Mulatto

Mulatto (Spanish mulato, small mule, person of mixed race, mulatto, from mulo, mule, from Old Spanish, from Latin mūlus.) is a person of mixed black and white ancestry or the offspring of one white parent and one black parent or someone 50% black and 50% white. It can also be used as an adjective to describe something as a light brown color.

Etymology

Mulato/Mulo/Mulus versus Muwallad

The term is thought to be derived from the Spanish and Portuguese word mulato (a small mule), which itself is derived from mulo (mule). It was once a generic designation name for any hybrid. This is believed to be the reason it is considered offensive by some English-speakers where it is not so considered by Spanish-speakers or Portuguese-speakers. The term mulato is documented in the data bank of the Real Academia Española (Spanish Royal Academy) for the first time in 1549. It states "The term mulato is documented in our diachronic data bank in 1549, whereas muladí (from mullawadí) does not appear until … the XVIII century, according to Corominas". They further state mulo has two meanings in Spanish: The first meaning is "mule", from Latin mulus. There is no proof that the term was once a generic designation for any hybrid species, but this may relate to why it can be considered offensive by some English speakers, who often prefer terms like "biracial" or "mixed race," instead. The second meaning of mulo in Spanish according to the Real Academia Española is "a person characterized by strength and vigour".

Another etymology which can be found in some dictionaries and scholarly works traces the word's origins to the Arabic term muwallad, which means "a person of mixed ancestry". Muwallad literally means, "born, begotten, produced, generated; brought up, raised; born and raised among Arabs (but not of pure Arab blood). Muwallad is derived from the root word WaLaD (Arabic: ولد direct Arabic transliteration: waw, lam, dal). Walad means, "descendant, offspring, scion; child; son; boy; young animal, young one." Muwallad referred to the offspring of Arab men and foreign, non-Arab women. The term muwalladin is used in Arabic up to this day to describe the children between Arab fathers and foreign mothers. According to Julio Izquierdo Labrado as well as Leopoldo Eguilaz y Yanguas as well as some Arabian sources, muwallad is the etymological origin of mulato. In this context mulato would have been derived directly from muwallad rather than through muladí, a term which was applied to Spanish Christians who had converted to Islam during the Arab domination of Spain. Rather, the two words may share a common etymological muwallad base.

Demography

Latin America

Mulattos represent a significant portion of various countries in Latin America: Belize (83%) the Dominican Republic (73%), Cuba (approx. 51%), Brazil (approx. 30%), Colombia, Panama (approx. 14%), Haiti (approx. 5%), Costa Rica (approx. 5%), Honduras, and Nicaragua.

The roughly 200,000 Africans brought to Mexico were for the most part absorbed by the mestizo populations of mixed European and Amerindian descent. The state of Guerrero once had a large population of African slaves. Other Mexican states inhabited by people with some African ancestry, along with other ancestries, include Oaxaca, Veracruz, and Yucatan.

People of mixed ancestry also constitute a significant portion of the population of Puerto Rico. In one recent genetic study of 800 Puerto Ricans, 61% had mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from an Amerind female ancestor, 27% inherited mitochondrial DNA from a female African ancestor and 12% had mitochondrial DNA from a female European ancestor. Conversely, patrilineal input as indicated by the Y chromosome showed that 70% of Puerto Rican males in the sample have Y chromosome DNA from a male European ancestor, 20% inherited Y chromosome DNA from a male African ancestor and less than 10% inherited Y chromosome DNA from male Amerindian ancestor. As these tests measure only the DNA along the matrilineal line and patrilineal lines of inheritance, each test only measures the one individual who mutated into a recognizable haplogroup and in tandem the thousands, perhaps millions of descendants that subsequently mutated but remained within the haplogroup; they cannot tell exactly with certainty what percentage of Puerto Ricans have recent African ancestry.

In Haiti (formerly Saint-Domingue), mulattos represented a smaller proportion of the population than in many other Latin American countries. Today they constitute about 5% of the population. In the 18th century, they made up a class of their own, the gens de couleur. Often they were highly educated and wealthy. Many Haitian mulattos were also slaveholders and as such actively participated in the suppression of the black majority. However, some also actively fought for the abolition of slavery. Distinguished mulattos such as Nicolas Suard and others were prime examples of mulattoes who devoted their time, energy and financial means to this cause. Some were also members of the Les Amis des Noirs in Paris, an association that fought for the abolition of slavery. Nevertheless, many mulattos were slaughtered by African Haitians during the wars of independence in order to secure African political power over the island. Earlier some African volunteers had already aligned themselves with the French against the mulattos during the first and second mulatto rebellion. In Haiti, mulattos initially possessed legal equality with the unmixed French population. This provided them with many benefits, including inheritance. In the 18th century, however, Europeans fearful of slave revolts had restricted their rights, but they were successfully reclaimed in 1791.

Brazil

According to the IBGE 2000 census, 38.5% of Brazilians identified themselves as parda, or of mixed ancestry . This figure not only includes mulatto people but also includes other multiracial people such as people who have European and Amerindian ancestry (called caboclo).
The term mulatto (mulato in Portuguese) is not commonly used anymore in Brazilian society. Instead, other terms widely used are moreno, light-moreno and dark-moreno. These terms are not considered offensive, and focus more on the skin color than on the ethnicity (it's close to others human characteristics like tall and short). Those terms are also used for other multiracial people in Brazil and they are the popular terms for parda skin color used on the 2000 official census.

United States

In the United States, the term was in the beginning also used as a term for those of mixed white and Native American ancestry. Mulatto was an official census category until 1930. In the south of the country mulattos inherited slave status if the mother was a slave, although in Spanish and French-influenced areas of the South prior to the Civil War (particularly New Orleans, Louisiana) a number of mulattos were also free and slave-owning.. During the 1700- 1800 the term mulatto represented a American Indian child it was not used to represent mixed ancestry,the definition changed after the United States 1868 14th amendment. Government agents recruiting American Indians to join the United States, changed the identity of American Indians desendants to Negro if born from a American Indian women free or enslaved. Children born by European women and American Indian men became the identity of mulatto. In 1920 Dr. Plecker, founder of the United States office of vital records changed the identity of all American Indians born from American Indian women to Negro instead of mulattoes.

Criticism of the use of the term

Critics point out that the use of the terms Negro or Item in the Phillipines singles out Black people from the rest of the population in the Phillipines, suggesting that they are inherently foreigners and will never be "true" citizens of the country of their birth. For example, a person of one Black parent from the Philippines is labelled as "negro" or "itim" (black), by many of the Austronesian majority and never fully accepted as part of mainstream society solely because of that person's Black phenotype, despite that person's upbringing in a thoroughly Filipino environment, possession of Filipino citizenship from birth, and unwavering allegiance to the Filipino flag.

See also

• Quadroon
• Octoroon
• Quintroon
• Sambo
• Cape Coloured
• Half-caste
• Rhineland Bastard
• Tragic mulatto

Footnotes

1. In the Dominican Republic, the mulatto population has also absorbed the small number of Taíno Amerindians once present in that country.
2. Based on a 1960 census that included colour categories such as white, Black, yellow, and mulatto. Since then, any racial components have been dropped from the Dominican census.

Sources

• Leopoldo Eguilaz y Yanguas (1886): Glosario de las palabras españolas (castellanas, catalanas, gallegas, mallorquinas, protugueses, valencianas y bascongadas), de orígen oriental (árabe, hebreo, malayo, persa y Turco). Granada, La Lealtad, 1886.
• Yemen Reviews 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, 1997. x, 392 pp. ISBN 90-04 10771 1 LC# JV8750.5.H33 1997 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 brilliantly analyzed through ethnographic and textual information.
• The British-Yemeni Society, Hadhrami migration in the 19th and 20th centuries
• Yemen Articles Interwiev: Hamid Al-Gadri

External links

• An article on the mulatto depictions in fiction
• At Race Relations, in depth research on Mulatto's
• Encarta's breakdown of Mulatto