Mulatto and you

[The Larch]

My favourite mangled term I've heard from several US news outlets is "British African-Americans" 

Your black people are unsettling to the common American eye:  they have the accent, don't embrace gangsta culture and are therefore less threatening to white people.   It's like a nation full of Taye Diggs.

What about yardies?

[CountDeMoney]

What about yardies?

They're not in the movies we see.  But I don't see how they're any different than Rastas, Jakes or any others of the bevy of delightfully exotic Caribbean types.

[Valmy]

Besides, black/white mixed race is just one of an infinite variety. I have friends who are all sorts of mixes of black/white/east Asian/south Asian etc.

Well we have centuries of slavery that led to this particular combo being of cultural importance.

[Valmy]

My favourite mangled term I've heard from several US news outlets is "British African-Americans" 

For that large African-American expat community in Britain I hope.

[Malthus]

My favourite mangled term I've heard from several US news outlets is "British African-Americans" 

Your black people are unsettling to the common American eye:  they have the accent, don't embrace gangsta culture and are therefore less threatening to white people.   It's like a nation full of Taye Diggs.

What about yardies?

Only in reference to the Octagon. Not the Octaroon. 

[viper37]

no, never used the term.  I also rarely make a distinction on one's origin based on his/her skin colour.

[garbon]

no, never used the term.  I also rarely make a distinction on one's origin based on his/her skin colour.

I think it isn't so much about people caring about my race but trying to use it to fit me in culturally - as they first step to me thinking that I'm Middle Eastern or Indian.

[The Brain]

Chief Bitchy Purple Hair.

[garbon]

Chief Bitchy Purple Hair.

Most people find it shocking that I used to dye my hair. Damn you corporate world! *shakes fist*

[11B4V]

"Oh, you're high yellow."  So there's worse, I guess.

I wouldn't say mulatto.  It is dated, and sounds like a fucking desert.

I thought it was some flavor of ice cream that gays were fond of.

[CountDeMoney]

I thought it was some flavor of ice cream that gays were fond of.

Like any other dairy product: beaten and whipped, Cracka?   

[garbon]

I shouldn't be amazed, but I am still shocked how 11B extols ignorance as a virtue.

[CountDeMoney]

It's just not his world, garbon.  Not even his solar system. 

[Martim Silva]

Making a quick search, it seems that all this issue with 'Mulatto' is tightly linked with US-influenced 'anti-racist' ideologies that were recently created.

The word, after all, just meant one's heritage and nobody thought more or less of him/her because of that, with everyone living and letting live. It is just when the 'Anti-Racist' crowd joins the scene that the 'racist' accusations start to fly and the racial confrontations happen.

From the Brazilian viewpoint, we have this curious story, from 2007:

http://www.midiaindependente.org/pt/red/2007/05/382383.shtml

Where the coordinator of the 'Brazilian Mulatto Resistance', Aparecida Rodrigues Silva, sued for racial discrimination  the actress and Caritas representative Francis Jr, [who is black], because the black actress told her tht "mulattos do not exist, and that the word derives from 'mule'". Rodrigues also said Francis offended her, by saying that "mulattos are seen as sexual objects".

Francis Jr. replied that she "only asked if she knew the meaning of the word 'mulatto'", because she doesn't seem fit for a social movement to use the word, which she links to the sexual exploitation of the black slaves in Brazil.
"Mulatto comes from mule, which his how the masters treated the black women with whom they maintained sexual relations".

To this, the brazilian commenters note:

"The word mulatto does come from mule, but was not invented by slaveowners, it is far older and exists in the Portuguese and Spanish languages since the XVth century. It refers to the hybrid character of a gestantion, in this case between blacks and whites, like a mule is an hybrid between a horse and a donkey. The original meaning of the word was not to compare someone to a cargo beast, but to reinforce its hybridism.

(...)

What is sad is to note that, in this XXIst century, black people are becoming more racist and intolerant than whites. Not all of them, but those influenced by the "afro" ideology that is disseminated by the left-wing college left that comes from the USA, and which proclaims an identity feeling based upon race (they define themselves as 'blacks', such as the afrcans and dark-skinned brazlians, even that there is no cultural affinity between these ethnic groups). I understand that, for people who think like that, there is nothing more ignominious than the image of a Mulatto, since it his the material proof of the absence of racism, and thus the denial of all that in which they believe and proclaim".

Another commenter says:

"I have to agree with the previous poster when he refers, and well, to the use of the "black" or "african-descentent", or "african-american" terms, which were imported by the black movements in Brazil.

It was the black democrat US senator Jesse Jackson that, during a visit to Palácio do Planalto [Brazilian equivalent to the White House - ms], during the government of Presidente FHC [Fernando Henrique Cardoso], who asked the president that he created a "black middle class" similar to the one that exists in the US. And why did he proposed tht? Tht is the question: since in the country of the Yanks the interbreeding between slaves and whites did not occur in a way as generalized as over here, the population descentent from former slaves remained isolated in the Southern States or in ghettos in the major cities.

Our case is rather different, where most of the population, over 60%, is half-breed and has a darker sink and crisp hair, being the non-mixed blacks a miniority relative to the others. Yes, it is enough for someone to have a little crisped hair and a darker skin tone to be considered "black" by those movements".

[Eddie Teach]

Nothing wrong with the word, and it is more descriptive than "mixed race". That said, in areas with large Asian/Amerindian/Mideastern/etc populations, it'd be a bit cumbersome to come up with words for every permutation. I suspect this is the main reason the word is falling out of usage- there just aren't many areas left with major European and African populations but without significant representation from other races.