Mulatto and you

[garbon]

Incidentally, I thought this would be a thread / poll whether you had sex with any mulattos.

Why would I want to know that?

[Martinus]

Incidentally, I thought this would be a thread / poll whether you had sex with any mulattos.

Why would I want to know that?

Raciss.

[garbon]

Wrong piece. I don't want to think about you and sex.

[Capetan Mihali]

Used in earnest, only by some old folks once or twice -- I think an ex-girlfriend's great-aunt in North Carolina said it as a (neutral from her perspective) description.  Oh, and alsoone client up here, trying to describe who his defense attorney had been in another county -- "I can't remember her name; it was a mulatto gal."

In ironic or self-identifying 'reclamation' usage, I've heard it a few times, along with spinoffs ("Jewlatto" from someone with a black father and a Jewish mother).

[Brazen]

Definitely not an expression I'd use. Mixed race is par for the course in London, but you'd never ask someone if they were in conversation. Gone are the days of, "Where are you from? No, not London, where are you REALLY from?"

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.

[Martim Silva]

As a former colonial nation in Africa, the word 'Mulato' (or its female form, 'Mulata'), used to describe a person with mixed white/black parents/grandparents, is commonly used in Portugal.

It doesn't have any connotation beyond noting a person is part black and part white, and can - and is - used at will. Nobody takes it badly.

(that said, we have a large percentage of the population of pure black ancestry, literally having arrived from the darkest parts of Africa within the last decade, so we're not like the US which can claim most blacks have white blood in them)

In Brazil, where there was a ton of mixing, they take great pride on the sexual shamelessness of mulatto women. It is common to say "came to enjoy our mulatettes ('mulatinhas')?"

(and, during the Carnival, when it is normal and acceptable for these women to dance the samba in public with almost no clothes on, or just body paint, it is known as 'admiring the mulatinhas').

Had no idea this could be an issue in America 

(p.s. - while in Portugal the word 'crioulo' ('creole') used to indicate a full white person born in the Americas [there was another legal distinction for those whites born in Africa], the modern african dialects that trace their roots to the Portugese language are today also known as 'creole', even if spoken by 100% black folk).

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.

Not infinite, and there are terms for those types of mixings, too...

[Brazen]

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

[grumbler]

(that said, we have a large percentage of the population of pure black ancestry, literally having arrived from the darkest parts of Africa within the last decade, so we're not like the US which can claim most blacks have white blood in them)

I was having lunch with the Andorran ambassador the other day, and we were laughing at the idea some Portuguese might deluding themselves into believing in such absurdities as "pure black ancestry," given that probably 95% of the ancestors of any human are also ancestors for all other humans.  It turns out that some Portuguese are, indeed, so deluded!

"White blood" and "pure black ancestry" are really meaningless concepts, retained only because some people still believe in archaic  concepts like "race."

[grumbler]

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

I've heard that as well.  Some news people aren't thinking very clearly.

[Duque de Bragança]

Like Martim Silva, but mulato is slightly old-fashioned, more likely used by my parents' generation. Term is not offensive.

Mulâtre is very old-fashioned in French though, but not offensive, again.

[Martim Silva]

Like Martim Silva, but mulato is slightly old-fashioned, more likely used by my parents' generation. Term is not offensive.

Let me guess, your parent's generation was from Portugal? 

"White blood" and "pure black ancestry" are really meaningless concepts, retained only because some people still believe in archaic  concepts like "race."

You're weird, Grumbler 

"Pure black" means those people had no ancestors from any race other than black ones in millennia, which is the case here - often I have to (try to) give indications of routes to immigrants who just arrived at the airport from the Congo/Deep Angola, who can't speak european languages and are quite lost over here (we have to use gestures to make ourselves barely understood).

[Brazen]

In his Mongrel Nation series about the immigrant origins of everyone in the UK, Eddie Izzard found that in the 17th or 18th Century something like 15% of all Londoners were black. Having reached the city as sailors and made good money en route, their offspring reached the highest echelons of society, including doctors and lawyers. By the Victorian era, black Londoners were all but non-existent. The expert Eddie talked too said that as there are no records of them having left the country, chances were they had bred into the general populace, meaning we are all now a little bit black.

[Duque de Bragança]

Like Martim Silva, but mulato is slightly old-fashioned, more likely used by my parents' generation. Term is not offensive.

Let me guess, your parent's generation was from Portugal? 

Yes, and the teenagers in Portugal don't use the word as often as them. I use it more often than teenagers as well.
Mestiço is more common, since it's broader.

[The Larch]

I'm as likely to use mulatto as I am to use quadroon or octoroon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HHRfuLVfls

Also, must be posted:

[CountDeMoney]

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.