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This article investigates racial/ethnic categorizations designating the majority in a minority language and their uses and meanings in everyday interactions to grasp the dynamics of racialization from the perspective of minoritized people. The investigation focuses on the varieties of the language called Businenge(e) Tongo locally or Eastern Maroon Creoles spoken by Maroon populations living in French Guiana and Suriname. We first examine the different terms used to refer to whiteness, such as bakaa, wetiman and poyte, from a historical perspective using historical documents before examining their uses in contemporary conversations. The analysis in the final part focuses on interactions at the hospital of Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni. The paper combines two approaches: the sociology of social relations and social approaches to language rooted in ethnography. The distinction between the three terms allows considering race as indexing power relations. Naming whiteness is thus a way of providing a critical perspective on the social order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I analyse the appropriations of social housing within maroon working classes in Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni in French Guiana. I show that issues of power within the house are intricately linked to state governing modes. For their occupants, social housing materializes social ascent and urban integration, or marital emancipation for women: this "change of life" allows them to become "free" (frey). The residents mark the exterior and/or interior space and claim the development of the neighbourhood. The adjustments they make are denounced by the French authorities, along class, race, and nationality boundaries. The issues of "house government" therefore inextricably combine the power relations within a kinship group or a couple, and tensions between inhabitants and French authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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