to cast the part-black actress for the part-black role. True, for a part like this it is essential that the actress be "passable" as White more than Black...but as you pointed out, many women of partial African ancestry are.

In actuality, Susan Kohner was half Mexican and half Austro-Hungarian, whereas Fredi Washington (who played the 'Sarah Jane' figure in the original film) of was the daughter of two Black parents with mixed African and European ancestry.