Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Plaçage" in English language version.
It is clear that the differences in admixture proportions observed between African American groups cannot simply be explained in terms of geography. For example, the admixture proportions in New Orleans (22.5%) are higher than in most African American communities in the northeast. Both the geographic origin of the enslaved Africans imported to Louisiana and their status during the French domination have been distinct from what occurred in the British Colonies, and there have been historical accounts of substantial intermarriage in the New Orleans area.
Dr. Clark: Let me say first that "plaçage" as a notion is as problematic as the mythic quadroon. There was really no such thing -- even the term itself comes from a 20th-century Haitian practice, not from 19th-century New Orleans. There was no system of mothers brokering placements for their daughters with white men they had met at a quadroon ball. Instead, there was a broad range of relationships between free women of color and white men that originated in a variety of ways and often lasted for life. For an enslaved woman in late colonial New Orleans, entering into a sexual relationship with a white man who was not her owner could sometimes be a path to freedom, as it was for one of the women I write about, Agnes Mathieu.
