Mulatto

Not to be confused with Mulatto (rapper) or Mulatto Mountain.

"Mulato" and "Mulatos" redirect here. For other uses, see Mulato (disambiguation). For the river in Colombia, see Mulatos River.

Mulatto (/mjuːˈlætoʊ/, /məˈlɑːtoʊ/) is a racial classification to refer to people of mixed African and European ancestry. Its use is considered outdated and offensive in several languages, including English and Dutch, whereas in languages such as Spanish and Portuguese is not, and can even be a source of pride. A mulatta (Template:Lang-es) is a female mulatto.

Countries with the highest percentages of multi-racials who specifically have equally high European and African ancestry— Mulatto, are Dominican Republic (74%) and Cape Verde (71%). Brazil has the largest Mulatto population, known as Pardo in Brazil, numbering about 91 million, 45% of the country. Mulattos in many Latin American countries, aside from the strong European and African blood, usually also have slight indigenous admixture. "Race-mixing" has been strong in Latin America for centuries, since the start of the colonial period in many cases, many Latin American multiracial families (including mulatto) have been mixed for several generations and now the mixing has been mostly multiracials reproducing with other multiracials. Other countries with large mulatto populations in percentage and/or total number include Cuba, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Panama, Colombia, South Africa, and the United States.

Etymology

Juan de Pareja by Diego Velázquez, CE 1650 – Juan de Pareja was born into slavery in Spain. He was of mixed African and Spanish descent.

The English term and spelling mulatto is derived from the Spanish and Portuguese mulato. It was a common term in the Southeastern United States during the era of slavery. Some sources suggest that it may derive from the Portuguese word mula (from the Latin mūlus), meaning 'mule', the hybrid offspring of a horse and a donkey. The Real Academia Española traces its origin to mulo in the sense of hybridity; originally used to refer to any mixed race person. The term is now generally considered outdated and offensive in non-Spanish and non-Portuguese speaking countries, and was considered offensive even in the 19th century.

Jack D. Forbes suggests it originated in the Arabic term muwallad, which means 'a person of mixed ancestry'. Muwallad literally means 'born, begotten, produced, generated; brought up', with the implication of being born and raised among Arabs, but not of Arab blood. Muwallad is derived from the root word WaLaD (Arabic: ولد, direct Arabic transliteration: waw, lam, dal) and colloquial Arabic pronunciation can vary greatly. Walad means 'descendant, offspring, scion; child; son; boy; young animal, young one'.

In al-Andalus, muwallad referred to the offspring of non-Arab Muslim people who adopted the Islamic religion and manners. Specifically, the term was historically applied to the descendants of indigenous Christian Iberians who, after several generations of living among a Muslim majority, adopted their culture and religion. Notable examples of this category include the famous Muslim scholar Ibn Hazm. According to Lisan al-Arab, one of the earliest Arab dictionaries (c. 13th century AD), applied the term to the children of non-Muslim (often Christian) slaves or non-Muslim children who were captured in a war and were raised by Muslims to follow their religion and culture. Thus, in this context, the term muwallad has a meaning close to 'the adopted'. According to the same source, the term does not denote being of mixed-race but rather being of foreign-blood and local culture.

In English, printed usage of mulatto dates to at least the 16th century. The 1595 work Drake's Voyages first used the term in the context of intimate unions producing biracial children. The Oxford English Dictionary defined mulatto as "one who is the offspring of a European and a Black". This earliest usage regarded "black" and "white" as discrete "species", with the "mulatto" constituting a third separate "species".

According to Julio Izquierdo Labrado, the 19th-century linguist Leopoldo Eguilaz y Yanguas, as well as some Arabic sources muwallad is the etymological origin of mulato. These sources specify that mulato would have been derived directly from muwallad independently of the related word muladí, a term that was applied to Iberian Christians who had converted to Islam during the Moorish governance of Iberia in the Middle Ages.

The Real Academia Española (Spanish Royal Academy) casts doubt on the muwallad theory. It states, "The term mulata is documented in our diachronic data bank in 1472 and is used in reference to livestock mules in Documentacion medieval de la Corte de Justicia de Ganaderos de Zaragoza, whereas muladí (from mullawadí) does not appear until the 18th century, according to [Joan] Corominas".

Scholars such as Werner Sollors cast doubt on the mule etymology for mulatto. In the 18th and 19th centuries, racialists such as Edward Long and Josiah Nott began to assert that mulattoes were sterile like mules. They projected this belief back onto the etymology of the word mulatto. Sollors points out that this etymology is anachronistic: "The Mulatto sterility hypothesis that has much to do with the rejection of the term by some writers is only half as old as the word 'Mulatto'."

Africa

See also: Indigenous peoples of Africa

Of São Tomé and Príncipe's 193,413 inhabitants, the largest segment is classified as mestiço, or mixed race. 71% of the population of Cape Verde is also classified as such. The great majority of their current populations descend from unions between the Portuguese, who colonized the islands from the 15th century onward, and black Africans they brought from the African mainland to work as slaves. In the early years, mestiços began to form a third-class between the Portuguese colonists and African slaves, as they were usually bilingual and often served as interpreters between the populations.

In Angola and Mozambique, the mestiço constitute smaller but still important minorities; 2% in Angola and 0.2% in Mozambique.

Mulatto and mestiço are not terms commonly used in South Africa to refer to people of mixed ancestry. The persistence of some authors in using this term, anachronistically, reflects the old-school essentialist views of race as a de facto biological phenomenon, and the 'mixing' of race as legitimate grounds for the creation of a 'new race'. This disregards cultural, linguistic and ethnic diversity and/or differences between regions and globally among populations of mixed ancestry.

In Namibia, an ethnic group known as Rehoboth Basters, descend from historic liaisons between the Cape Colony Dutch and indigenous African women. The name Baster is derived from the Dutch word for 'bastard' (or 'crossbreed'). While some people consider this term demeaning, the Basters proudly use the term as an indication of their history. In the early 21st century, they number between 20,000 and 30,000 people. There are, of course, other people of mixed race in the country.

Cape Verde

The Creole or Mulatto ethnic group boasts of comprising 71% of the total Cape Verdean population. The Creole population traces back their history to African slavery and Portuguese colonization. Cape Verde was uninhabited upon Portuguese discovery in the 1400s. Cape Verde became an important slave trade center and linked Africa to the Western countries. Intermarriages between the freed slaves and the European settlers gave rise to the Creole population.

South Africa

Main article: Coloureds

Abdullah Abdurahman

In South Africa, Coloured is a term used to refer to individuals with some degree of sub-Saharan ancestry but subjectively 'not enough' to be considered 'black' under the Apartheid era law of South Africa. Today these people self-identify as 'Coloured'. Other Afrikaans terms used include Bruinmense (translates to 'brown people'), Kleurlinge (translates to 'Coloured') or Bruin Afrikaners (translates to 'brown Africans' and is used to distinguish them from the main body of Afrikaners (translates to 'African') who are white). Under Apartheid law through the latter half of the 20th century, the government established seven categories of Coloured people: Cape Coloured, Cape Malay, Griqua and Other Coloured – the aim of subdivisions was to enhance the meaning of the larger category of Coloured by making it all-encompassing. Legally and politically speaking, all people of colour were classified "black" in the non-racial terms of anti-Apartheid rhetoric of the Black Consciousness Movement.

In addition to European ancestry, the Coloured people usually had some portion of Asian ancestry from immigrants from India, Indonesia, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, China and/or Saint Helena. Based on the Population Registration Act to classify people, the government passed laws prohibiting mixed marriages. Many people who classified as belonging to the "Asian" category could legally intermarry with "mixed-race" people because they shared the same nomenclature. There was extensive combining of these diverse heritages in the Western Cape.

In other parts of South Africa and neighboring states, the coloured usually were descendants of two primary ethnic groups - primarily Africans of various tribes and European colonists of various tribes, with generations of coloured forming families. The use of the term Coloured has changed over the course of history. For instance, in the first census after the South African war (1912), Indians were counted as 'Coloured'. But before and after this war, they were counted as 'Asiatic'.

In KwaZulu-Natal, most Coloureds (that were classified as "other coloureds") had British and Zulu heritage. Zimbabwean coloureds were descended from Shona or Ndebele mixing with British and Afrikaner settlers.

Griqua, on the other hand, are descendants of Khoisan and Afrikaner trekboers, with contributions from central Southern African groups. The Griqua were subjected to an ambiguity of other creole people within Southern African social order. According to Nurse and Jenkins (1975), the leader of this "mixed" group, Adam Kok I, was a former slave of the Dutch governor. He was manumitted and provided land outside Cape Town in the eighteenth century. With territories beyond the Dutch East India Company administration, Kok provided refuge to deserting soldiers, refugee slaves, and remaining members of various Khoikhoi tribes.

Afro-European tribes and clans

• Akus
• Americo-Liberians
• Amaros
• Fernandinos
• Gold Coast Euro-Africans
• Saro people
• Sherbro Hubris
• Sherbro Tuckers
• Sherbro Caulkers
• Sherbro Rogers
• Sherbro Clevelands
• Sierra Leone Creole people

Latin America and the Caribbean

Mulattoes in colonial Mexico

Main article: Casta

See also: Pardo, Morisco, Torna atrás, and Lobo (racial category)

Spaniard + Negra, Mulatto. Miguel Cabrera. Mexico 1763

Africans were transported by Spaniards slave traders to Mexico starting in the early 16th century. Offspring of Spaniards and African women resulted early on in mixed-race children, termed mulattoes. In Spanish law, the status of the child followed that of the mother, so that despite having a Spanish parent, their offspring were enslaved. The label mulatto was recorded in official colonial documentation, so that marriage registers, censuses, and court documents allow research on different aspects of mulattoes’ lives. Although some legal documents simply label a person a mulatto/a, other designations occurred. In the sales of casta slaves in 17th-century Mexico City, official notaries recorded gradations of skin color in the transactions. These included mulato blanco or mulata blanca ('white mulatto'), for light-skinned slave. These were usually American-born slaves. Some said categorized persons i.e. mulata blanca used their light skin to their advantage if they escaped their unlawful and brutal incarceration from their criminal slave owners, thus 'passing' as free persons of color. Mulatos blancos often emphasized their Spanish parentage, and considered themselves and were considered separate from negros or pardos and ordinary mulattoes. Darker mulatto slaves were often termed mulatos prietos or sometimes mulatos cochos. In Chile, along with mulatos blancos, there were also españoles oscuros ('dark Spaniards').

There was considerable malleability and manipulation of racial labeling, including the seemingly stable category of mulatto. In a case that came before the Mexican Inquisition, a woman publicly identified as a mulatta was described by a Spanish priest, Diego Xaimes Ricardo Villavicencio, as "a white mulata with curly hair, because she is the daughter of a dark-skinned mulata and a Spaniard, and for her manner of dress she has flannel petticoats and a native blouse (huipil), sometimes silken, sometimes woolen. She wears shoes, and her natural and common language is not Spanish, but Chocho [an indigenous Mexican language], as she was brought up among Indians with her mother, from which she contracted the vice of drunkenness, to which she often succumbs, as Indians do, and from them she has also received the crime of [idolatry]." Community members were interrogated as to their understanding of her racial standing. Her mode of dress, very wavy hair and light skin confirmed for one witness that she was a mulatta. Ultimately though, her rootedness in the indigenous community persuaded the Inquisition that she was an India, and therefore outside of their jurisdiction. Even though the accused had physical features of a mulatta, her cultural category was more important. In colonial Latin America, mulato could also refer to an individual of mixed African and Native American ancestry, but the term zambo was more consistently used for that racial mixture.

Dominican friar Thomas Gage spent over a decade in the Viceroyalty of New Spain in the early 17th century; he converted to Anglicanism and later wrote of his travels, often disparaging Spanish colonial society and culture. In Mexico City, he observed in considerable detail the opulence of dress of women, writing that "The attire of this baser sort of people of blackamoors and mulattoes (which are of a mixed nature, of Spaniards and blackamoors) is so light, and their carriage so enticing, that many Spaniards even of the better sort (who are too too [sic] prone to venery) disdain their wives for them... Most of these are or have been slaves, though love have set them loose, at liberty to enslave souls to sin and Satan."

In the late 18th century, some mixed-race persons sought legal "certificates of whiteness" (cédulas de gracias al sacar), in order to rise socially and practice professions. American-born Spaniards (criollos) sought to prevent the approval of such petitions, since the "purity" of their own whiteness would be in jeopardy. They asserted their "purity of blood" (limpieza de sangre) as white persons who had "always been known, held and commonly reputed to be white persons, Old Christians of the nobility, clean of all bad blood and without any mixture of commoner, Jew, Moor, Mulatto, or converso in any degree, no matter how remote." Spaniards both American- and Iberian-born discriminated against pardos and mulattoes because of their "bad blood." One Cuban sought the grant of his petition in order to practice as a surgeon, a profession from which he was barred because of his mulatto designation. Royal laws and decrees prevented pardos and mulattoes from serving as a public notary, lawyer, pharmacist, ordination to the priesthood, or graduation from university. Mulattas declared white could marry a Spaniard.

Gallery

• 
  Casta painting of a Spaniard, a Negra and a Mulatto. José de Alcíbar, 18th c. Mexico
• 
  De Español y Negra, Mulato. Anon. 18th c.
• 
  De Español y Negra, Mulato. José Joaquín Magón. 18th c. Mexico
• 
  De Español y Negra, Mulato. Anon.
• 
  De negro y española, sale mulato (From a Black man and a Spanish woman, a Mulatto is begotten). Anon.
• 
  De Español y Mulata, Morisca. Anon. 1799
• 
  De Mulata y Español, Morisca, Juan Patricio Morlete. 18th c. Mexico
• 
  De Mulato y Mestiza, Torna atrás
• 
  De Negro y Mulata, Zambo. 18th c. Peru
• 
  Don Miguel Enríquez, a Puerto Rican privateer

Mulattoes in the modern era

Brazil

Main articles: Pardo Brazilians and Mixed-race Brazilian

A Redenção de Cam (Redemption of Ham), by Galician painter Modesto Brocos, 1895, Museu Nacional de Belas Artes. (Brazil) The painting depicts a black grandmother, mulatta mother, white father and their quadroon child, hence three generations of hypergamy through racial whitening.

According to the IBGE 2000 census, 38.5% of Brazilians identified as pardo, a term for people of mixed backgrounds. Many mixed-race Brazilians have varying degrees of European, Amerindian and African ancestry. According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics census 2006, some 42.6% of Brazilian identify as pardo, an increase over the 2000 census.

Dominican Republic

Main article: Mixed Dominicans

Mixed Dominicans, also referred to as mulatto, mestizo or historically quadroon, are Dominicans who are of mixed racial ancestry. Dominican Republic has many racial terms and some are used differently than in other countries, for example Mestizo signifies any racial mix and not solely a European/indigenous mix like in other Latin American countries, while Indio describes people of skin tones between white and black and has nothing to do with native peoples. Representing 73.9% of the Dominican Republic's population, they are by far the single largest racial grouping of the country. Mixed Dominicans are the descendants from the racial integration between the Europeans, Native Americans, and later the Africans. They have a total population of approximately 8 million.

The Dominican Republic was the site of the first European settlement in the Americas, the Captaincy General of Santo Domingo founded in 1493. After the arrival of Europeans and the founding of the colony, African people were imported to the island. The fusion of European, native Taino, and African influences contributed to the development of present-day Dominican culture. From the start of the colonial period in the 1500s, Miscegenation (Mestizaje), intermixing of races particularly Spanish settlers, native Tainos, and imported Africans (free or enslaved), was very strong. In fact, colonial Santo Domingo had higher amount of mixing and lesser racial tensions in comparison to other colonies, even other Spanish colonies, this was due to the fact that for most of it's colonial period, Santo Domingo was a poorer colony where even the majority of the white Spanish settlers were poor, which helped foster a relatively peaceful racial atmosphere, allowing for growth in its mixed race population and racial fluidity. Santo Domingo as a colony was used a military base and had an economy based on Cattle ranching, which was a far less labor intensive than the more common plantation slavery at the time. By the 1700s, the majority of the population was mixed race, forming the basis of the Dominican ethnicity as a distinct people well before independence was achieved. During colonial times, mixed-race/mulatto Dominicans had a lot of influence, they were instrumental in the independence period and the founding of the nation. Many Dominican presidents were mulatto, and mulatto Dominicans have had influence in every aspect of Dominican culture and society.

According to recent genealogical DNA studies of the Dominican population, the genetic makeup is predominantly European and Sub-Saharan African, with a lesser degree of Native American ancestry. The average Dominican DNA of the founder population is estimated to be 73% European, 10% Native, and 17% African. After the Haitian and Afro-Caribbean migrations the overall percentage changed to 57% European, 8% Native and 35% African. Due to mixed race Dominicans (and most Dominicans in general) being a mix of mainly European and African, with lesser amounts of indigenous Taino, they can accurately be described as "Mulatto" or "Tri-racial". Dominican Republic have several informal terms to loosely describe a person's degree of racial admixture, Mestizo means any type of mixed ancestry unlike in other Latin American countries it describes specifically a European/native mix, Indio describes mixed race people whose skin color is between white and black.

In Dominican Republic and some other Latin American countries, it can sometimes be difficult to determine the exact number of racial groups, because the lines between whites and lighter multiracials are very blurry, which is also true between blacks and darker multiracials. As race in Dominican Republic acts as a continuum of white—mulatto—black and not as clear cut as in places like the United States. And many times in the same family, there can be people of different colors and racial phenotypes who are blood related, this is due to the large amounts of interracial mixing for hundreds of years in Dominican Republic and the Spanish Caribbean in general, allowing for high amounts of genetic diversity. The majority of the Dominican population is tri-racial, with nearly all Dominicans having Taíno Native American ancestry along with European and African ancestry. European ancestry in the mixed population typically ranges between 50% and 60% on average, while African ancestry ranges between 30% and 40%, and the Native ancestry usually ranges between 5% and 10%. European and Native ancestry tends to be strongest in cities and towns of the north-central Cibao region, and generally in the mountainous interior of the country. African ancestry is strongest in coastal areas, the southeast plain, and the border regions.

Puerto Rico

Although the average Puerto Rican is of mixed-race, few actually identified as multiracial ("two or more races") in the 2010 census; only 3.3% did so. They more often identified with their predominant heritage or phenotype. However, in the 2020 census, the amount of Puerto Ricans identifying as multiracial went up to 49.8% and an additional 25.5% identified as "some other race", showing a marked change in the way Puerto Ricans view themselves. This may show that Puerto Ricans are now more open to embracing all sides of their mixed-race heritage and do not view themselves as part of the standard race dynamic in the United States hence the high number of people identifying as "some other race", a similar phenomenon went on in the mainland United States with the overall US Hispanic/Latino population. Most have significant ancestry from two or more of the founding source populations of Spaniards, Africans, and Tainos, although Spanish ancestry is predominant in a majority of the population. Similar to many other Latin American ethnic groups, Puerto Ricans are multi-generationally mixed race, though most are European dominant in ancestry, Puerto Ricans who are "evenly mixed" can accurately be described "Mulatto", "Quadroon", or Tri-racial very similar to mixed populations in Cuba and Dominican Republic. Overall, Puerto Ricans are European-dominant Tri-racials, however there are many with near even European and African ancestry. According to the National Geographic Genographic Project, "the average Puerto Rican individual carries 12% Native American, 65% West Eurasian (Mediterranean, Northern European and/or Middle Eastern) and 20% Sub-Saharan African DNA."

Studies have shown that the racial ancestry mixture of the average Puerto Rican (regardless of racial self-identity) is about 64% European, 21% African, and 15% Native Taino, with European ancestry strongest on the west side of the island and West African ancestry strongest on the east side, and the levels of Taino ancestry (which, according to some research, ranges from about 5%-35%) generally highest in the southwest of the island.

A study of a sample of 96 healthy self-identified White Puerto Ricans and self-identified Black Puerto Ricans in the U.S. showed that, although all carried a contribution from all 3 ancestral populations (European, African, and Amerindian), the proportions showed significant variation. Depending on individuals, although often correlating with their self-identified race, African ancestry ranged from less than 10% to over 50%, while European ancestry ranged from under 20% to over 80%. Amerindian ancestry showed less fluctuation, generally hovering between 5% and 20% irrespective of self-identified race.

Many Spaniard men took indigenous Taino and West African wives and in the first centuries of the Spanish colonial period the island was overwhelmingly racially mixed. Under Spanish rule, mass immigration shifted the ethnic make-up of the island, as a result of the Royal Decree of Graces of 1815. Puerto Rico went from being two-thirds black and mulatto in the beginning of the 19th century, to being nearly 80% white by the middle of the 20th century. This was compounded by more flexible attitudes to race under Spanish rule, as epitomized by the Regla del Sacar. Under Spanish rule, Puerto Rico had laws such as Regla del Sacar or Gracias al Sacar, which allowed persons of mixed ancestry to pay a fee to be classified as white, which was the opposite of "one-drop rule" in US society after the American Civil War.

Cuba

In the 2012 Census of Cuba, 26.6% (2.97 million) of the Cubans self-identified as mulatto or mestizo. But the percentage multiracial/mulatto make up varies widely, from as low as 26% to as high as 51%. Unlike, the two other Spanish Caribbean islands (Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico) where nearly everyone even most self-proclaimed whites and blacks are mixed to varying degrees, in Cuba there are significant pure or nearly pure European and African populations. Multi-racials/Mulattos are widespread throughout Cuba. The DNA average for the Cuban population is 72% European, 23% African, and 5% indigenous, though among mulatto Cubans the European and African ancestry is more even.

Prior to the 20th century, majority of the Cuban population was of mixed race descent to varying degrees, with pure Spaniards or criollos being a significant minority. Between 1902 and 1933, some 750,000 Spaniards migrated to Cuba from Europe, which changed the racial demographics of the region rapidly. Many of the newly arrived Spanish migrants did not intermix with the native Cuban population, unlike the earlier colonial settlers and conquistadors who intermixed with Tainos and Africans at large scale rates. Self identified “white” Cubans with colonial roots on the island usually have Amerindian and or African admixture to varying degrees, as well as self identified “black” Cubans with colonial roots having varying degrees of European and or Amerindian admixture.

United States

Colonial and Antebellum eras

See also: Children of the plantation and Shadow family

Advertisement in the Virginia Gazette placed by Thomas Jefferson offering a reward for his escaped slave named Sandy who was defined as "mulatto".

Historians have documented sexual abuse of enslaved women during the colonial and post-revolutionary slavery times by white men in power: planters, their sons before marriage, overseers, etc., which resulted in many multiracial children born into slavery. Starting with Virginia in 1662, colonies adopted the principle of partus sequitur ventrem in slave law, which said that children born in the colony were born into the status of their mother. Thus, children born to slave mothers were born into slavery, regardless of who their fathers were and whether they were baptized as Christians. Children born to white mothers were free, even if they were mixed-race. Children born to free mixed-race mothers were also free.

Paul Heinegg has documented that most of the free people of color listed in the 1790–1810 censuses in the Upper South were descended from unions and marriages during the colonial period in Virginia between white women, who were free or indentured servants, and African or African American men, servant, slave or free. In the early colonial years, such working-class people lived and worked closely together, and slavery was not as much of a racial caste. Slave law had established that children in the colony took the status of their mothers. This meant that multi-racial children born to white women were born free. The colony required them to serve lengthy indentures if the woman was not married, but nonetheless, numerous individuals with African ancestry were born free, and formed more free families. Over the decades, many of these free people of color became leaders in the African-American community; others married increasingly into the white community. His findings have been supported by DNA studies and other contemporary researchers as well.

A daughter born to a South Asian father and Irish mother in Maryland in 1680, both of whom probably came to the colony as indentured servants, was classified as a "mulatto" and sold into slavery.

Historian F. James Davis says,

Rapes occurred, and many slave women were forced to submit regularly to white males or suffer harsh consequences. However, slave girls often courted a sexual relationship with the master, or another male in the family, as a way of gaining distinction among the slaves, avoiding field work, and obtaining special jobs and other favored treatment for their mixed children (Reuter, 1970:129). Sexual contacts between the races also included prostitution, adventure, concubinage, and sometimes love. In rare instances, where free blacks were concerned, there was marriage (Bennett, 1962:243–68).

Creole woman with black servant, New Orleans, 1867.

Historically in the American South, the term mulatto was also applied at times to persons with mixed Native American and African American ancestry. For example, a 1705 Virginia statute reads as follows:

"And for clearing all manner of doubts which hereafter may happen to arise upon the construction of this act, or any other act, who shall be accounted a mulatto, Be it enacted and declared, and it is hereby enacted and declared, That the child of an Indian and the child, grand child, or great grand child, of a negro shall be deemed, accounted, held and taken to be a mulatto."

However, southern colonies began to prohibit Indian slavery in the eighteenth century, so, according to their own laws, even mixed-race children born to Native American women should be considered free. The societies did not always observe this distinction.

Certain Native American tribes of the Inocoplo family in Texas referred to themselves as "mulatto". At one time, Florida's laws declared that a person from any number of mixed ancestries would be legally defined as a mulatto, including White/Hispanic, Black/Native American, and just about any other mix as well.

In the United States, due to the influence and laws making slavery a racial caste, and later practices of hypodescent, white colonists and settlers tended to classify persons of mixed African and Native American ancestry as black, regardless of how they identified themselves, or sometimes as Black Indians. But many tribes had matrilineal kinship systems and practices of absorbing other peoples into their cultures. Multiracial children born to Native American mothers were customarily raised in her family and specific tribal culture. Federally recognized Native American tribes have insisted that identity and membership is related to culture rather than race, and that individuals brought up within tribal culture are fully members, regardless of whether they also have some European or African ancestry. Many tribes have had mixed-race members who identify primarily as members of the tribes.

If the multiracial children were born to slave women (generally of at least partial African descent), they were classified under slave law as slaves. This was to the advantage of slaveowners, as Indian slavery had been abolished. If mixed-race children were born to Native American mothers, they should be considered free, but sometimes slaveholders kept them in slavery anyway. Multiracial children born to slave mothers were generally raised within the African-American community and considered "black".

"Mulattoes returning from town with groceries and supplies near Melrose, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana." Marion Post Wolcott, Farm Security Administration, July 1940

Louisiana

Three different race classifications appear in this public notice by the executor of the last will of Andre Deshotels, deceased, regarding emancipation of his former slaves. (Opelousas Patriot, St. Landry Parish, November 3, 1855, via Chronicling America digital newspaper archive)

The American Guide to Louisiana, published by the Federal Writers Project in 1941, included a breakdown of traditional race classifications in that region, stating "The following elaborate terminology, now no longer in use because of the lack of genealogical records upon which to base finely drawn blood distinctions, was once employed to differentiate between types according to diminution of Negro blood." (Original orthography preserved.)

Term	Parentage	"Percentage of Negro blood"
Sacatro	Negro and Griffe	87.5
Griffe	Negro and Mulatto	75
Marabon	Mulatto and Griffe	62.5
Mulatto	Negro and white	50
Os rouge	Negro and Indian	50
Tierceron	Mulatoon and Quadroon	37.5
Quadroon	White and Mulatto	25
Octoroon	White and Quadroon	12.5

A 1916 history called The Mulatto in the United States reported two other archaic race-classification systems:

From Frederick Law Olmstead's A Journey to the Seaboard Slave States (1854)

Header text	Header text
Sacatra	griffe and negress
Griffe	Negro and mulatto
Marabon	mulatto and griffe
Mulatto	white and Negro
Quadroon	white and mulatto
Metif	white and Quadroon
Meamelouc	white and metif
Quarteron	white and meamelouc
Sang-mele	white and quarteron

From Charles Davenport's Heredity of Skin Color in Negro-White Crosses (1910)

Header text	Header text
Mulatto	Negro and white
Quadroon	mulatto and white
Octoroon	quadroon and white
Cascos	mulatto and mulatto
Sambo	mulatto and Negro
Mango	sambo and Negro
Mustifee	octoroon and white
Mustifino	mustifee and white

Contemporary era

Further information: Multiracial Americans

Mulatto was used as an official census racial category in the United States, to acknowledge multiracial persons, until 1930. (In the early 20th century, several southern states had adopted the one-drop rule as law, and southern Congressmen pressed the US Census Bureau to drop the mulatto category: they wanted all persons to be classified as "black" or "white".)

Since 2010, persons responding to the census have been allowed to identify as having more than one type of ethnic ancestry.

Mulatto (Biracial in the U.S.) populations come from various sources. Firstly, the average ancestral DNA of African Americans is about 80% African, 19% European, and 1% indigenous. Lighter skinned African Americans are usually "more mixed" than the average African American, with the white ancestors sometimes being several generations back, which gives them a multiracial phenotype. Some of these lighter African Americans have abandoned the black identity and started to identify as multiracial. Many small isolate mixed race groups, such as for example Louisiana Creole people, got absorbed into the overall African American population. There also growing numbers of black/white interracial couples and multiracial people of recent origins– parents being of different races. Many immigrants who are racially Mulattos, have come to the United States from countries like Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, being most prevalent in cities like New York and Miami.

Colonial references

• Basters
• Fernandino
• Quadroon – and other terms denoting the degree of African descent
• Métis
• Mestizo
• Zambo
• Creole peoples

See also

• Multiracial people
• Miscegenation
• Interracial marriage
• Racial fluidity
• Biracial and multiracial identity development
• Multiracialism
• Ethnic groups in Latin America
• Mixed Dominicans
• Dominican people
• Puerto Ricans
• Cubans
• Spanish Caribbean
• Moreno Venezuelans
• Cape Verdeans
• Mixed-race Brazilian
• Pardo Brazilians
• Mixed Race Day, holiday in Brazil celebrating mixed race heritage
• Multiracial Americans
• Passing (racial identity)
• One-drop rule, United States racial classification
• High yellow
• Redbone (ethnicity)
• Melungeon
• Dominickers
• Louisiana Creole people
• Creoles of color
• Creole peoples
• Mulatto Haitians
• Marabou (ethnicity)
• Dougla people
• Multiracial Antiguans and Barbudans
• Mixed-race Caymanians
• Multiracial Ugandans in Uganda
• Coloureds
• Rhineland Bastard
• Cafres
• Cassare, a marriage alliance between European traders and African rulers.
• Mixed White and Black African people in the United Kingdom
• Casta
• Zambo
• Pardo
• Quadroon
• Free people of color
• Tragic mulatto
• Blanqueamiento
• African diaspora in the Americas
• Afro-Latin Americans
• Afro-Arabs
• Black Europeans of African ancestry
• African admixture in Europe
• Atlantic slave trade
• History of Latin America
• Colorism in the Caribbean
• Discrimination based on skin color
• Mixed twins
• Race and genetics
• Race of the future
• Historical race concepts

References

Notes

Citations

Further reading

• Beckmann, Susan. "The mulatto of style: language in Derek Walcott's drama." Canadian Drama 6.1 (1980): 71-89. online
• McNeil, Daniel (2010). Sex and Race in the Black Atlantic: Mulatto Devils and Multiracial Messiahs. Routledge.
• Tenzer, Lawrence Raymond (1997). The Forgotten Cause of the Civil War: A New Look at the Slavery Issue. Scholars' Pub. House.
• Talty, Stephan (2003). Mulatto America: At the Crossroads of Black and White Culture: A Social History. HarperCollins Publishers Inc. ISBN 9780060185176.
• Gatewood, Willard B. (1990). Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880-1920. Indiana University Press. ISBN 9780253325525.
• Eguilaz y Yanguas, Leopoldo (1886). Glosario de las palabras españolas (castellanas, catalanas, gallegas, mallorquinas, portuguesas, valencianas y bascongadas), de orígen oriental (árabe, hebreo, malayo, persa y turco) (in Spanish). Granada: La Lealtad.
• Freitag, Ulrike; Clarence-Smith, William G., eds. (1997). Hadhrami Traders, Scholars and Statesmen in the Indian Ocean, 1750s-1960s. Social, Economic and Political Studies of the Middle East and Asia. Vol. 57. Leiden: Brill. p. 392. ISBN 90-04-10771-1. Archived from the original on 28 June 2008. Retrieved 14 July 2008. Engseng Ho, an anthropologist, discusses the role of the muwallad in the region. The term muwallad, used primarily in reference to those of "mixed blood", is analyzed through ethnographic and textual information.
• Freitag, Ulrike (December 1999). "Hadhrami migration in the 19th and 20th centuries". The British-Yemeni Society. Archived from the original on 12 July 2000. Retrieved 14 July 2008.
• Myntti, Cynthia (1994). "Interview: Hamid al-Gadri". Yemen Update. 34 (44). American Institute for Yemeni Studies: 14–9. Archived from the original on 18 June 2008. Retrieved 14 July 2008.
• Williamson, Joel (1980). New People: Miscegenation and Mulattoes in the United States. The Free Press. ISBN 9780029347904.

External links

• A Brief History of Census “Race”
• Surprises in the Family Tree
• The Mulatto Factor in Black Family Genealogy
• Dr. David Pilgrim, "The Tragic Mulatto Myth", Jim Crow Museum, Ferris State University
• At "Race Relations", in-depth research links on Mulattoes, About.com
• Encarta's breakdown of Mulatto people (Archived 2009-11-01)
• Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Mulatto" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.