ROFLMAO!
What a coincidence!
I had just read this strip… your comment vaguely reminded me of it. 
My comment was referring only to the intent of the people who coined the word, since it was what ** John Mace ** was talking about. I do not doubt that the way it is or was perceived could vary widely depending on the place and time.
Now, did I ask for a naked picture of you? 
I was just curious about what your face looks like. From your post it sounds like you have an interesting mix of ethnicities, that’s all. No sleaziness intended.
It’s your call, though - you don’t have to post a picture if you don’t want to, of course.
You need the historical context. Terms that distinguished, or even acknowledged, the degree of European blood in persons of mixed African and European descent were aggressively rejected during the Civil Rights Movement of the 20th century.
All such terms (mulatto, quadroon, octaroon, and the very generalized ‘colored’) were rejected in favor of the previously universally insulting ‘Black’. You will find well-intentioned people of European descent, typically over 60, who cannot choke out 'black, know ‘colored’ is … passe, and are relieved to use the dated but acceptable ‘people of color’.
The reasoning behind the rejection is that the terms honor the European descent above the African (which, given the social context in which they arose, cannot be denied) and the assumption that any person of mixed descent was a result of de facto rape committed during (or as a result of) the slavery era.
So, yes, mulatto is an offensive term.
I find ‘mixed-race’ even more offensive, as I find the whole concept of race offensive. ‘Descent’ has only one more syllable, and it doesn’t have the crawling-skin-inducing assumption that there are fundamental differences in humans.
DISCLAIMER:
The above was written by a person of primarily European descent (with ‘White’ tidily specified on a birth certificate), most of whose ancestors immigrated to the New World after the slavery era in the U.S.
And who remembers adults gasping that they could never called a colored person ‘black’ to their face …
Mulatto, bi-racial, mixed-race, whatever - it can all be summed up in one very simple and short word: hot.
They’re pretty much always hot. The guys and the girls.
And you get a honky?
Apparently mulato/a is non-offensive all over the Spanish Caribbean (you couldn’t start counting all the Cuban songs that use “mulato/a”, and there are intellectuals here who insist on saying PRicans are a “nación mulata”) but in actual everyday descriptive speech it has fallen into disuse; if your appearance is of a strongly african phenotype, you will be more likely simply referred to as “black” (in Spanish: “negro/a”), and for every other shade people will use some euphemism to try to convey that you’re darker or lighter of skin tone. Really after 500 years of mongrelization it’s kind of pointless to attempt to continue to use the however many gradations that used to be. In any case as with so many other words, it’s a matter of context and tone.
And Argent, c’mon, KG’s Puerto Rican, you know we’re ALL smokin’ hot.
The 2008 AP Stylebook does not include an entry for mulatto and does not mention the word in its listing for “colored” or anywhere else, as best I could tell. It’s only one source but I think it reflects a view that the term is outdated.
Eh, I wouldn’t use octavón much, but one of the reasons I found my Jamaican landlady’s racism so ironically funny is that she was octavona at a guess, most of her friends were darker than she was, and each generation of her descendants was blacker than the previous one. And yet, she’d exclaim “them colored folks, they just can’t be trusted!” and her best friend would nod “u-hu, you said it, Maaaama!”
If I hadn’t happened to meet all four generations and to know that the fathers of each generation were about as black as you can get (two were Africa-born), I would have called her mulata. It doesn’t mean exactly 50:50 any more, but it does mean that the main ancestries appear to be “black” and “white.”
Many people in Spain feel that calling Halle Berry “negra” is “like saying she doesn’t have a mother.” She’s not “black,” she’s café con leche!
And the PC-language dance can be endlessly amusing.
Exactly - I’d say it’s fine for discussion of historical people, not fine for discussion of your contemporaries.
This brings to mind the genre of casta paintings in Mexico & elsewhere in the Spanish New World. The classification system became quite complicated, but has I’m sure it’s pretty obsolete by now. Many of the paintings are quite charming, though.
(I’d never use mulatto to refer to a contemporary.)
Short answer: It’s offensive in (parts of) the USA. It’s less offensive in certain historical contexts or in parts of Latin America. I always use “mulatto” to describe the ancestors of the Haitian upper class & have generally used it to describe the moderately light-skinned people of that upper class. It contrasts ethnically with “mestizo,” which indicates a mix of European & indigenous ancestry.
(And if you mix those, I think the Brazilians might call you a “zebra.” It’s mostly just a colorful way to describe a given kind of mixed-race ancestry.)
Eeeh. I knew two mulatta sisters. One was… THE. MOST. BEAUTIFUL. WOMAN. …in that circle of friends. The other was the chubby sister with the odd face, not what I’d call pretty at all.
Very interesting link…
I’m wondering how offensive it is, as Dairy Queen still had ‘Moo-Lattes’ last time I was there (a couple of months ago).
This is about as productive as arguing about whether Mrs Obama ought to be called a Negress. Of course it’s patronizing and contemptuous. In the early 21st Century, in the United States, why wouldn’t it be?
All it does, all it is designed to do, all it was ever intended to do, is emphasize the myth that non-European people are socially inferior (excluding as European, of course, people from Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, far Northern Europe, and far, far Western Europe, and including people from north of the Alps, west of the Oder, south of the Baltic and east of the Irish Sea).
Rookie mistake! You don’t ask for a picture directly. Instead when someone makes a claim involving their physical appearance you say:
“Cite?”
As for the OP, as with all terms it depends on your perspective.
First - was it originally intended to be offensive? As per wikipedia, the original term may have had an active derogatory context. But even if it wasn’t, if it was meant just as a classification term, the prejudicial atmosphere at the time makes some negative connotation basically inherent.
Second - Is it still considered offensive? Probably two separate questions here:
-
Do biracial people themselves consider it offensive when others call them that? When they themselves use the term? What term is actually most used among themselves?
-
What is the perception of the greater population? Are others aware that it could be offensive and use it anyway? Or maybe it isn’t offensive inherently but they use it in a derogatory manner. Do they assume that it isn’t offensive and use it without derogatory intent? What is the policy of organizations like universities and media in their style guides? How about etiquette books?
Third - is not just the term, but the concept itself in some way offensive? Everyone had a mixed ethnic background. Putting greater emphasis on only the black portion of this background seems kind of strange. And when you get down to it, there are no racial groups, just racial clines. Just like the crayola box, people may decide to only make an 8 crayon set representing some arbitrary division of the rainbow, but there are still an infinite number of colors along the actual color spectrum.
The answer to the OP then, is mu.
Pure anecdote.
At age 18 just a few weeks after high school graduation, I moved from a small town in Central Illinois up to the big scary city of Chicago. I got a roommate in a huge apartment building. The receptionist lady at the building was absolutely gorgeous, and I definitely had a bit of a crush on her. She looked to be some sort of ethnicity, but neither my roommate or I could figure out what it could have been.
As we were walking in one night, my roommate just straight up asked her what her ethnicity was. I realized it was rude, but I was also eager to hear the answer so I just stood there and waited. Her response was “I get that question all the time… I’m mulatto.” Because I am an idiot, I assumed this was someone from Mulat or something. We looked it up on the internet when we got to our place. Neither of us had heard that word before that moment.
Anyway, that was about 10 years ago now, but she certainly didn’t seem bothered by it.