Sneak Peeks – Ain’t no Black or White
…Educated Creoles valued European culture above their own. In the late eighteen hundreds the Creole upper class was more interested in literary societies, public lectures, and piano recitals than in African drumming and dancing. As a result, Creole culture is unlike that of most other ethnic groups in Sierra Leone in its embrace of western cultures and ideals.
The Creoles hardly integrated with the indigenous people; rarely married indigenous Sierra Leoneans except the Sherbro, which was the only group of people whose culture is similar, in terms of its embrace of western culture. Sherbros interacted with Portuguese and English traders and even intermarried with them producing Afro-European clans such as the Tuckers and Caulkers. They have a more westernised culture than that of other Sierra Leone ethnic groups.
The offspring of Creoles who married ‘natives’ were not considered Creoles; they were considered ‘native’ in very much the same way that the offspring of ‘black’ and ‘white’ parents in Britain and the US were considered, and are still considered, ‘black’. Sherbros were the only ethnic group to which Creoles intermarried and whose offspring were still referred to as Creoles…
Read and Transform 