mulatto

Etymology

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".

Latin-based language origin

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 Spanish and 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.

Werner Sollors, professor of English and African American Studies at Harvard University, casts 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 mulattos 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'."

The term is now generally considered controversial in the United States, and was considered offensive even in the 19th century. The use of this word does not have the same negative associations found among English speakers. Among Latinos in both the US and Latin America, the word is used in every day speech and its meaning is a source of racial and ethnic pride.

In Latin-based languages, the default, masculine word ends with the letter "o" and is written as follows: Portuguese and Spanish – mulato; Italian – mulatto. However, the French equivalent is mulâtre. In Dutch, the direct translation is mulat. In English, the masculine plural is written as mulattos while in Spanish and Portuguese it is mulatos. The masculine plural in Italian is mulatti and in French it is mulâtres. The feminine plurals are: English – mulattas; Spanish and Portuguese – mulatas; Italian – mulatte; French – mulâtresses.

Arabic origin

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 of Arab and non-Arab parents. 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 from parents of Arab Muslim origin and non-Arab Muslim people who adopted the Islamic religion and manners. Specifically, the term was historically applied to the descendants of indigenous Christian Iberians and Berber and Arab Muslims who, after several generations of living among a Muslim majority, adopted their culture and religion.

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".

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 Africans they brought from the African continent south of the Sahara to work as slaves. In the early years, mestiços began to form a third-class between the Portuguese colonists and black 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.

South Africa

The Coloured / Cape Malay people from Africa are descendants of mixed ancestry, from the early 17th-century European colonizers namely Dutch, British and French intermixed with the indigenous Khoisan and Bantu tribes of that region, as well as intermixing with Asian slaves from Indonesia, Malaysia and India.

The intermixing of different races began in the Cape province of South Africa during the 17th and 18th centuries, the Dutch East India Company brought enslaved people from Asian regions, including; Indonesia, Malaysia and India these individuals were brought to the Cape Colony to work on farms, in households, as they were enslaved labourers. There is a significant genetic mixture of European, Indigenous African and (Indian) South Asian DNA in the modern ethnic group of Cape Coloureds. Thus forced into their own communities and therefore created a generational mix of people and are to date an ethnic group.

In addition to Indigenous African, European and South Asian ancestry, Coloured people had some portion of Spanish or Portuguese ancestry. In the early 19th century some immigrants from Brazil arrived in South Africa as sailors, traders or refugees, and some intermarried with local mixed race (Coloured) communities. Also the Canary Islands off the northwest coast of Africa, were a Spanish colony, and during the 17th and 18th centuries, the Dutch East India Company, and other European powers brought enslaved people from the Canary Islands to South Africa, particularly to the Cape Colony (now known as South Africa). The Dutch East India Company's ship Het Gelderland, which arrived at the Cape in 1671 with 174 slaves from the Canary Islands and The Portuguese ship, "Sao Jose" which was captured by the Dutch in 1713 and brought to the Cape with slaves from the Canary Islands. These enslaved people were forced to work on farms, in households, and in other industries and many were subjected to harsh conditions and treatment. The intermixing among European men and Spanish and Portuguese women's descendants are part of the diverse Coloured communities in South Africa. Spanish and Portuguese ancestry is not a dominant feature amongst the Coloured identity in South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe. Individual family histories and ancestry may vary widely while the African, European and Asian ancestry is dominant amongst Coloured people from Africa.

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. 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'. Before and after this war, they were counted as 'Asiatic'. Zimbabwean Coloureds were descended from Shona or Ndebele mixing with British and Afrikaner (ethnic Dutch) settlers along with Arab slaves.

Afro-European ethnicities

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

Mulattos in Jamaica

The mulatto class emerged as a distinct social group during the era of plantation slavery, when European men—often plantation owners or merchants—had children with enslaved African women. These mixed-race offspring were initially classified as enslaved, but some were granted freedom, particularly if their fathers acknowledged them.

By the late 18th century, free mulattos and other people of mixed race began petitioning for legal rights. The Jamaican Assembly, recognizing their growing numbers and economic contributions, gradually relaxed restrictions on property ownership, education, and political participation for this group. However, full-blooded Black Jamaicans remained largely excluded from these privileges. This was mainly due to discrimination based on skin color within the same racial group, or formally known as colorism today. Those who were not mixed and didnt have lighter skin were still treated as second class citizens and not afforded the same opportunities as their lighter counterparts. They were somewhat more socially acceptable due to their mixed heritage and lighter skin .

During the early 19th century, Jamaica's mulatto class gained greater access to wealth and education, particularly in urban centers like Kingston and Spanish Town. Laws were amended to allow free people of color to:

Property ownership: By the late 18th century, elite mixed-race Jamaicans successfully petitioned the Assembly for the right to own land and establish businesses. This was partly due to concerns among colonial rulers about maintaining a loyal intermediary class between the white elite and the enslaved population.

Education access: While formal education was largely reserved for whites, some mixed-race families gained access to schooling, particularly in urban centers like Kingston.

Political participation: By 1831, free people of color were allowed to hold political offices, including positions as justices of the peace, aldermen, and school trustees. This marked a significant shift in their legal status.

Figures like George Stiebel, Jamaica's first recorded millionaire, exemplified the upward mobility of mulatto Jamaicans. His Afro-European heritage allowed him to navigate both Black and white social circles, though racial hierarchies still shaped his experiences.

Mulattos in colonial Mexico

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 mulattos. 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 mulattos' 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 slavery. Mulatos blancos often emphasized their Spanish parentage, and considered themselves and were considered separate from negros or pardos and ordinary mulattos. 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.

Mulattos in the modern era

The term "Pardo" was first used by the Portuguese after their arrival in Brazil in 1500. The earliest reference comes from a letter by Pero Vaz de Caminha. Over time, the term evolved from the Latin word "Pardus" and was used to name birds called "Pardais" in the Middle East and the Americas. Currently, "Pardo" is officially used in Brazil by the IBGE(Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) for the classification of color/race.

According to the IBGE 2020 census, 45,3% 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.

Mulattos account for up to 5% of Haiti's population. In Haitian history, such mixed-race people, known in colonial times as free people of color, gained some education and property before the Revolution. In some cases, their white fathers arranged for multiracial sons to be educated in France and join the military, giving them an advance economically. Free people of color gained some social capital and political power before the Revolution, were influential during the Revolution and since then. The people of color have retained their elite position, based on education and social capital, that is apparent in the political, economic and cultural hierarchy in present-day Haiti. Numerous leaders throughout Haiti's history have been people of color.

Many Haitian mulattos were slaveholders and often actively participated in the oppression of the black majority. Some Dominican mulattos were also slave owners.

The Haitian Revolution was started by mulattos. The subsequent struggle within Haiti between the mulattos led by André Rigaud and the black Haitians led by Toussaint Louverture devolved into the War of Knives. With secret aid from the United States, Toussaint eventually won the conflict and made himself ruler of the entire island of Hispaniola. Napoleon ordered for Charles Leclerc and a substantial army to put down the rebellion; Leclerc seized Toussaint in 1802 and deported him to France, where he died in prison a year later. Leclerc was succeeded by General Rochambeau. With reinforcements from France and Poland, Rochambeau began a bloody campaign against the mulattos and intensified operations against the blacks, importing bloodhounds to track and kill them. Thousands of black POW and suspects were chained to cannonballs and tossed into the sea. Historians of the Haitian Revolution credit Rochambeau's brutal tactics for uniting black and mulatto soldiers against the French.

United States

Colonial and Antebellum eras

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).

California

The first pioneers of Alta California were of mulatto ancestry.

Louisiana

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.)

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

Contemporary era

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 2000, 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 90% African, 9% European, and 1% indigenous. Lighter skinned (African descendant 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 are 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, being most prevalent in cities like New York and Miami.

Colonial references

Métis

Castizo

Half-breed

Quadroon