"Gens de couleur is a French term meaning \"people of color.\" The term was commonly used in France's West Indian colonies prior to the abolition of slavery, where it was a short form of gens de couleur libres (\"free people of color\"). It referred specifically to free people of mixed-race, primarily European and African.In some cases, planters or other relatively wealthy white men took slave women or free women of mixed race as concubines."@en .