Well is it?
A mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, my libido
IMHO, while the term is historic and rather precise, I would think that the association of the history of the word would render it not useable in polite society.
Assume that you live in a middle class neighborhood in todays USA. Your next door neighbors just happen to be an Afro-American(who makes more than you do and got a MS degree, while you got a BA). He just happens to be married to a white woman. (Reverse the genders here if it suits you).
Now, are you gonna call their kids mulattos at the next neighborhood BBQ? I thought not.
This is more a matter of opinion than fact, so I’ll move this to IMHO.
Before I do, I will note that Cecil has used the word in three columns, all of them older than, oh, about eight years:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_049.html
I think the polite term now is “half-honkey”.
“Mulatto”, no.
“High Yellow”, possibly.
It’s a throw-back term, like negro or Mongloid. I wouldn’t say that it’s offensive, but anyone using the term would appear to be “out of the loop”, so to speak. Plus, it harkens back to the slave days, since it was coined back in that era. Nowadays, “mulattos” are referred to as mixed or biracial, and while these terms may carry their own baggage, they are generally more accepted than “mulatto”.
Two friends of mine (unrelated to one another) describe themselves as “mulatto.”
Question: I though “mulatto” was fairly specific, whereas “mixed” or “biracial” are not so much. Example: If my dad is Asian and my mom is Irish, wouldn’t I be “biracial” but not “mulatto”? </question>
One of my dearest friends is black/white biracial, and I know that she and her family consider the term “mulatto” to be offensive. The term, like many other race-related terms, is outdated and suffers from association with a time period when race relations were not at their best. But more than that, the word is Spanish for “mule”, and thus carries the connotation of being an unnatural hybrid, one that is unattractive but sturdy and good for work. I’m sure you can see why it would bother some people to be refered to in such a way.
You are right, but it generally doesn’t matter. For instance, all Halle Berry has to say is that she’s mixed, and most people know she’s talking about a white/black “mixture”. For most white/black biracial folk, their “mulatto-ness” is clear enough so that it doesn’t have to be spelled out.
Websters has for that word:
1 : the first-generation offspring of a black person and a white person
2 : a person of mixed white and black ancestry
These days that (2) could probably define most of us? I don’t think the word is offensive I
think that its just obscure.
OK, just to make sure: what about “coloured”, meaning mixed?
A definite no-no?
Do people actually use “colored” to mean “mixed”? I’ve never heard it used in that way. I have heard it used to refer to people who were, in fact, mixed, but it always seemed like a “one-drop rule” sort of thing to me – anyone who is not pure lily white is “colored”.
I would certainly consider “colored” a no-no when refering to people of any background.
Hmmm, never thought of it that way. My definition could be off, of course - I’m not a native speaker, and it’s not a word I’d use on a daily basis anyway.
If it really does mean “anything but white”, then yeah, it has a racist undertone to it. It’s just that I thought it refered to mixed.
You learn something new everyday!
In the US, yes. In South Africa, no.
In the States, colored was once a synonym for black, and like “mulatto”, “negro”, and “nigra” it’s an outdated term with historical baggage attached to it (when I hear “colored”, I think of those signs on the water fountains). Not offensive in and of itself, but you’d have to be a bonehead to still be using the term (either that, or really really old).
In South Africa, “coloreds” are people who aren’t completely white or black, like people with mixed ancestry and East Indians. So I suppose there it’s okay to use “colored”.
< question >
Is there a regional difference to the offensiveness of “mulatto?” Lamia says her good friend finds it offensive, whereas mine don’t and use the word liberally to describe their heritage. Is there a regional correlation or are my friends just indifferent or naive to the word?
</question>
On a related note, someone asked me if “hispanic” was an offensive term or not, thinking that with my obvious latin background I would know. I’ve no clue. Aside from the more obvious slurs like “spic”, I would have abolutely no reaction at all to terminlogy that may or may not have fallen into disrepute. (I do hoever, react to the way in which language is used – if you use an ugly tone of voice, it doesn’t matter what word you use to describe me.)
I’m interested to know why, too. A friend explained to me that “Hispanic” was not coined from within the community, but that others have given them that descriptor. He preferred the term “Latinamerican”, or latino/latin.
I really don’t care, it’s more about the way someone uses a term. If your tone of voice is ugly, I don’t care if you say “beautiful princess of the world”, I would still be offended.
Beats high yellow.
Marc
I doubt there is any clear-cut regional difference, but I am sure individuals vary as to how offensive they find it. Since the term originated in the Spanish language and was then adopted into English I also would not be surprised if there were some difference in perception between people from English and Spanish-speaking backgrounds.
I’ve never heard anyone say that they found “Hispanic” actually offensive, but I know some people prefer Latin American or Latino/a. There are a variety of reasons for this, the most obvious one being that it is more inclusive of Portuguese-speakers.