Mulatto
Mulatto is a racial classification that refers to people of mixed Sub-Saharan African and European ancestry only. When speaking or writing about a singular woman in English, the word is mulatta. The use of this term began in areas that later became the United States shortly after the Atlantic slave trade began. Although it has been employed in derogatory contexts, some mixed-race communities reject the claim that the term is inherently offensive and instead regard it as a descriptor that has been mischaracterized by individuals who are not of mixed-race origin. After the post Civil Rights Era, the term is now considered to be controversial in the United States. In other Anglophone countries such as English and Dutch-speaking West Indian countries, the word mulatto is used to this day.
Countries with the highest percentages of persons who have equally high European and sub-Saharan African ancestry — Mulatto — are the Dominican Republic and Cape Verde. Mulattos in many Latin American countries, aside from predominately European and sub-Saharan African ancestry, usually also have slight indigenous admixture. Race-mixing has been prevalent in Latin America for centuries, since the start of the European colonization of the Americas in many cases. Many Latin American multiracial families have been mixed for several generations. In the 21st century, multiracials now frequently have unions and marriages with other multiracials. Other countries and territories with notable mulatto populations in percentage or total number include Cuba, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Panama, Colombia, South Africa, and the United States.
Etymology
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 Spanish and Portuguese word mula, meaning 'mule', the hybrid offspring of a horse and a donkey. The Real Academia Española traces its origin to mulo in the sense of hybridity; originally used to refer to any mixed race person. The term is now generally considered controversial in non-Spanish and non-Portuguese speaking countries, and was considered offensive even in the 19th century.Jack D. Forbes suggests it originated in the Arabic term muwallad, which means 'a person of mixed ancestry'. Muwallad literally means 'born, begotten, produced, generated; brought up', with the implication of being born of Arab and non-Arab parents. Muwallad is derived from the root word WaLaD and colloquial Arabic pronunciation can vary greatly. Walad means 'descendant, offspring, scion; child; son; boy; young animal, young one'.
In al-Andalus, muwallad referred to the offspring from parents of Arab Muslim origin and non-Arab Muslim people who adopted the Islamic religion and manners. Specifically, the term was historically applied to the descendants of Arab or Berber Muslims and indigenous Christian Iberians who, after several generations of living among a Muslim majority, adopted their culture and religion.
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".
According to Julio Izquierdo Labrado, the 19th-century linguist Leopoldo Eguilaz y Yanguas, as well as some Arabic sources 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 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 does not appear until the 18th century, according to Joan Coromines| Corominas".
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 mulattos 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'."
The use of this word does not have the same negative associations found among English speakers. Among Latinos in both the US and Latin America, the word is used in every day speech and its meaning is a source of racial and ethnic pride. In four of the Latin-based languages, the default, masculine word ends with the letter "o" and is written as follows: Spanish and Portuguese – mulato; Italian – mulatto. The French equivalent is mulâtre. In English, the masculine plural is written as mulattos while in Spanish and Portuguese it is mulatos. The masculine plural in Italian is mulatti and in French it is mulâtres. The feminine plurals are: English – mulattas; Spanish and Portuguese – mulatas; Italian – mulatte; French – mulâtresses.
Africa
Of São Tomé and Príncipe's 193,413 inhabitants, the largest segment is classified as mestiço, or mixed race. 71% of the population of Cape Verde is also classified as such. The great majority of their current populations descend from unions between the Portuguese, who colonized the islands from the 15th century onward, and Africans they brought from the African continent south of the Sahara to work as slaves. In the early years, mestiços began to form a third-class between the Portuguese colonists and black 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 and 0.2% in Mozambique.
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.
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'. 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.
South Africa
The Coloured / Cape Malay people from Africa are descendants of mixed ancestry, from the early 17th-century European colonizers namely Dutch, British and French intermixed with the indigenous Khoisan and Bantu tribes of that region, as well as intermixing with Asian slaves from Indonesia, Malaysia and India.The intermixing of different races began in the Cape province of South Africa during the 17th and 18th centuries, the Dutch east India company brought enslaved people from Asian regions, including; Indonesia, Malaysia and India these individuals were brought to the Cape Colony to work on farms, in households, as they were enslaved labourers. There is a significant genetic mixture of European, African and Asian DNA in the modern ethnic group of Coloured people. Thus forced into their own communities and therefore created a generational mix of people and are to date an ethnic group.
In addition to African, European and Asian ancestry, Coloured people had some portion of Spanish or Portuguese ancestry. In the early 19th century some immigrants from Brazil arrived in South Africa as sailors, traders or refugees, and some intermarried with local mixed race communities. Also the Canary Islands off the northwest coast of Africa, were a Spanish colony, and during the 17th and 18th centuries, the Dutch east India Company and other European powers brought enslaved people from the Canary Islands to South Africa, particularly to the Cape Colony. The Dutch East India Company's ship Het Gelderland, which arrived at the Cape in 1671 with 174 slaves from the Canary Islands and The Portuguese ship, "Sao Jose" which was captured by the Dutch in 1713 and brought to the Cape with slaves from the Canary Islands. These enslaved people were forced to work on farms, in households, and in other industries and many were subjected to harsh conditions and treatment. The intermixing among European men and Spanish and Portuguese women's descendants are part of the diverse Coloured communities in South Africa. Spanish and Portuguese ancestry is not a dominant feature amongst the Coloured identity in South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe. Individual family histories and ancestry may vary widely while the African, European and Asian ancestry is dominant amongst Coloured people from Africa.
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. The use of the term Coloured has changed over the course of history. For instance, in the first census after the South African war, Indians were counted as 'Coloured'. Before and after this war, they were counted as 'Asiatic'. Zimbabwean Coloureds were descended from Shona or Ndebele mixing with British and Afrikaner settlers and Arab slaves.
Griqua, on the other hand, are descendants of Khoisan and Afrikaner trekboers. The Griqua were subjected to an ambiguity of other creole people within Southern African social order. According to Nurse and Jenkins, 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.