# Coffee + Milk = Moolatte! **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 9, 2004, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coffee-milk-moolatte/254198 "2004-07-09T01:12:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![pizzabrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e9c0ed/32.png) [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2004, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coffee-milk-moolatte/254198/21 "2004-07-09T14:28:52Z")
> [@cazzle](#): > > Wait, what is a cafe latte if it’s not coffee with milk? It is coffee with milk. Specifically, it’s espresso with steamed milk. Over here, you can add milk to a cup of American style coffee (i.e., watery enough to fill a mug) without it being a “caffe latte”, though. ---
**Author:** ![NotQuiteAYinzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/73ab20/32.png) [@NotQuiteAYinzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NotQuiteAYinzer)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2004, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coffee-milk-moolatte/254198/22 "2004-07-09T14:39:01Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > If six people say “it reminds me of a formerly common term for a biracial individual that has negative connotations” you rethink it. Am I allowed to say I’m too young (at 27) to know that word has/had bad connotations? I’d always thought it was just a result of not knowing what “race” to put a half-white-half-black person into. Until I saw the discussion here I didn’t think it was any worse than “Caucasian” or “African-American”. Hell, I thought they did that on purpose since the color of the drink is kinda halfway between dark (coffee) and light (milk/ice cream). ---
**Author:** ![Indygrrl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@Indygrrl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indygrrl)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2004, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coffee-milk-moolatte/254198/23 "2004-07-09T14:46:56Z")
> [@Green Bean](#): > > What’s next? > > THE NEW OCTOROON MILKSHAKE: ONLY 1/8 THE CARBS OF A REGULAR MILKSHAKE! > > GOOD HAIR FRIES: STRAIGHTER AND LONGER THAN REGULAR FRIES. > > THE HIGH YELLOW BURGER: IT’S JUST BETTER. Holy crap, that made me loller. Honestly, it hadn’t occurred to me that DQ meant anything derogatory by it. Maybe I’m not as in tune as I thought because when I first read this I thought the OP was reaching. Now I’m not sure. ---
**Author:** ![Cazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cazzle/32/75_2.png) [@Cazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cazzle)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2004, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coffee-milk-moolatte/254198/24 "2004-07-09T14:52:22Z")
> [@pizzabrat](#): > > It is coffee with milk. Specifically, it’s espresso with steamed milk. Over here, you can add milk to a cup of American style coffee (i.e., watery enough to fill a mug) without it being a “caffe latte”, though. Sounds like the same thing as here then. Cafe Latte is coffee made with heated milk, but a flat white is just coffee with milk added (at least, that’s my understanding). > [@NotQuiteAYinzer](#): > > Am I allowed to say I’m too young (at 27) to know that word has/had bad connotations? I’d always thought it was just a result of not knowing what “race” to put a half-white-half-black person into. Until I saw the discussion here I didn’t think it was any worse than “Caucasian” or “African-American”. You can’t blame your age - or should I say our age - because I’ve never known that mulatto could be used inoffensively. I thought it was always a derogatory term. ---
**Author:** ![Indygrrl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@Indygrrl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indygrrl)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2004, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coffee-milk-moolatte/254198/25 "2004-07-09T16:05:53Z")
Out of sheer ignorance I asked a black friend ™ what she thinks about it, here is her response: > [@](#): > > Well, I guess is depends on who you ask. It’s sort of like Black/Colored > vs. African-American. Some people are offended by black/colored and prefer > AA. Others, like me, don’t give a damn. > > Bi-racial is the preferred term over mulatto in the same matter, simply > because that’s what’s PC right now. Johnnie (her husband), on the other hand, will refer > to himself as both. > > But, DQ’s marketing folks should have thought through all this before naming > their product. It’s classic of what happens when there are a bunch of old, > white men in a room making a decision like this. ---
**Author:** ![pizzabrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e9c0ed/32.png) [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2004, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coffee-milk-moolatte/254198/26 "2004-07-10T04:46:40Z")
> [@Indygrrl](#): > > Out of sheer ignorance I asked a black friend ™ what she thinks about it, here is her response: It’s only offensive if you think about it. If you’re just taught that mulatto means a child w/ black & white parents and leave it at that, then it’s just a superficial title. But if you realized that “mulatto” is also Spanish for “mule”- the offspring of a horse and a donkey - you can start to connect the offensive dots. It’s the same with “Moolatte”. An etymology freak like me can’t accept that DQ gave their drink such a clumsy and unattractive name that doesn’t roll off of your tongue in any way nor accurately describe the product for absolutely no reason. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2004, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coffee-milk-moolatte/254198/27 "2004-07-10T13:28:18Z")
The offensiveness argument aside, I disagree with posters who believe that the name is coincidental or unintentional. “Coffee-colored” is or was a common-enough description of a lighter-skinned black person. A coffee-colored drink called a “Moolatte” is not a merry mixup. Whether the company made the connection is a different question. I would suspect that if this becomes a PC flap, the company will deny any connection and promptly sue their ad firm. ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2004, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coffee-milk-moolatte/254198/28 "2004-07-10T13:44:41Z")
I have a hard time believing that a company would decide to traverse the minefield of race on purpose. Usually, they go to ridiculous lengths to AVOID such things. ---
**Author:** ![Weirddave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/919ad9/32.png) [@Weirddave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weirddave)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2004, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coffee-milk-moolatte/254198/29 "2004-07-10T14:38:46Z")
> [@pizzabrat](#): > > It’s only offensive if you think about it. If you’re just taught that mulatto means a child w/ black & white parents and leave it at that, then it’s just a superficial title. But if you realized that “mulatto” is also Spanish for “mule”- the offspring of a horse and a donkey - you can start to connect the offensive dots. It’s the same with “Moolatte”. An etymology freak like me can’t accept that DQ gave their drink such a clumsy and unattractive name that doesn’t roll off of your tongue in any way nor accurately describe the product for absolutely no reason. I am disgusted with this entire thing. The US still has real problems with race today, with people being denyed jobs or housing because of race, others facing violence or death for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and being the wrong color. These are the ghosts of hundreds of years of racism and slavery that haunt us to this day, real, legitimate concerns in our society that must be addressed. All that, and we get this shit? People upset because a product has a name that sounds kinda like an english word that usually means “person of mixed black and white parents”, yet in another language that word is a secondary term for “mule”? Is that what the race struggle has come to in America? Please tell me if that’s the case, because if so, I will conclude that the race problem is over and that blacks are fully emancipated, because if they have enough time to worry about remarkably stupid imaginary slights, then nothing of substance can be wrong. Honestly, pizzabrat, don’t you see the harm you are doing here? Things like this, people up in arms about use of the perfectly innocent term niggardly to the point that a man gets fired from his job, Al Sharpton flying into Chicago for a “civil rights” protest when a black man is shot, only to turn right around and go home when he learns that the officer who shot him was black too, negating the viability of the incident for political hay, almost everything Jessie Jackson does, [California Representative Mervyn Dymally and Isis D’Luciano](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=265620), the list goes on and on. Do you not see how crying wolf over all of these stupid things, again and again and again and again trivializes the racial divide in this country to the point that legitimate racial complaints are lost in the cacophony? Many people in this country, both white and black, believe that the civil rights movement of the 60s has morphed into a political power base that needs to continually manufacture outrage, weather it exists or not, in order to justify it’s existance and outrage it’s power base into continuing to support it. In this it’s no different than the AARP or the Republican Party, but please, think about the harm this approach is doing to race relations in America. ---
**Author:** ![pizzabrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e9c0ed/32.png) [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2004, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coffee-milk-moolatte/254198/30 "2004-07-10T15:03:13Z")
> [@Weirddave](#): > > People upset because a product has a name that sounds kinda like an english word that usually means “person of mixed black and white parents”, yet in another language that word is a secondary term for “mule”? Why do you keep overreacting like this… I’m not upset. Nobody’s upset. I think “Moolatte” is funny (as in, the idea that a mainstream product would be named after a racial term is funny). I was merely explaining the etymology of the word “mulatto” and why it could be considered pejorative because it came up as a hijack. Then I was just continuing my argument that “Moolatte” is, of course, a pun, because it wouldn’t make sense as a name if it wasn’t. On review of my post, I see that it was ambigous and confusing, but no, I’m not saying that I find “Moolatte” offensive. > [@Retvim](#): > > I have a hard time believing that a company would decide to traverse the minefield of race on purpose. Usually, they go to ridiculous lengths to AVOID such things. [www.i-am-asian.com](http://www.i-am-asian.com), [356Black](http://www.mcdonalds.com/usa/fun/365black.html). That’s just McDonalds. Really, though, where’d you get that belief from? ---
**Author:** ![Unregistered\_Bull](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3da27b/32.png) [@Unregistered\_Bull](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unregistered_Bull)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2004, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coffee-milk-moolatte/254198/31 "2004-07-10T15:13:42Z")
> [@pizzabrat](#): > > It’s only offensive if you think about it. If you’re just taught that mulatto means a child w/ black & white parents and leave it at that, then it’s just a superficial title. But if you realized that “mulatto” is also Spanish for “mule”- the offspring of a horse and a donkey - you can start to connect the offensive dots. It’s the same with “Moolatte”. An etymology freak like me can’t accept that DQ gave their drink such a clumsy and unattractive name that doesn’t roll off of your tongue in any way nor accurately describe the product for absolutely no reason. Spanish would probably only use one “t”. And “mulato y mulata” only mean what it does is in English (half black) to my knowledge. And “mula” is the word for mule. What dialect are you using? Are you pissed that “churro” (a tub shaped pastry with ridges covered in cinnamon and sugar) sounds/looks too much like “chorra” (slang for penis)? ---
**Author:** ![Weirddave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/919ad9/32.png) [@Weirddave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weirddave)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2004, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coffee-milk-moolatte/254198/32 "2004-07-10T15:14:35Z")
> [@pizzabrat](#): > > Why do you keep overreacting like this… I’m not upset. Nobody’s upset. I think “Moolatte” is funny (as in, the idea that a mainstream product would be named after a racial term is funny). I was merely explaining the etymology of the word “mulatto” and why it could be considered pejorative because it came up as a hijack. Then I was just continuing my argument that “Moolatte” is, of course, a pun, because it wouldn’t make sense as a name if it wasn’t. > > On review of my post, I see that it was ambigous and confusing, but no, I’m not saying that I find “Moolatte” offensive. Oh. I thought you did. [Emily Letella] Nevermind [/Emily Letella] But let me ask you, if I had been correct, and you were seriously upset at the DQ folks, would my post still be “overreacting”? ---
**Author:** ![pizzabrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e9c0ed/32.png) [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2004, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coffee-milk-moolatte/254198/33 "2004-07-10T15:18:14Z")
> [@Machetero](#): > > Spanish would probably only use one “t”. And “mulato y mulata” only mean what it does is in English (half black) to my knowledge. And “mula” is the word for mule. What dialect are you using? Yeah, somebody just corrected me about that this morning. Looks like I was wrong about that the whole time… Heh. > [@](#): > > Are you pissed that “churro” (a tub shaped pastry with ridges covered in cinnamon and sugar) sounds/looks too much like “chorra” (slang for penis)? No… Why would I be pissed? ---
**Author:** ![Unregistered\_Bull](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3da27b/32.png) [@Unregistered\_Bull](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unregistered_Bull)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2004, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coffee-milk-moolatte/254198/34 "2004-07-10T15:28:28Z")
I should have interjected a smiley. I just think both are rather insignificant coincidences that won’t even cross the majority of peoples minds nor tick that many folks off. ---
**Author:** ![pizzabrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e9c0ed/32.png) [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2004, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coffee-milk-moolatte/254198/35 "2004-07-10T16:01:44Z")
> [@Weirddave](#): > > But let me ask you, if I had been correct, and you were seriously upset at the DQ folks, would my post still be “overreacting”? No. I probably would be just as angry as you are. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coffee-milk-moolatte/254198.md?page=1)