Mulatto

Not to be confused with Mulatto (rapper) or Mulatto Mountain.

"Mulato" and "Mulatos" redirect here. For other uses, see Mulato (disambiguation). For the river in Colombia, see Mulatos River.

Mulatto (/mjuːˈlætoʊ/, /məˈlɑːtoʊ/) is a racial classification to refer to people of mixed African and European ancestry. Its use is considered outdated and offensive in several languages, including English and Dutch,^[1] whereas in languages such as Italian, Spanish and Portuguese it is not, and can even be a source of pride.^[2][3][4] A mulatta (Spanish: mulata) is a female mulatto.^[5][6]

Countries with the highest percentages of multi-racials who specifically have equally high European and African ancestry— Mulatto, are Dominican Republic (74%)^[7][8] and Cape Verde (71%).^{[9][10][11][12][13]} Brazil has the largest Mulatto population, known as Pardo in Brazil, numbering about 91 million, 45% of the country.^[14] Mulattos in many Latin American countries, aside from the strong European and African blood, usually also have slight indigenous admixture. "Race-mixing" has been strong in Latin America for centuries, since the start of the colonial period in many cases, many Latin American multiracial families (including mulatto) have been mixed for several generations and now the mixing has been mostly multiracials reproducing with other multiracials. Other countries with notable mulatto populations in percentage and/or total number include Cuba,^[15] Puerto Rico,^[16] Venezuela,^[17] Panama,^[18] Colombia,^[19] South Africa,^[20] Curaçao,^[21][22] and the United States.^[23]

Etymology

 

Juan de Pareja by Diego Velázquez, CE 1650 – Juan de Pareja was born into slavery in Spain. He was of mixed African and Spanish descent.

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 Portuguese word mula (from the Latin mūlus), meaning 'mule', the hybrid offspring of a horse and a donkey.^[24][25] The Real Academia Española traces its origin to mulo in the sense of hybridity; originally used to refer to any mixed race person.^[26] The term is now generally considered outdated and offensive in non-Spanish and non-Portuguese speaking countries,^[27] and was considered offensive even in the 19th century.^[28]

Jack D. Forbes suggests it originated in the Arabic term muwallad, which means 'a person of mixed ancestry'.^[29] Muwallad literally means 'born, begotten, produced, generated; brought up', with the implication of being born and raised among Arabs, but not of Arab blood. 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'.^{[citation needed]}

In al-Andalus, muwallad referred to the offspring of non-Arab Muslim people who adopted the Islamic religion and manners. Specifically, the term was historically applied to the descendants of indigenous Christian Iberians who, after several generations of living among a Muslim majority, adopted their culture and religion. Notable examples of this category include the famous Muslim scholar Ibn Hazm. According to Lisan al-Arab, one of the earliest Arab dictionaries (c. 13th century AD), applied the term to the children of non-Muslim (often Christian) slaves or non-Muslim children who were captured in a war and were raised by Muslims to follow their religion and culture. Thus, in this context, the term muwallad has a meaning close to 'the adopted'. According to the same source, the term does not denote being of mixed-race but rather being of foreign-blood and local culture.

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".^[30]

According to Julio Izquierdo Labrado,^[31] the 19th-century linguist Leopoldo Eguilaz y Yanguas, as well as some Arabic sources^[32] 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".^{[nb 1]}

Scholars such as Werner Sollors cast 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 mulattoes 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'."^[34]

Africa

See also: Indigenous peoples of Africa

Of São Tomé and Príncipe's 193,413 inhabitants, the largest segment is classified as mestiço, or mixed race.^[35] 71% of the population of Cape Verde is also classified as such.^[36] The great majority of their current populations descend from unions between the Portuguese, who colonized the islands from the 15th century onward, and black Africans they brought from the African mainland to work as slaves. In the early years, mestiços began to form a third-class between the Portuguese colonists and 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^[37] and 0.2% in Mozambique.^[38]

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.^[39]

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.^{[citation needed]}

Cape Verde

The Creole or Mulatto ethnic group boasts of comprising 71% of the total Cape Verdean population. The Creole population traces back their history to African slavery and Portuguese colonization. Cape Verde was uninhabited upon Portuguese discovery in the 1400s. Cape Verde became an important slave trade center and linked Africa to the Western countries. Intermarriages between the freed slaves and the European settlers gave rise to the Creole population.^[9]

South Africa

Main article: Coloureds

 

Abdullah Abdurahman

In South Africa, Coloured is a term used to refer to individuals with some degree of sub-Saharan ancestry but subjectively 'not enough' to be considered 'black' under the Apartheid era law of South Africa. Today these people self-identify as 'Coloured'. Other Afrikaans terms used include Bruinmense (translates to 'brown people'), Kleurlinge (translates to 'Coloured') or Bruin Afrikaners (translates to 'brown Africans' and is used to distinguish them from the main body of Afrikaners (translates to 'African') who are white). Under Apartheid law through the latter half of the 20th century, the government established seven categories of Coloured people: Cape Coloured, Cape Malay, Griqua and Other Coloured – the aim of subdivisions was to enhance the meaning of the larger category of Coloured by making it all-encompassing. Legally and politically speaking, all people of colour were classified "black" in the non-racial terms of anti-Apartheid rhetoric of the Black Consciousness Movement.^[40]

In addition to European ancestry, the Coloured people usually had some portion of Asian ancestry from immigrants from India, Indonesia, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, China and/or Saint Helena. 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.^[40] There was extensive combining of these diverse heritages in the Western Cape.

In other parts of South Africa and neighboring states, the coloured usually were descendants of two primary ethnic groups - primarily Africans of various tribes and European colonists of various tribes, with generations of coloured forming families. 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'. But before and after this war, they were counted as 'Asiatic'.^[41]

In KwaZulu-Natal, most Coloureds (that were classified as "other coloureds") had British and Zulu heritage. Zimbabwean coloureds were descended from Shona or Ndebele mixing with British and Afrikaner settlers.^{[citation needed]}

Griqua, on the other hand, are descendants of Khoisan and Afrikaner trekboers, with contributions from central Southern African groups.^[42] The Griqua were subjected to an ambiguity of other creole people within Southern African social order. According to Nurse and Jenkins (1975), the leader of this "mixed" group, Adam Kok I, was a former slave of the Dutch governor. He was manumitted and provided land outside Cape Town in the eighteenth century. With territories beyond the Dutch East India Company administration, Kok provided refuge to deserting soldiers, refugee slaves, and remaining members of various Khoikhoi tribes.^[40]

Afro-European tribes and clans

• 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

Mulattoes in colonial Mexico

Main article: Casta

See also: Pardo, Morisco, Torna atrás, and Lobo (racial category)

 

Spaniard + Negra, Mulatto. Miguel Cabrera. Mexico 1763

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 mulattoes. 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 mulattoes’ 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 their unlawful and brutal incarceration from their criminal slave owners, thus 'passing' as free persons of color. Mulatos blancos often emphasized their Spanish parentage, and considered themselves and were considered separate from negros or pardos and ordinary mulattoes. Darker mulatto slaves were often termed mulatos prietos or sometimes mulatos cochos.^[43] In Chile, along with mulatos blancos, there were also españoles oscuros ('dark Spaniards').^[44]

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.^[45] 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.^[46]

Dominican friar Thomas Gage spent over a decade in the Viceroyalty of New Spain in the early 17th century; he converted to Anglicanism and later wrote of his travels, often disparaging Spanish colonial society and culture. In Mexico City, he observed in considerable detail the opulence of dress of women, writing that "The attire of this baser sort of people of blackamoors and mulattoes (which are of a mixed nature, of Spaniards and blackamoors) is so light, and their carriage so enticing, that many Spaniards even of the better sort (who are too too [sic] prone to venery) disdain their wives for them... Most of these are or have been slaves, though love have set them loose, at liberty to enslave souls to sin and Satan."^[47]

In the late 18th century, some mixed-race persons sought legal "certificates of whiteness" (cédulas de gracias al sacar), in order to rise socially and practice professions. American-born Spaniards (criollos) sought to prevent the approval of such petitions, since the "purity" of their own whiteness would be in jeopardy. They asserted their "purity of blood" (limpieza de sangre) as white persons who had "always been known, held and commonly reputed to be white persons, Old Christians of the nobility, clean of all bad blood and without any mixture of commoner, Jew, Moor, Mulatto, or converso in any degree, no matter how remote."^[48] Spaniards both American- and Iberian-born discriminated against pardos and mulattoes because of their "bad blood." One Cuban sought the grant of his petition in order to practice as a surgeon, a profession from which he was barred because of his mulatto designation. Royal laws and decrees prevented pardos and mulattoes from serving as a public notary, lawyer, pharmacist, ordination to the priesthood, or graduation from university. Mulattas declared white could marry a Spaniard.^[49]

Gallery

•  
  Casta painting of a Spaniard, a Negra and a Mulatto. José de Alcíbar, 18th c. Mexico
•  
  De Español y Negra, Mulato. Anon. 18th c.
•  
  De Español y Negra, Mulato. José Joaquín Magón. 18th c. Mexico
•  
  De Español y Negra, Mulato. Anon.
•  
  De negro y española, sale mulato (From a Black man and a Spanish woman, a Mulatto is begotten). Anon.
•  
  De Español y Mulata, Morisca. Anon. 1799
•  
  De Mulata y Español, Morisca, Juan Patricio Morlete. 18th c. Mexico
•  
  De Mulato y Mestiza, Torna atrás
•  
  De Negro y Mulata, Zambo. 18th c. Peru
•  
  Don Miguel Enríquez, a Puerto Rican privateer
•  
  Examples of NuevaEspana(New Spain/Mexico) classifications of Mulatto and Mestizo in 1763
•  
  Descendants of (1711) Salvador Rosales the mulatto.

Mulattoes in the modern era

Brazil

Main articles: Pardo Brazilians and Mixed-race Brazilian

 

A Redenção de Cam (Redemption of Ham), by Galician painter Modesto Brocos, 1895, Museu Nacional de Belas Artes. (Brazil) The painting depicts a black grandmother, mulatta mother, white father and their quadroon child, hence three generations of hypergamy through racial whitening.

According to the IBGE 2000 census, 38.5% of Brazilians identified as pardo, a term for people of mixed backgrounds.^[50][51][52] Many mixed-race Brazilians have varying degrees of European, Amerindian and African ancestry.^{[citation needed]} 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.^[53]

Haiti

Main article: Mulatto Haitians

Mulattoes 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.^[54]

Many Haitian mulattoes were slaveholders and often actively participated in the oppression of the black majority.^[55] Some Dominican mulattoes were also slave owners.^[56]

The Haitian Revolution was started by mulattoes. The subsequent struggle within Haiti between the mulattoes led by André Rigaud and the black Haitians led by Toussaint Louverture devolved into the War of Knives.^[57][58] With secret aid from the United States,^[59] 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 mulattoes 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.^[60] Historians of the Haitian Revolution credit Rochambeau's brutal tactics for uniting black and mulatto soldiers against the French.

 

Jean-Pierre Boyer, the mulatto ruler of Haiti (1818–43)

In 1806, Haiti divided into a black-controlled north and a mulatto-ruled south. Haitian President Jean-Pierre Boyer, the son of a Frenchman and a former African slave, managed to unify a divided Haiti but excluded blacks from power. In 1847, a black military officer named Faustin Soulouque was made president, with the mulattoes supporting him; but, instead of proving a tool in the hands of the senators, he showed a strong will, and, although by his antecedents belonging to the mulatto party, he began to attach the blacks to his interest. The mulattoes retaliated by conspiring; but Soulouque began to decimate his enemies by confiscation, proscriptions, and executions. The black soldiers began a general massacre in Port-au-Prince, which ceased only after the French consul, Charles Reybaud, threatened to order the landing of marines from the men-of-war in the harbor.

Dominican Republic

Soulouque considered the neighbouring Dominican Republic's white and mulatto rulers as his "natural" enemies.^[61] He invaded the Dominican Republic in March 1849, but was defeated at the Battle of Las Carreras by Pedro Santana^{[nb 2]} near Ocoa on 21 April and compelled to retreat. Haitian strategy was ridiculed by the American press:

[At the first encounter] ... a division of negro troops of Faustin ran, and their commander, Gen. Garat, was killed. The main body, eighteen thousand troops, under the Emperor, encountered four hundred Dominicans with a field piece, and notwithstanding the disparity of force, the latter charged and caused the Haytiens to flee in every direction ... Faustin came very near falling into the enemy's hands. They were once within a few feet of him, and he was only saved by Thirlonge and other officers of his staff, several of whom lost their lives. The Dominicans pursued the retreating Haytiens some miles until they were checked and driven back by the Garde Nationale of Port-au-Prince, commanded by Robert Gateau, the auctioneer.^[63]

The Haitians were unable to ward off a series of Dominican navy reprisal raids along Haiti's south coast, launched by Dominican president Buenaventura Báez.^[64] Despite the failure of the Dominican campaign, Soulouque caused himself to be proclaimed emperor on 26 August 1849, under the name of Faustin I. He was called a rey de farsa (clown emperor) by the Dominicans.^[61] Toward the close of 1855, he invaded the Dominican Republic again at the head of an army of 30,000 men, but was again defeated by Santana, and barely escaped being captured. His treasure and crown fell into the hands of the enemy. Soulouque was ousted in a military coup led by mulatto General Fabre Geffrard in 1858–59.

In the eastern two-thirds of Hispaniola, the mulattoes were an ever-growing majority group, and in essence they took over the entire Dominican Republic, with no organized black opposition. Many of its rulers and famous figures were mulattoes, such as Gregorio Luperón, Ulises Heureaux, José Joaquín Puello, Matías Ramón Mella,^[65] Buenaventura Báez,^[66] and Rafael Trujillo.^[67] The Dominican Republic has been described as the only true mulatto country in the world.^[68] Pervasive Dominican racism, based on rejection of African ancestry, has led to many assaults against the large Haitian immigrant community,^[68] the most lethal of which was the 1937 parsley massacre. Approximately 5,000–67,000^{[citation needed]} men, women, children, babies and elderly, who were selected by their skin color, were massacred with machetes, or were thrown to sharks.^[69]

Dominican Republic

Main article: Mixed Dominicans

Mixed Dominicans, also referred to as mulatto, mestizo or historically quadroon, are Dominicans who are of mixed racial ancestry. Dominican Republic has many racial terms and some are used differently than in other countries, for example Mestizo signifies any racial mix and not solely a European/indigenous mix like in other Latin American countries, while Indio describes people of skin tones between white and black and has nothing to do with native peoples. Representing 73.9% of the Dominican Republic's population, they are by far the single largest racial grouping of the country.^[70] Mixed Dominicans are the descendants from the racial integration between the Europeans, Native Americans, and later the Africans. They have a total population of approximately 8 million.^[71][72]

The Dominican Republic was the site of the first European settlement in the Americas, the Captaincy General of Santo Domingo founded in 1493. After the arrival of Europeans and the founding of the colony, African people were imported to the island. The fusion of European, native Taino, and African influences contributed to the development of present-day Dominican culture. From the start of the colonial period in the 1500s, Miscegenation (Mestizaje), intermixing of races particularly Spanish settlers, native Tainos, and imported Africans (free or enslaved), was very strong.^[73] In fact, colonial Santo Domingo had higher amount of mixing and lesser racial tensions in comparison to other colonies, even other Spanish colonies, this was due to the fact that for most of its colonial period, Santo Domingo was a poorer colony where even the majority of the white Spanish settlers were poor, which helped foster a relatively peaceful racial atmosphere, allowing for growth in its mixed race population and racial fluidity. Santo Domingo as a colony was used a military base and had an economy based on Cattle ranching, which was a far less labor-intensive than the more common plantation slavery at the time.^[74][75] By the 1700s, the majority of the population was mixed race, forming the basis of the Dominican ethnicity as a distinct people well before independence was achieved.^[76] During colonial times, mixed-race/mulatto Dominicans had a lot of influence, they were instrumental in the independence period and the founding of the nation. Many Dominican presidents were mulatto, and mulatto Dominicans have had influence in every aspect of Dominican culture and society.

According to recent genealogical DNA studies of the Dominican population, the genetic makeup is predominantly European and Sub-Saharan African, with a lesser degree of Native American ancestry.^[77] The average Dominican DNA of the founder population is estimated to be 73% European, 10% Native, and 17% African. After the Haitian and Afro-Caribbean migrations the overall percentage changed to 57% European, 8% Native and 35% African.^[78] Due to mixed race Dominicans (and most Dominicans in general) being a mix of mainly European and African, with lesser amounts of indigenous Taino, they can accurately be described as "Mulatto" or "Tri-racial".^[79][80] Dominican Republic have several informal terms to loosely describe a person's degree of racial admixture, Mestizo means any type of mixed ancestry unlike in other Latin American countries it describes specifically a European/native mix,^[81] Indio describes mixed race people whose skin color is between white and black.^[82]

In Dominican Republic and some other Latin American countries, it can sometimes be difficult to determine the exact number of racial groups, because the lines between whites and lighter multiracials are very blurry, which is also true between blacks and darker multiracials. As race in Dominican Republic acts as a continuum of white—mulatto—black and not as clear cut as in places like the United States.^[83] And many times in the same family, there can be people of different colors and racial phenotypes who are blood related, this is due to the large amounts of interracial mixing for hundreds of years in Dominican Republic and the Spanish Caribbean in general, allowing for high amounts of genetic diversity.^[84] The majority of the Dominican population is tri-racial, with nearly all Dominicans having Taíno Native American ancestry along with European and African ancestry. European ancestry in the mixed population typically ranges between 50% and 60% on average, while African ancestry ranges between 30% and 40%, and the Native ancestry usually ranges between 5% and 10%. European and Native ancestry tends to be strongest in cities and towns of the north-central Cibao region, and generally in the mountainous interior of the country. African ancestry is strongest in coastal areas, the southeast plain, and the border regions.^[77]

Puerto Rico

Although the average Puerto Rican is of mixed-race,^{[citation needed]} few actually identified as multiracial ("two or more races") in the 2010 census; only 3.3% did so.^[85] They more often identified with their predominant heritage or phenotype. However, in the 2020 census, the amount of Puerto Ricans identifying as multiracial went up to 49.8% and an additional 25.5% identified as "some other race", showing a marked change in the way Puerto Ricans view themselves. This may show that Puerto Ricans are now more open to embracing all sides of their mixed-race heritage and do not view themselves as part of the standard race dynamic in the United States hence the high number of people identifying as "some other race", a similar phenomenon went on in the mainland United States with the overall US Hispanic/Latino population.^[86] Most have significant ancestry from two or more of the founding source populations of Spaniards, Africans, and Tainos, although Spanish ancestry is predominant in a majority of the population. Similar to many other Latin American ethnic groups, Puerto Ricans are multi-generationally mixed race, though most are European dominant in ancestry, Puerto Ricans who are "evenly mixed" can accurately be described "Mulatto", "Quadroon", or Tri-racial very similar to mixed populations in Cuba and Dominican Republic. Overall, Puerto Ricans are European-dominant Tri-racials, however there are many with near even European and African ancestry. According to the National Geographic Genographic Project, "the average Puerto Rican individual carries 12% Native American, 65% West Eurasian (Mediterranean, Northern European and/or Middle Eastern) and 20% Sub-Saharan African DNA."^[87]

Studies have shown that the racial ancestry mixture of the average Puerto Rican (regardless of racial self-identity) is about 64% European, 21% African, and 15% Native Taino, with European ancestry strongest on the west side of the island and West African ancestry strongest on the east side, and the levels of Taino ancestry (which, according to some research, ranges from about 5%-35%) generally highest in the southwest of the island.^[88][89][90]

A study of a sample of 96 healthy self-identified White Puerto Ricans and self-identified Black Puerto Ricans in the U.S. showed that, although all carried a contribution from all 3 ancestral populations (European, African, and Amerindian), the proportions showed significant variation. Depending on individuals, although often correlating with their self-identified race, African ancestry ranged from less than 10% to over 50%, while European ancestry ranged from under 20% to over 80%. Amerindian ancestry showed less fluctuation, generally hovering between 5% and 20% irrespective of self-identified race.^[91][92][93]

Many Spaniard men took indigenous Taino and West African wives and in the first centuries of the Spanish colonial period the island was overwhelmingly racially mixed. Under Spanish rule, mass immigration shifted the ethnic make-up of the island, as a result of the Royal Decree of Graces of 1815. Puerto Rico went from being two-thirds black and mulatto in the beginning of the 19th century, to being nearly 80% white by the middle of the 20th century. This was compounded by more flexible attitudes to race under Spanish rule, as epitomized by the Regla del Sacar.^{[94][95][96][97][98]} Under Spanish rule, Puerto Rico had laws such as Regla del Sacar or Gracias al Sacar, which allowed persons of mixed ancestry to pay a fee to be classified as white,^[99] which was the opposite of "one-drop rule" in US society after the American Civil War.^[100][101]

Cuba

In the 2012 Census of Cuba, 26.6% (2.97 million) of the Cubans self-identified as mulatto or mestizo.^[102] But the percentage multiracial/mulatto make up varies widely, from as low as 26% to as high as 51%.^[15] Unlike, the two other Spanish Caribbean islands (Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico) where nearly everyone even most self-proclaimed whites and blacks are mixed to varying degrees, in Cuba there are significant pure or nearly pure European and African populations.^[84] Multi-racials/Mulattos are widespread throughout Cuba. The DNA average for the Cuban population is 72% European, 23% African, and 5% indigenous, though among mulatto Cubans the European and African ancestry is more even.^[103]

Prior to the 20th century, majority of the Cuban population was of mixed race descent to varying degrees, with pure Spaniards or criollos being a significant minority. Between 1902 and 1933, some 750,000 Spaniards migrated to Cuba from Europe, which changed the racial demographics of the region rapidly. Many of the newly arrived Spanish migrants did not intermix with the native Cuban population, unlike the earlier colonial settlers and conquistadors who intermixed with Tainos and Africans at large scale rates. Self identified “white” Cubans with colonial roots on the island usually have Amerindian and or African admixture to varying degrees, as well as self identified “black” Cubans with colonial roots having varying degrees of European and or Amerindian admixture.

United States

Colonial and Antebellum eras

See also: Children of the plantation and Shadow family

 

Advertisement in the Virginia Gazette placed by Thomas Jefferson offering a reward for his escaped slave named Sandy who was defined as "mulatto".^[104]

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.^{[citation needed]}

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.^[105][106] His findings have been supported by DNA studies and other contemporary researchers as well.^[107]

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.^[108]

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).^[109]

 

Creole woman with black servant, New Orleans, 1867.

Historically in the American South, the term mulatto was also applied at times to persons with mixed Native American and African American ancestry.^[110] For example, a 1705 Virginia statute reads as follows:

"And for clearing all manner of doubts which hereafter may happen to arise upon the construction of this act, or any other act, who shall be accounted a mulatto, Be it enacted and declared, and it is hereby enacted and declared, That the child of an Indian and the child, grand child, or great grand child, of a negro shall be deemed, accounted, held and taken to be a mulatto."^[111]

However, southern colonies began to prohibit Indian slavery in the eighteenth century, so, according to their own laws, even mixed-race children born to Native American women should be considered free. The societies did not always observe this distinction.

Certain Native American tribes of the Inocoplo family in Texas referred to themselves as "mulatto".^[112] At one time, Florida's laws declared that a person from any number of mixed ancestries would be legally defined as a mulatto, including White/Hispanic, Black/Native American, and just about any other mix as well.^[113]

In the United States, due to the influence and laws making slavery a racial caste, and later practices of hypodescent, white colonists and settlers tended to classify persons of mixed African and Native American ancestry as black, regardless of how they identified themselves, or sometimes as Black Indians. But many tribes had matrilineal kinship systems and practices of absorbing other peoples into their cultures. Multiracial children born to Native American mothers were customarily raised in her family and specific tribal culture. Federally recognized Native American tribes have insisted that identity and membership is related to culture rather than race, and that individuals brought up within tribal culture are fully members, regardless of whether they also have some European or African ancestry. Many tribes have had mixed-race members who identify primarily as members of the tribes.

If the multiracial children were born to slave women (generally of at least partial African descent), they were classified under slave law as slaves. This was to the advantage of slaveowners, as Indian slavery had been abolished. If mixed-race children were born to Native American mothers, they should be considered free, but sometimes slaveholders kept them in slavery anyway. Multiracial children born to slave mothers were generally raised within the African-American community and considered "black".^[110]

 

"Mulattoes returning from town with groceries and supplies near Melrose, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana." Marion Post Wolcott, Farm Security Administration, July 1940

California

See also: Los Angeles Pobladores

The first pioneers of Alta California were of mulatto ancestry.^[114]

Louisiana

 

Three different race classifications appear in this public notice by the executor of the last will of Andre Deshotels, deceased, regarding emancipation of his former slaves. (Opelousas Patriot, St. Landry Parish, November 3, 1855, via Chronicling America digital newspaper archive)

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."^[115] (Original orthography preserved.)

Term	Parentage	"Percentage of Negro blood"
Sacatro	Negro and Griffe	87.5
Griffe	Negro and Mulatto	75
Marabon	Mulatto and Griffe	62.5
Mulatto	Negro and white	50
Os rouge	Negro and Indian	50
Tierceron	Mulatoon and Quadroon	37.5
Quadroon	White and Mulatto	25
Octoroon	White and Quadroon	12.5

A 1916 history called The Mulatto in the United States reported two other archaic race-classification systems:^[116]

From Frederick Law Olmstead's A Journey to the Seaboard Slave States (1854)

Header text	Header text
Sacatra	griffe and negress
Griffe	Negro and mulatto
Marabon	mulatto and griffe
Mulatto	white and Negro
Quadroon	white and mulatto
Metif	white and Quadroon
Meamelouc	white and metif
Quarteron	white and meamelouc
Sang-mele	white and quarteron

From Charles Davenport's Heredity of Skin Color in Negro-White Crosses (1910)

Header text	Header text
Mulatto	Negro and white
Quadroon	mulatto and white
Octoroon	quadroon and white
Cascos	mulatto and mulatto
Sambo	mulatto and Negro
Mango	sambo and Negro
Mustifee	octoroon and white
Mustifino	mustifee and white

Contemporary era

Further information: Multiracial Americans

Mulatto was used as an official census racial category in the United States, to acknowledge multiracial persons, until 1930.^[117] (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".)^{[118][119][120]}

Since 2010, persons responding to the census have been allowed to identify as having more than one type of ethnic ancestry.^{[citation needed]}

Mulatto (Biracial in the U.S.) populations come from various sources. Firstly, the average ancestral DNA of African Americans is about 80% African, 19% European, and 1% indigenous.^[121] Lighter skinned African 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.^{[122][123][124]} Some of these lighter African Americans have abandoned the black identity and started to identify as multiracial.^[125] Many small isolate mixed race groups, such as for example Louisiana Creole people, got absorbed into the overall African American population. There also growing numbers of black/white interracial couples and multiracial people of recent origins– parents being of different races.^{[126][127][128][129]} Many immigrants who are racially Mulattos, have come to the United States from countries like Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, being most prevalent in cities like New York and Miami.

Colonial references

• Basters
• Fernandino
• Quadroon – and other terms denoting the degree of African descent
• Métis
• Mestizo
• Castizo
• Half-breed
• Zambo
• Pardo
• Creole peoples

See also

• Multiracial people
• Miscegenation
• Interracial marriage
• Racial fluidity
• Biracial and multiracial identity development
• Multiracialism
• Ethnic groups in Latin America
• Mixed Dominicans
• Dominican people
• Puerto Ricans
• Cubans
• Spanish Caribbean
• Moreno Venezuelans
• Cape Verdeans
• Mixed-race Brazilian
• Pardo Brazilians
• Mixed Race Day, holiday in Brazil celebrating mixed race heritage
• Multiracial Americans
• Passing (racial identity)
• One-drop rule, United States racial classification
• High yellow
• Redbone (ethnicity)
• Melungeon
• Dominickers
• Louisiana Creole people
• Creoles of color
• Creole peoples
• Mulatto Haitians
• Marabou (ethnicity)
• Dougla people
• Multiracial Antiguans and Barbudans
• Mixed-race Caymanians
• Multiracial Ugandans in Uganda
• Coloureds
• Rhineland Bastard
• Cafres
• Cassare, a marriage alliance between European traders and African rulers.
• Mixed White and Black African people in the United Kingdom
• Mestizo
• Castizo
• Casta
• Zambo
• Pardo
• Quadroon
• Mischling
• Free people of color
• Tragic mulatto
• Blanqueamiento
• African diaspora in the Americas
• Afro-Latin Americans
• Afro-Arabs
• Black Europeans of African ancestry
• African admixture in Europe
• Atlantic slave trade
• History of Latin America
• Colorism in the Caribbean
• Discrimination based on skin color
• Mixed twins
• Race and genetics
• Race of the future
• Historical race concepts

References

Notes

1. Corominas describes his doubts on the theory as follows: "[Mulato] does not derive from the Arab muwállad, 'acculturated foreigner' and sometimes 'mulatto' (see 'Mdí'), as Eguílaz would have it, since this word was pronounced 'moo-EL-led' in the Arabic of Spain. In the 19th century, Reinhart Dozy (Supplément aux Dictionnaires Arabes, Vol. II, Leyden, 1881, 841a) rejected this Arabic etymology, indicating the true one, supported by the Arabic nagîl, 'mulatto', derived from nagl, 'mule'."^[33]
2. General Pedro Santana, who also held the Spanish noble name Marquess de las Carreras.^[62]

Citations

1. “Is 'mulat' taboe?”. trouw.nl
2. Quote: In English and among many African Americans, the term "mulatto" carries offensive connotations. In Spanish and Portuguese, however, and among U.S. Latinos/as and Latin Americans, the term mulato/a (so spelled) not only does not carry an offensive connotation but has in fact now become a sign of pride and identity. (in Grace and Humanness: Theological Reflections Because of Culture by Orlando O. Esp, Orbis Books, 2007)
3. . Lexico Dictionaries. Archived from the original on 28 June 2020. Retrieved 25 March 2021.
4. "Dictionary.com | Meanings & Definitions of English Words". Dictionary.com. Retrieved 14 December 2023.
5. "Mulatta definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary". www.collinsdictionary.com. Retrieved 25 March 2021.
6. . Lexico Dictionaries (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 29 June 2020. Retrieved 25 March 2021.
7. "Ethnic Groups Of The Dominican Republic". WorldAtlas. 25 April 2017. Retrieved 14 December 2023.
8. Montinaro, Francesco; Busby, George B.J.; Pascali, Vincenzo L.; Myers, Simon; Hellenthal, Garrett; Capelli, Cristian (24 March 2015). "Unravelling the hidden ancestry of American admixed populations". Nature Communications. 6: 6596. Bibcode:2015NatCo...6.6596M. doi:10.1038/ncomms7596. PMC 4374169. PMID 25803618.
9. "Ethnic Groups Of Cape Verde". WorldAtlas. 5 June 2018. Retrieved 14 December 2023.
10. Barker, Jean E. (12 September 2012). "Cape Verdean-Americans: A Historical Perspective of Ethnicity and Race". Trotter Review. 10 (1). Retrieved 14 December 2023.
11. "Cabo Verde | Culture, Facts & Travel | - CountryReports". www.countryreports.org. Retrieved 14 December 2023.
12. "Cabo Verde - The World Factbook". www.cia.gov. Retrieved 14 December 2023.
13. Fisher, Gene A.; Model, Suzanne (2012). "Cape Verdean identity in a land of Black and White". Ethnicities. 12 (3): 354–379. doi:10.1177/1468796811419599. S2CID 145341841.
14. "Population by ethnicity Brazil 2022". Statista. Retrieved 14 December 2023.
15. latinostories.com
16. nationalgeographic.org 25 July 2014
17. Nacional ine.gob.ve
18. "Panama". Central Intelligence Agency. 6 December 2023. Retrieved 14 December 2023 – via CIA.gov.
19. "Geoportal del DANE - Geovisor CNPV 2018". Retrieved 14 December 2023.
20. Stats^{[dead link]}
21. "Curacao". Central Intelligence Agency. 6 December 2023. Retrieved 14 December 2023 – via CIA.gov.
22. Curacao, U. S. Consulate in (17 November 2022). "History of Curacao, St. Maarten, Bonaire, St. Eustatius, and Saba". U.S. Consulate General in Curacao. Retrieved 14 December 2023.
23. Bodenhorn, Howard (2002). The Complexion Gap: The Economic Consequences of Color among Free African Americans in the Rural Antebellum South (Report). Cambridge, MA. doi:10.3386/w8957.
24. "Chambers Dictionary of Etymology". Robert K. Barnhart. Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. 2003. p. 684.
25. Harper, Douglas. "mulatto". Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved 14 July 2008.
26. "Mulato". Real Academia Española. Retrieved 14 June 2017. De mulo, en el sentido de híbrido, aplicado primero a cualquier mestizo
27. Kimberly McClain DaCosta (2007). Making Multiracials: State, Family, and Market in the Redrawing of the Color Line. Stanford University Press. pp. 165–166. ISBN 978-0-8047-5545-0. Although the "mulatto" ad is supposed to be streetwise, authentic, and hip, the mixed-race character's use of an outdated, even offensive, term to refer to herself belies such assertions.
28. Nicholas Patrick Beck (1975). The Other Children: Minority Education in California Public Schools from Statehood to 1890. University of California, Los Angeles. p. 132. Strictly speaking, a "mulatto" is the first-generation offspring of a white and a Negro. Often regarded, even in the 19th century, as an offensive term, the word was frequently used to indicate a person of any mixture of caucasian and Negro ancestry.
29. Jack D. Forbes (1993). Africans and Native Americans: the language of race and the evolution of Red-Black peoples. University of Illinois Press. p. 145. ISBN 978-0-252-06321-3.
30. David S. Goldstein; Audrey B. Thacker, eds. (2007). Complicating Constructions: Race, Ethnicity, and Hybridity in American Texts. University of Washington Press. p. 77. ISBN 978-0295800745.
31. Izquierdo Labrado, Julio. "La esclavitud en Huelva y Palos (1570-1587)" (in Spanish). Retrieved 14 July 2008.
32. Salloum, Habeeb. . The Honorary Consulate of Syria. Archived from the original on 30 June 2008. Retrieved 14 July 2008.
33. Corominas, Joan and Pascual, José A. (1981). Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, Vol. ME-RE (4). Madrid: Editorial Gredos. ISBN 84-249-1362-0.
34. Werner Sollors, Neither Black Nor White Yet Both, Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 129.
35. "São Tomé and Príncipe". Infoplease. Retrieved 14 July 2008.
36. "Cape Verde". Infoplease. Retrieved 14 July 2008.
37. "Angola". Infoplease. Retrieved 14 July 2008.
38. "Mozambique". Infoplease. Retrieved 14 July 2008.
39. results, search (17 November 2005). Not White Enough, Not Black Enough: Racial Identity in the South African Coloured Community (1st ed.). Athens: Ohio University Press. ISBN 9780896802445.
40. Palmer, Fileve T. (April 2015). Through a Coloured Lens: Post-Apartheid Identity amongst Coloureds in KZN (Thesis). hdl:2022/19854.
41. Christopher, A.J. (2009). "Delineating the nation: South African censuses 1865–2007". Political Geography. 28 (2): 101–109. doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2008.12.003. ISSN 0962-6298.
42. The Griqua mission at Philippolis, 1822-1837. Schoeman, Karel. Pretoria, South Africa: Protea Book House. 2005. ISBN 978-1869190170. OCLC 61189833.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
43. Vinson, Ben III. (2018). Before Mestizaje: The Frontiers of Race and Caste in Colonial Mexico. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 82–83, 86. ISBN 978-1-107-02643-8.
44. Undurraga Schüler, Verónica (2009). "Españoles oscuros y mulatos blancos: Identidades múltiples y disfraces del color en el ocaso de la colonia chilena: 1778–1820". In Gaune, Rafael; Lara, Martín (eds.). Historias de racismo y discriminación en Chile (in Spanish). Santiago. pp. 341–68. ISBN 978-956-8601-61-4.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
45. Tavárez, David. "Legally Indian: Inquistorial Readings of Indigenous Identity in New Spain” in Imperial Subjects: Race and Identity in Colonial Latin America. Eds. Andrew B. Fisher and Matthew D. O’Hara. Durham: Duke University Press 2009, (quoting AGN Mexico, Inquisition 669, no, 10m 481r-v) pp. 91-93.
46. Schwaller, Robert C. (2010). "Mulata, Hija de Negro y India: Afro-Indigenous Mulatos in Early Colonial Mexico". Journal of Social History. 44 (3): 889–914. doi:10.1353/jsh.2011.0007. PMID 21853621. S2CID 40656601.
47. Thompson, J. Eric S., ed. (1958) [1648]. Thomas Gage's Travels in the New World. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. pp. 68–69. OCLC 229491.
48. Twinam, Ann. "Purchasing Whiteness: Conversations on the Essence of Pardo-ness and Mulatto-ness at the End of Empire" in Imperial Subjects, p. 146.
49. Twinam, "Purchasing Whiteness" p. 147.
50. . Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística. Archived from the original on 13 February 2009. Retrieved 14 July 2008.
51. "Populaçăo residente, por cor ou raça, segundo a situaçăo do domicÌlio e os grupos de idade - Brasil" (PDF). Censo Demográfico 2000. Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística. Retrieved 14 July 2008.
52. "Manual do Recenseador Parte 2" (PDF). Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística. August 2019: 32. Retrieved 21 January 2022. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
53. (PDF). IBGE. 2006. ISBN 85-240-3919-1. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 March 2007.^{[page needed]}
54. Smucker, Glenn R. "The Upper Class". A Country Study: Haiti (Richard A. Haggerty, editor). Library of Congress Federal Research Division (December 1989).
55. "Haitian Revolution". Britannica. 9 November 2023.
56. "Anti-Haitianism, Historical Memory, and the Potential for Genocidal Violence in the Dominican Republic". Retrieved 14 December 2023.
57. Corbett, Bob. "The Haitian Revolution of 1791-1803". Webster University.
58. Smucker, Glenn R. "Toussaint Louverture". A Country Study: Haiti (Richard A. Haggerty, editor). Library of Congress Federal Research Division (December 1989).
59. "Digital History". www.digitalhistory.uh.edu. Retrieved 14 December 2023.
60. Clodfelter, Micheal (2017). Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures, 1492-2015 (4th ed.). McFarland. p. 141. ISBN 978-0786474707.
61. Baur, John E. (1949). "Faustin Soulouque, Emperor of Haiti His Character and His Reign": 143. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
62. Schoenrich, Otto (1918). Santo Domingo: a Country with a Future. New York: Macmillan Company.
63. Philadelphia Public Ledger, January 28, 1856.
64. Deibert, Michael (2011). Notes From the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti. Seven Stories Press. p. 161.
65. Ricourt, Milagros. The Dominican Racial Imaginary: Surveying the Landscape of Race and Nation in Hispaniola. p. 69.
66. Marley, David. Historic Cities of the Americas: An Illustrated Encyclopedia. p. 99.
67. "The Dictatorship of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina".
68. Keen, Benjamin; Haynes, Keith A. (2009). A History of Latin America. Cengage Learning. p. 303.
69. Tarbox, Jeremy (2012). "Racist massacre in the Dominican pigmentocracy". Eureka Street. 22 (19): 20–21. Retrieved 14 December 2018.
70. Breve Encuesta Nacional de Autopercepción Racial y Étnica en la República Dominicana. Santo Domingo: Oficina Nacional de Estadística de la República Dominicana. 2022.
71. Esteva Fabregat, Claudio «La hispanización del mestizaje cultural en América» Revista Complutense de Historia de América, Universidad Complutense de Madrid. p. 133 (1981)
72. . Archived from the original on 27 May 2020. Retrieved 23 March 2020.
73. Race beyond the Plantation: Slavery and Freedom in Colonial Santo Domingo yale.edu
74. "Dominican Republic - Press, Broadcasting, Media | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 14 December 2023.
75. "Refworld | World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples - Dominican Republic". Retrieved 14 December 2023.
76. "Refworld | World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples - Dominican Republic". Retrieved 14 December 2023.
77. Montinaro, Francesco; et al. (24 March 2015). "Unravelling the hidden ancestry of American admixed populations". Nature Communications. 6. See Supplementary Data. Bibcode:2015NatCo...6.6596M. doi:10.1038/ncomms7596. PMC 4374169. PMID 25803618.
78. Estrada‐Veras, Juvianee I.; Cabrera‐Peña, Giselle A.; Pérez‐Estrella de Ferrán, Ceila (12 May 2016). "Medical genetics and genomic medicine in the Dominican Republic: challenges and opportunities". Molecular Genetics & Genomic Medicine. 4 (3): 243–256. doi:10.1002/mgg3.224. PMC 4867558. PMID 27247952.
79. Rodríguez, Ernesto (11 January 2019). "Ancestry DNA Results: Dominicans are Spaniards Mixed with Africans and Tainos". Retrieved 14 December 2023.
80. Group, 2006-2020, Merit Designs Consulting. "Dominicans are 49% Black, 39% White and 4% Indian". Retrieved 14 December 2023.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
81. García Arévalo, Manuel A. (14 December 1995). "Orígenes del mestizaje y de la mulatización en Santo Domingo". repositorio.unphu.edu.do. Retrieved 14 December 2023.
82. Rodríguez, Ernesto (30 September 2021). "Evidencia del uso de «indio» antes de establecerse la República Dominicana". Retrieved 14 December 2023.
83. Powers, Anne M. (26 September 2011). "Black, White and In Between - Categories of Colour". Retrieved 14 December 2023.
84. Rivera, Lucas (18 May 2012). "The Hypocrisy of the "Pigmentocracy"". Trotter Review. 7 (2). Retrieved 14 December 2023.
85. 2010 Census Data - 2010 Census: 2010 Census Results, Puerto Rico. U.S. Department of Commerce. Bureau of the Census. Retrieved July 1, 2013.
86. Bureau, US Census. "2020 Census Illuminates Racial and Ethnic Composition of the Country". Census.gov. Retrieved 14 December 2023.
87. . National Geographic Society Newsroom. 25 July 2014. Archived from the original on 24 March 2020. Retrieved 24 March 2020.
88. . Live Science. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 26 October 2014.
89. "Cerca del 40% de los puertorriqueños con genes europeos descienden de Canarias". 19 July 2017.
90. Via, Marc; Gignoux, Christopher R.; Roth, Lindsay A.; et al. (January 2011). "History Shaped the Geographic Distribution of Genomic Admixture on the Island of Puerto Rico". PLOS ONE. 6 (1): e16513. Bibcode:2011PLoSO...616513V. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0016513. PMC 3031579. PMID 21304981.
91. (PDF). SSC WISC Edu. University of Wisconsin-Madison. 7 February 2006. Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 November 2017. Retrieved 22 February 2018.
92. . Archived from the original on 27 February 2017. Retrieved 26 October 2014.
93. González Burchard, E; Borrell, LN; Choudhry, S; et al. (December 2005). "Latino populations: a unique opportunity for the study of race, genetics, and social environment in epidemiological research". Am J Public Health. 95 (12): 2161–8. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2005.068668. PMC 1449501. PMID 16257940.
94. (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 February 2012. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
95. "Representation of racial identity among Puerto Ricans and in the u.s. mainland". Archived from the original on 12 December 2012.
96. CIA World Factbook Retrieved June 8, 2009.
97. 2010.census.gov July 5, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
98. Puerto Rico's Historical Demographics 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved November 10, 2011.
99. Alford, Natasha S. (9 February 2020). "Why Some Black Puerto Ricans Choose 'White' on the Census". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 23 July 2021.
100. Falcón in Falcón, Haslip-Viera and Matos-Rodríguez 2004: Ch. 6
101. Kinsbruner, Jay (22 February 1996). Not of Pure Blood: The Free People of Color and Racial Prejudice in Nineteenth-century Puerto Rico. Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0822318422 – via Google Books.
102. "Major Ethnic Groups In Cuba". WorldAtlas. 23 July 2018. Retrieved 14 December 2023.
103. Marcheco-Teruel, Beatriz; Parra, Esteban J.; Fuentes-Smith, Evelyn; Salas, Antonio; Buttenschøn, Henriette N.; Demontis, Ditte; Torres-Español, María; Marín-Padrón, Lilia C.; Gómez-Cabezas, Enrique J.; Álvarez-Iglesias, Vanesa; Mosquera-Miguel, Ana; Martínez-Fuentes, Antonio; Carracedo, Ángel; Børglum, Anders D.; Mors, Ole (24 July 2014). "Cuba: Exploring the History of Admixture and the Genetic Basis of Pigmentation Using Autosomal and Uniparental Markers". PLOS Genetics. 10 (7): e1004488. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1004488. PMC 4109857. PMID 25058410.
104. "Fugitive Slave Laws". Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved 30 August 2022.
105. Paul Heinegg, Free African Americans of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Delaware, 1995–2005, Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Co, 1995-2005
106. Dorothy Schneider, Carl J. Schneider, Slavery in America, Infobase Publishing, 2007, pp. 86–87.
107. Felicia R Lee, "Family Tree’s Startling Roots", New York Times. Accessed November 3, 2013.
108. Assisi, Francis C. (2005). . INDOlink. Archived from the original on 30 January 2009. Retrieved 2 January 2009.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
109. Floyd James Davis, Who Is Black?: One Nation's Definition, pp. 38–39
110. Miles, Tiya (2008). Ties that Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-25002-4. Retrieved 27 October 2009.
111. General Assembly of Virginia (1823). "4th Anne Ch. IV (October 1705)". In Hening, William Waller (ed.). Statutes at Large. Philadelphia. p. 252. Retrieved 30 September 2014.
112. "Mulato Indians". The Handbook of Texas Online. Texas State Historical Association. Retrieved 7 January 2013.
113. Sewell, Christopher Scott; Hill, S. Pony (1 June 2011). The Indians of North Florida: From Carolina to Florida, the Story of the Survival of a Distinct American Indian Community. Backintyme. p. 19. ISBN 9780939479375. Retrieved 7 January 2013.
114. Menchaca, Martha (15 January 2002). Recovering History, Constructing Race: The Indian, Black, and White Roots of Mexican Americans. University of Texas Press. ISBN 9780292778481. Retrieved 14 December 2023 – via Google Books.
115. Louisiana Writers' Project (1941). Louisiana: A Guide to the State. American guide series. New York: Hastings House. ISBN 978-0-403-02169-7 – via HathiTrust.
116. The mulatto in the United States: Including a study of the rôle of mixed-blood races throughout the world. Badger. 1918.
117. Schor, Paul (2017). "The Disappearance of the 'Mulatto' as the End of Inquiry into the Composition of the Black Population of the United States". Counting Americans: How the US Census Classified the Nation. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 155–168. ISBN 978-0-19-991785-3.
118. "Introduction". Mitsawokett: A 17th Century Native American Community in Central Delaware.
119. "Walter Plecker's Racist Crusade Against Virginia's Native Americans". Mitsawokett: A 17th Century Native American Settlement in Delaware. Retrieved 14 July 2008.
120. Heite, Louise. . Delaware's Invisible Indians. Archived from the original on 24 July 2008. Retrieved 14 July 2008.
121. "Detailed map of African-American genetic variation unveiled". Broad Institute. 22 July 2011. Retrieved 14 December 2023.
122. Staff, newsone (2 February 2018). "Why So Many Black People Are Still So Caught Up On Skin Color". Retrieved 14 December 2023.
123. "The Mulatto Advantage Summary - 423 Words | Bartleby". www.bartleby.com. Retrieved 14 December 2023.
124. Bates, Karen Grigsby (7 October 2014). "'A Chosen Exile': Black People Passing In White America". NPR. Retrieved 14 December 2023.
125. Center, Pew Research (14 April 2022). "1. Personal identity and intra-racial connections". Retrieved 14 December 2023.
126. census.gov
127. "The rise of interracial marriage — and its approval rating". Retrieved 14 December 2023.
128. "Number of Interracial Marriages, Multiracial Americans Growing Rapidly". Voice of America. 4 March 2017. Retrieved 14 December 2023.
129. Foster-Frau, Silvia; Mellnik, Ted; Blanco, Adrian (8 October 2021). "'We're talking about a big, powerful phenomenon': Multiracial Americans drive change". Washington Post. Retrieved 14 December 2023.

Further reading

• Beckmann, Susan. "The mulatto of style: language in Derek Walcott's drama." Canadian Drama 6.1 (1980): 71–89. online
• McNeil, Daniel (2010). Sex and Race in the Black Atlantic: Mulatto Devils and Multiracial Messiahs. Routledge.
• Tenzer, Lawrence Raymond (1997). The Forgotten Cause of the Civil War: A New Look at the Slavery Issue. Scholars' Pub. House.
• Talty, Stephan (2003). Mulatto America: At the Crossroads of Black and White Culture: A Social History. HarperCollins Publishers Inc. ISBN 9780060185176.
• Gatewood, Willard B. (1990). Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880-1920. Indiana University Press. ISBN 9780253325525.
• Eguilaz y Yanguas, Leopoldo (1886). Glosario de las palabras españolas (castellanas, catalanas, gallegas, mallorquinas, portuguesas, valencianas y bascongadas), de orígen oriental (árabe, hebreo, malayo, persa y turco) (in Spanish). Granada: La Lealtad.
• Freitag, Ulrike; Clarence-Smith, William G., eds. (1997). . Social, Economic and Political Studies of the Middle East and Asia. Vol. 57. Leiden: Brill. p. 392. ISBN 90-04-10771-1. Archived from the original on 28 June 2008. Retrieved 14 July 2008. 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 analyzed through ethnographic and textual information.
• Freitag, Ulrike (December 1999). . The British-Yemeni Society. Archived from the original on 12 July 2000. Retrieved 14 July 2008.
• Myntti, Cynthia (1994). . Yemen Update. American Institute for Yemeni Studies. 34 (44): 14–9. Archived from the original on 18 June 2008. Retrieved 14 July 2008.
• Williamson, Joel (1980). New People: Miscegenation and Mulattoes in the United States. The Free Press. ISBN 9780029347904.

External links

 

Look up mulatto in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• A Brief History of Census “Race”
• Surprises in the Family Tree
• The Mulatto Factor in Black Family Genealogy
• Dr. David Pilgrim, "The Tragic Mulatto Myth", Jim Crow Museum, Ferris State University
• , in-depth research links on Mulattoes, About.com
• Encarta's breakdown of Mulatto people ( 2009-11-01)
• Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Mulatto" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.