I don’t think Les Mis is too relevant– doesn’t it take place 30 years later?

When people say “no angel,” the phrase might mean “imperfect,” but it implies “a person who has committed crimes.”

History’s not on your side. You personally may believe that a person who is 1/8 black and 7/8 white is “white,” but the laws of Virginia at the time of the story did not- https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Racial_Integrity_Act_of_1924 If you subscribe to the Paper Bag Test, that has no basis in law, only in black culture.