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Mulatto (also Mulato) is a term of Spanish or Portuguese origin describing the offspring of a European and an African. The form "mulato" is the orthoraphy as used in Spanish and Portuguese. A considerable number of Hispanic Americans identify themselves as mulatto.

In colonial years the term originally referred to the children of one European and one African parent. During this era a myriad of other terms, both in Latin America and the USA, were in use to denote other individuals of African/European ancestry in ratios smaller or greater than the 50:50 of mulattos: quadroon and octoroon, for example.

Etymology

The origin of the term as given by dictionaries is from the Spanish word mulato, "small mule", person of mixed race, from mulo, mule, from Old Spanish, from Latin mulus. The term was once a generic designation name for any hybrid species, and as a result it may be considered offensive by some English-speakers who might prefer terms like "biracial" instead.

An alternate etymology traces its origins to the Arabic muwallad, which means "a person of mixed ancestry". This hypothesis is not certain.

Mulo/a vs. Muwallad

Muwallad referred to the ofspring of Arab men and African women. Some of these mixed children were usually not discriminated against, and actually succeeded their fathers as caliphs. According to professor Labrado muwallad is the etymological origin of mulato. Another theory maintains that mulato would not have been directly derived from muwallad but from muladi which was in turn derived from muwallad.

The term mulato is documented in the data bank of the Real Academia Española for the first time in 1549, while muladi does not appear until the half of the XVIII century. However, it is very unlikely that this reflected the actual period of coinage. The question raised is, how could muladí be coined three to four hundred years after the Arab period in Spain? Common usage could not pull an Arabic word out of thin air to serve as model. The explanation for the late occurrence of muladí in Spanish dictionaries is not hard to find. Both muladí and mulato would have originated not in Christian Spain, but among Christians living under Islamic rule - the "mozárabes" (practicing Christians and Arabic-speaking Christians), and later the "muladíes" (Christians converted to Islam).

There are several problems with this interpretation, however. Muladí was used predominantly in Spanish, but the definition indicates those that converted to Islam and lived among Arabs. The definition did not indicate phenotype.

The phonetic similarity is not as strong orally. There is a strong need to focus on the accent as it identifies how the word was pronounced and how it could evolve. The term was Moo-lah-dI with the stress on the i. This contrasts with mulato pronounced Moo-lAh-toh. That stress difference is obvious in the plural writing too. MuladIes, Moo-lah-dI-es. Considering the fact that Mulato and Muladí were contemporaneous in use there is still the question of how would the division in spelling and pronunciation have occurred.

The claim is addressed by the Royal Academy of Spain: "The term MULATO is documented in our diachronic data bank in 1549, whereas MULADÍ (From Mullawadí) does not appear until the half of the XVIII century , according to Corominas (in our data bank CORDE there are no examples until 1902). Therefore, it is not possible to derive MULATO from MULADí. On the other hand, the suffix - ato is found in the DRAE with several meanings, among them the one of 'animal young': fawn cervato, wild boar jabato, and Mule mulato. The term would have been used by comparison of the hybrid generation of the mulato with the one of the mule.

Even if Muladí was coined at an earlier date outside Spain prior to the recordings in the DRAE, the existence of Mulato, used in context of a small mule and the lack of the existence of Muladí in Spain would obviate any causational correlation between the two.

Hispanic America and Brazil

In Latin America, mulattos officially made up the majority of the population in the Dominican Republic (73%) and Cuba (51%).

In other American countries where mulattos do not constitute a majority, they can represent a significant portion of their populations; Brazil (aprox. 38%), Colombia (14%), Venezuela, Panama (14%) and Porto Rico

Although when Africans were first brought to Mexico and Honduras they represeneted a sizable portion of the population, there was never more than 200,000 Africans in Mexico (and a similar number in Honduras). Also, they were absorbed there for the most part by the mestizo populations of mixed European and Amerindian descent. Furthermore, when slavery was abolished, the African and Mulatto populations decreased due to continued immigration from Spain and other European countries; Native Americans in Mexico, in modern times, have the highest birth rates in the nation. Thus the African and mulatto population is not as significant there as in other American nations.

United States and Puerto Rico

In the United States, the term was in the beginning also used as a term for those of mixed white and Native American ancestry. Mulatto was an official census category until 1930. It was the racism of the American eugenist movement of the early 20th century which led to the establishment of what is known as the One Drop Rule. The One Drop Rule was made law in 1924 by the Eugenist Walter Plecker. It said that a single drop of black blood would from there on make a person fully black and was based on the false assumption that blacks where genetically inferior to whites. The one-drop-rule became illegal in 1964 but only since the 1980s is it increasingly under attack.

One criticism made in the use of "mulatto" is that it is said to ignore the high rate of racial intermixing in North America. However most black Americans are still predominantly black (average of 17% European ancestry according to geneticist Marc Shriver). This makes them quite different in ancestry from mulattoes which in the US are often even more than 50% European in ancestry. 30% of European Americans also have black ancestry.

This criticism is also fails to take into account that in the United States the historic Anglo-American tradition of the One-Drop Rule (the custom of deeming all people with any amount of African blood to be black) prevented mulattos from remaining an independent ethnic entity through the past 70 years, with members seeing themselves as such. The existing mulatto communities in Charlston, Richmond, New Orleans and elsewhere were torn apart by the one-drop-rule. Yet remnants of those communities still exist to this day despite the official black label.

Mulattos might also constitute a significant portion of the population of Puerto Rico, a commonwealth territory in association with the USA. However, recent genetic research indicates that, in relation to matrilineal ancestry as revealed by mtDNA, 61% have inherited mitochondrial DNA from an Amerind female ancestor, 27% have inherited mitochondrial DNA from a female African ancestor and 12% showed to have inherited mitochondrial DNA from a female European ancestor. Conversely, patrilineal input as indicated by the Y chromosome, showed that 70% of all Puerto Rican males have inherited Y chromosome DNA from a male European ancestor, 20% have inherited Y chromosome DNA from a male African ancestor and less than 10% have inherited Y chromosome DNA from male Amerindian ancestor. Because these test measure only the DNA along the matrilineal line and patrilinel lines of inheritance, each test only measures the one individual out of thousands, perhaps millions of ancestors; they cannot tell us exactly what percentage of Puerto Ricans have African Ancestry.

Nevertheless, independent of their actual numbers, the history of the population of Puerto Rican mulattos is independent from those of the US. Prior to the Spanish-American War, when Puerto Rico became a commonwealth of the United States, Puerto Rico was an integral part of the Spanish Empire, and it still constitutes a cultural-geographic segment of Latin America. Thus, the history of Puerto Rico is a shared one with Latin America.

Haiti

In Haiti (formerly Saint-Domingue), a non-Hispanic country of the Caribbean, mulattos represented a smaller proportion of the population than in many Latin American countries. Today they constitute about 5% of the population.

Historically, Haitian mulattos have been looked down upon by both blacks and whites alike, and used by both when best suited. African Hatians regarded them as no better or worse than their unmixed French progenitors. Mulattos made up a class of their own. They were free and usually had a preference for French rather than African culture. Often they were highly educated and wealthy. This is much in contrast to US mulattos where mulattos inherited slave status if the mother was a slave, although in 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.

Being part of their time, many Haitian mulattos were also slaveholders and as such actively participated in the oppression of the black majority. However, many 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.

Famous Mulattos

Definition of a mulatto:

1. A person having one white and one black parent.

2. A person of mixed white and black ancestry.

3. A person whose parents are any mixture of black and white.

• Barack Obama, (1/2 Kenyan - 1/2 European American) U.S. Senator
• Halle Berry, (1/2 African-American - 1/2 white British) American actress
• Aleijadinho, (1/2 Portugese - 1/2 African) most famous Brazilian colonial architect
• Thandie Newton, (1/2 Zimbabwean - 1/2 White) British actress
• Bob Marley, (1/2 black Jamaican - 1/2 white Jamaican) Jamaican singer/Rastafarian
• Kelly Holmes, (1/2 Jamaican - 1/2 English) British athlete/Olympic gold medalist (800m, 1500m)
• Daley Thompson, (1/2 Nigerian - 1/2 Scottish) British athlete/Olympic gold Mmdalist (2x Decathalon)
• Alexandre Pétion, first elected Haitian president and abolitionist
• Sade Adu, (1/2 Nigerian - 1/2 British) British singer and musician
• Isaiha Jackson, Director
• The Hughes Brothers, Film directors
• Craig David, (1/2 Grenadian - 1/2 English/Jewish) British R&B singer
• Machado de Assis (1/4 black Brazilian - 3/4 white brazilian and portugese) Brazilian writer
• Alexandre Dumas(1/4 African 3/4 white French) French writer
• Fefe Dobson, (1/2 Jamaican/Asian - 1/2 White/Native American) Canadian singer
• Paul Boateng, Former British MP, now Ambassador to South Africa
• Rick Fox, (1/2 Bahamian - 1/2 White Canadian) American basketball player
• Trisha Goddard, (1/2 Dominican - 1/2 English) British Talkshow hostess
• Malou Hansson, (1/2 Ghanaian - 1/2 Swedish) Former Miss Sweden
• Ben Harper, (1/2 Jewish/American - 1/2 African/American) American musician
• Javine Hylton, (1/2 Jamaican - 1/2 White) British singer
• Alicia Keys, (1/2 Jamaican American - 1/2 Italian/Irish) American singer
• Boris Kodjoe, (1/2 Ghanaian - 1/2 German) Austrian model/actor
• Shakara Ledard, (1/2 Bahamian - 1/2 French) French model
• Cedric Simmons, (1/2 African American - 1/2 German) American model and shoe salesman
• Noémie Lenoir, (1/2 Réunionese - 1/2 French) French actress/model
• Shemar Moore, (1/2 African-American - 1/2 Irish/French-Canadian) American actor/model
• Mya, (1/2 Jamaican - 1/2 Italian) American singer
• Sophie Okonedo, (1/2 Nigerian - 1/2 Jewish) British actress
• Renee & Rosie Tenison, (1/2 African-American - 1/2 White) American models
• Mariah Carey, (1/2 Irish - 1/2 African-Venezuelan(mullato)) American singer
• Tamia Washington, (1/2 French-Canadian - 1/2 African-Canadian) Canadian singer
• Vin Diesel, (1/2 Italian - Scottish,Irish - 1/2 African American) American actor
• Michael Jordan, (90% Black - 10% White) American basketball player
• Grant Hill, (3/4 African American - 1/4 Caucasian) American basketball player
• Karyn Parsons, (1/2 White American - 1/2 African-American) American actress
• Sonia Rolland, (1/2 Tutsi Rwandan - French) French actress and former model
• Dwight Wright, (1/2 Puerto Rican - 1/2 African American) Famous college football running back

Footnotes

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.

• Multiracial affairs