Mulatto

The Etymology of the Term Mulatto

Many contemporary scholars assert that the word mulatto is a derivation of mulato, which is both the Portuguese and Spanish word used to describe the offspring of a horse and a donkey. It is a cognate of the English word mule. There are others in the scholarly community who argue that “mulatto” came to the English language by way of the Arabic term muwallad, which connotes a person who lives in an Arabic community but is of partial-Arabic descent. In some Arabic-speaking countries, the term is still used to refer to the children Arabic men sire with non-Arabic women. Nevertheless, other evidence suggests that mulato has been in use in Spain since the 15th century, while muwallad does not appear to have been in usage prior to the 19th century.

On a related note, the modern Portuguese word mestiço has a similar connotation to “mulatto” in Lusophone Africa; it is used as an official designation to describe people of mixed African and European ancestry.

Hypodescent and U.S. Law

Because of policies based on hypodescent, whereby children born of mixed unions are assigned to the subordinate ethnic group, mulattoes of African American and European lineage were considered to be black. Hening's Statutes of Virginia of 1705 codified the use of the term mulatto to describe individuals with African American and white ancestry or Native and white ancestry. In antebellum America, mulattoes of black and white ancestry were considered black and thus were subject to existing slave laws. Similarly, Jim Crow laws regulated the rights of mulattoes, along with black Americans. Even for those without African ancestry who were labeled mulattoes (including those of Native American and Caucasian descent), the categorization meant that they could be sold into slavery legally in the United States.

In the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s, several southern states, including Virginia, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Georgia, codified laws that defined Americans with any African ancestry, irrespective of the percentage, as black. Other states, including North Dakota, Utah, Florida, Missouri, Nebraska, and Maryland, established the threshold for identification as [Page 1500]African American to be one great-great-grandparent (one out of 16 ascendants is black) or one great-great-great-grandparent (one out of 32 ascendants is black).

Until 1930, mulatto was an official racial designation on the U.S. census. Even without the official category, 6,171 Americans self-identified as mulatto on the 2000 census.

Racial Passing

During slavery and well into the 20th century, many light-complexioned mulattoes enjoyed privileges that most African Americans did not, especially those who were closer in phenotype to white Americans. Some inherited property from their white parents; a very small number owned slaves themselves. In addition, the phenomenon of racial passing, which occurs when a person of one ethnic background presents himself or herself as a member of a different ethnic group, may have been commonplace among multiethnic Americans in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Some with lighter complexions and phenotypes atypical of most individuals of African descent posed as white (oftentimes Mediterranean), Native American, Arab, or Asian to avoid the discrimination African Americans faced.

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