A New Aristocracy
Though each of these groups had their own pride and prejudices, plantation owners were an arrogant, racist and socially ordinary class. In fact, the roots of many of these whites were suspected. Père Labat, a Jesuit that arrived to Martinique in the XVIII century, assured that his neighbors, slave owners, were descendants of servants. These kinds of remarks, made this priest very unpopular among the Creole community, and can explain the fact that, fourteen years later, his superiors ordered him to abandon the island without return.

At that time, the islands were not only full of slaves, but also crowds of low class Europeans that arrived hoping to become plantation owners, and leaving behind their humble roots. The color of their skins situated them, automatically, in a new rank within the social hierarchy of the islands. These people, lacking scruples, usually prospered within the New World society. Another dark event is the black women sexual exploitation by white men.

Vulgar men that lived fearing a revolt formed the majority of the slave owner’s class. The Rule of 1733 of Governor Gardelin in the Danish Virgin islands, ordered severe punishment to blacks not behaving properly, or accused of leading rebellions. In 1785, the Black Code was declared official in the French Antilles, a clear proof of racism at the time. There was a list of 128 different kinds of black color, and the correspondent social implications.

Everyone visiting the islands noticed the ostentation of plantation owners, that used to waste money easily, which explains that many of them ended usually in debt.
In many occasions, owners were absent, living instead a great life in Great Britain or other European countries, with the profits coming from their plantations, allowing them to live with luxury and excesses, which was not totally approved, even in the XVIII century

Gens de Couleur
The numerous interracial mixtures gave birth to a second group within the Antillean society, formed by “free color people”, also called “gens de couleur”. These people formed an important community, and had a marginal position between whites and slaves; in fact, their number increased quickly, contrary to whites whose number decreased. Frequently white men had colored sons, with the exception of Scotsmen and Irish that arrived to the islands in the XVII century. Now, their descendants are known in Barbados as red legged.

In that age, the Antilles witnessed the fight of the mulattos to achieve a better social position, as well as the most elementary civil and politic rights. The first steps forward were obtained at the end of the XVIII century, when in Antigua the right to vote was granted to free mulattos, if they could prove they were land owners.

Social Respectability
The progressive rise of colored people had two consequences. First, though it was not a revolutionary movement, you can say that, in some senses, changed the Antillean society. Mulattos, as well as whites, were very interested in maintaining the system based on slavery. Though on one side, they suffered subordination; on the other, they didn’t disagree with the social structure they were a part of. They needed whites as a model to follow to obtain social respectability, as well as the latter needed mulattos as allies in case of slave rebellions. Mulattos must also have good relations with the white’s governments, to be granted some concessions. An example of this was the royal edict, approved in 1831 in the Danish Virgin islands, granting them citizenship, if they had good behavior and certain social respectability. Mulattos took the opportunity to live like the whites, wasting money in silk socks, jewels, and organizing masquerade balls. The government then tried to repress this way of life.

The social snobbism began substituting progressively, the former feeling of fraternity that existed among the members of a same race. During the XVIII century, these freed mulattos were known in the Antilles by their dissipated life. In his book about Martinique, Lafcadio Hearn wrote some words that described the situation in the islands: “Travelers arriving here in the XVIII century, were astonished by the luxurious clothes and jewels used by the beautiful mulatto women of St. Pierre, to European eyes it was a public scandal”.