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Mulatto (Portuguese or Spanish mulato, "small mule", "person of mixed race", ultimately from Latin mūlus, "mule") is a person who has both black and white ancestry. It can also be used as an adjective to describe something as a light brown color.^[1]

This word is regarded as pejorative by some English speakers, who prefer terms such as "biracial." This is because the term mulatto also is used to define a small mule, as well as a term that was used during slave times to define a person of mixed heritage. It is very offensive to most English speakers of today. Its cognates in other languages are not necessarily offensive.

Contents 1 United States 2 Latin America 2.1 Brazil 3 Etymology 4 See also 5 References 6 Footnotes 7 Sources 8 External links

"Mulatto" was an official census category until 1930.^[2] In the south of the country, mulattos inherited slave status if their 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.^{[citation needed]} During the years 1700 – 1800, the term mulatto represented a American Indian child^{[citation needed]}; it was not used to represent mixed ancestry^{[citation needed]}.

The definition changed after the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1868. Government agents recruiting American Indians to join the United States, changed the identity of American Indian descendants to Negro^{[citation needed]} if born from a American Indian women free or enslaved^{[citation needed]}. Children born to European women and American Indian men were assigned the identity of mestizo. 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 Native American instead of mestizo.^{[citation needed]}

Madison Grant had written in his book The Passing of the Great Race: "The cross between a white man and an Indian is an Indian; the cross between a white man and a negro is a negro; the cross between a white man and a Hindu is a Hindu." In the case of Native American admixture with whites the one-drop rule was extended only as far as those with one-quarter Indian blood due to what was known as the "Pocahontas exception." The "Pocahontas exception" existed because many influential Virginia families claimed descent from Pocahontas. To avoid classifying them as non-white, the Virginia General Assembly declared that a person could be considered white as long as they had no more than one-sixteenth Indian blood. Currently a person of Indian and Caucasian blood is known as a mestizo. Many Hollywood stars are Mulatto, more so than Mestizos.

Mulattos represent a significant portion of various countries in Latin America: Belize (approx. 24.9%), Dominican Republic (approx. 73%), Brazil (approx. 30%), Panama (approx. 26%), Cuba (approx. 24.86%), Colombia (approx. 14%), Puerto Rico (approx. 8%), Uruguay (approx. 8%), Haiti (approx. 5%), Venezuela (approx. 4%), and Costa Rica (approx. 5%).

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^[3]. 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.^[4] 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.^{[citation needed]} 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 who 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.

According to the IBGE 2000 census, 38.5% of Brazilians identified themselves as pardo, or of mixed ancestry.^[5][6] 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 is close to other human characteristics like tall and short). Those terms are also used for other multiracial people in Brazil, and they are the popular terms for the pardo skin color used on the 2000 official census.

The term is thought to be derived from the Portuguese and Spanish word mulato (a small mule), which itself is derived from mulo (mule).^[7][8][9] 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,^{[citation needed]} although it is not so considered by Portuguese-speakers or Spanish-speakers.^[10] 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. 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^[11] as well as Leopoldo Eguilaz y Yanguas as well as some Arabian sources,^[12] 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.

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.

• Leopoldo Eguilaz y Yanguas (1886): Glosario de las palabras españolas (castellanas, catalanas, gallegas, mallorquinas, portugueses, 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 Interview: Hamid Al-Gadri

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

Miscegenation in Spanish and Portuguese colonies v • d • e

Negro ——— Spaniard ——— Spaniard ——— Amerindian ——— Negro ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ Mulatto Criollo Mestizo Zambo