"They was all white."

Creoles understood the benefits of exploiting whiteness for material gain. Sometimes, even having a person of color who looked white with his hand on one's shoulder was enough to reap benefits. Earl A. Barthé recalled that, when traveling through the South as a young man while looking for work,

there were these little highway diners. But if you were black, you might be able to stop and get gas but you couldn't go in to eat. You couldn't use the rest room. Not unless you were white. So, me and Harold [Earl A. Barthé's brother], we were travelling with a dark-skinned fella, we would sit in the back seat of the car and pretend he was the driver when we pulled in. We would get out and say "boy, fill up the tank while we get some sandwiches," and we would walk right in and order the food "to go."... They thought we was white. They didn't know... A white man might look at you twice but he wouldn't ask you if you was white if you carried yourself like you were white...we could be Mexican or we could be Indians or Italians and they was all white...we just wanted to get our food and get on to the next job, man! We were looking for work! We weren't on vacation!

Barthé, Darryl. Becoming American in Creole New Orleans, 1896–1949. United States, LSU Press, 2021.