In the 2012 Census of Cuba, 26.6% (2.97 million) of the Cubans self-identified as mulatto or mestizo. [112] But the percentage multiracial/mulatto make up varies widely, from as low as 26% to as high as 51%. [29] Unlike, the two other Spanish Caribbean islands (Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico) where nearly everyone even most self-proclaimed whites and blacks are mixed to varying degrees, in Cuba there are significant pure or nearly pure European and African populations. [95] Multi-racials/Mulattos are widespread throughout Cuba. The DNA average for the Cuban population is 72% European, 23% African, and 5% indigenous, though among mulatto Cubans the European and African ancestry is more even. [113]
Prior to the 20th century, majority of the Cuban population was of mixed race descent to varying degrees, with pure Spaniards or criollos being a significant minority. Between 1902 and 1933, some 750,000 Spaniards migrated to Cuba from Europe, which changed the racial demographics of the region rapidly. Many of the newly arrived Spanish migrants did not intermix with the native Cuban population, unlike the earlier colonial settlers and conquistadors who intermixed with Tainos and Africans at large scale rates. Self identified “white” Cubans with colonial roots on the island usually have Amerindian and or African admixture to varying degrees, as well as self identified “black” Cubans with colonial roots having varying degrees of European and or Amerindian admixture.
Historians have documented sexual abuse of enslaved women during the colonial and post-revolutionary slavery times by white men in power: planters, their sons before marriage, overseers, etc., which resulted in many multiracial children born into slavery. Starting with Virginia in 1662, colonies adopted the principle of partus sequitur ventrem in slave law, which said that children born in the colony were born into the status of their mother. Thus, children born to slave mothers were born into slavery, regardless of who their fathers were and whether they were baptized as Christians. Children born to white mothers were free, even if they were mixed-race. Children born to free mixed-race mothers were also free. [115]
Paul Heinegg has documented that most of the free people of color listed in the 1790–1810 censuses in the Upper South were descended from unions and marriages during the colonial period in Virginia between white women, who were free or indentured servants, and African or African American men, servant, slave or free. In the early colonial years, such working-class people lived and worked closely together, and slavery was not as much of a racial caste. Slave law had established that children in the colony took the status of their mothers. This meant that multi-racial children born to white women were born free. The colony required them to serve lengthy indentures if the woman was not married, but nonetheless, numerous individuals with African ancestry were born free, and formed more free families. Over the decades, many of these free people of color became leaders in the African-American community; others married increasingly into the white community. [116] [117] His findings have been supported by DNA studies and other contemporary researchers as well. [118]
A daughter born to a South Asian father and Irish mother in Maryland in 1680, both of whom probably came to the colony as indentured servants, was classified as a "mulatto" and sold into slavery. [119]
Historian F. James Davis says,
Rapes occurred, and many slave women were forced to submit regularly to white males or suffer harsh consequences. However, slave girls often courted a sexual relationship with the master, or another male in the family, as a way of gaining distinction among the slaves, avoiding field work, and obtaining special jobs and other favored treatment for their mixed children (Reuter, 1970:129). Sexual contacts between the races also included prostitution, adventure, concubinage, and sometimes love. In rare instances, where free blacks were concerned, there was marriage (Bennett, 1962:243–68). [120]
Historically in the American South, the term mulatto was also applied at times to persons with mixed Native American and African American ancestry. [121] For example, a 1705 Virginia statute reads as follows:
"And for clearing all manner of doubts which hereafter may happen to arise upon the construction of this act, or any other act, who shall be accounted a mulatto, Be it enacted and declared, and it is hereby enacted and declared, That the child of an Indian and the child, grand child, or great grand child, of a negro shall be deemed, accounted, held and taken to be a mulatto." [122]
However, southern colonies began to prohibit Indian slavery in the eighteenth century, so, according to their own laws, even mixed-race children born to Native American women should be considered free. The societies did not always observe this distinction.
Certain Native American tribes of the Inocoplo family in Texas referred to themselves as "mulatto". [123] At one time, Florida's laws declared that a person from any number of mixed ancestries would be legally defined as a mulatto, including White/Hispanic, Black/Native American, and just about any other mix as well. [124]
In the United States, due to the influence and laws making slavery a racial caste, and later practices of hypodescent, white colonists and settlers tended to classify persons of mixed African and Native American ancestry as black, regardless of how they identified themselves, or sometimes as Black Indians. But many tribes had matrilineal kinship systems and practices of absorbing other peoples into their cultures. Multiracial children born to Native American mothers were customarily raised in her family and specific tribal culture. Federally recognized Native American tribes have insisted that identity and membership is related to culture rather than race, and that individuals brought up within tribal culture are fully members, regardless of whether they also have some European or African ancestry. Many tribes have had mixed-race members who identify primarily as members of the tribes.
If the multiracial children were born to slave women (generally of at least partial African descent), they were classified under slave law as slaves. This was to the advantage of slaveowners, as Indian slavery had been abolished. If mixed-race children were born to Native American mothers, they should be considered free, but sometimes slaveholders kept them in slavery anyway. Multiracial children born to slave mothers were generally raised within the African-American community and considered "black". [121]
The first pioneers of Alta California were of mulatto ancestry. [125]
The American Guide to Louisiana, published by the Federal Writers Project in 1941, included a breakdown of traditional race classifications in that region, stating "The following elaborate terminology, now no longer in use because of the lack of genealogical records upon which to base finely drawn blood distinctions, was once employed to differentiate between types according to diminution of Negro blood." [126] (Original orthography preserved.)
Term | Parentage | "Percentage of Negro blood" |
---|---|---|
Sacatro | Negro and Griffe | 87.5 |
Griffe | Negro and Mulatto | 75 |
Marabon | Mulatto and Griffe | 62.5 |
Mulatto | Negro and white | 50 |
Os rouge | Negro and Indian | 50 |
Tierceron | Mulatoon and Quadroon | 37.5 |
Quadroon | White and Mulatto | 25 |
Octoroon | White and Quadroon | 12.5 |
A 1916 history called The Mulatto in the United States reported two other archaic race-classification systems: [127]
Header text | Header text |
---|---|
Sacatra | griffe and negress |
Griffe | Negro and mulatto |
Marabon | mulatto and griffe |
Mulatto | white and Negro |
Quadroon | white and mulatto |
Metif | white and Quadroon |
Meamelouc | white and metif |
Quarteron | white and meamelouc |
Sang-mele | white and quarteron |
Header text | Header text |
---|---|
Mulatto | Negro and white |
Quadroon | mulatto and white |
Octoroon | quadroon and white |
Cascos | mulatto and mulatto |
Sambo | mulatto and Negro |
Mango | sambo and Negro |
Mustifee | octoroon and white |
Mustifino | mustifee and white |
Mulatto was used as an official census racial category in the United States, to acknowledge multiracial persons, until 1930. [128] (In the early 20th century, several southern states had adopted the one-drop rule as law, and southern Congressmen pressed the US Census Bureau to drop the mulatto category: they wanted all persons to be classified as "black" or "white".) [129] [130] [131]
Since 2000, persons responding to the census have been allowed to identify as having more than one type of ethnic ancestry. [132]
Mulatto (Biracial in the U.S.) populations come from various sources. Firstly, the average ancestral DNA of African Americans is about 90% African, 9% European, and 1% indigenous. [133] Lighter skinned (African descendant Americans) are usually "more mixed" than the average African American, with the white ancestors sometimes being several generations back, which gives them a multiracial phenotype. [134] [135] [136] Some of these lighter African Americans have abandoned the black identity and started to identify as multiracial. [137] Many small isolate mixed race groups, such as for example Louisiana Creole people, got absorbed into the overall African American population. There also growing numbers of black/white interracial couples and multiracial people of recent origins– parents being of different races. [138] [139] [140] [141] Many immigrants who are racially Mulattos, have come to the United States from countries like Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, being most prevalent in cities like New York and Miami.
The population of Puerto Rico has been shaped by native American settlement, European colonization especially under the Spanish Empire, slavery and economic migration. Demographic features of the population of Puerto Rico include population density, ethnicity, education of the populace, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.
Puerto Ricans, most commonly known as Boricuas, but also occasionally referred to as Borinqueños, Borincanos, or Puertorros, are an ethnic group native to the Caribbean archipelago and island of Puerto Rico, and a nation identified with the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico through ancestry, culture, or history. Puerto Ricans are predominately a tri-racial, Spanish-speaking, Christian society, descending in varying degrees from Indigenous Taíno natives, Southwestern European colonists, and West and Central African slaves, freedmen, and free Blacks. As citizens of a U.S. territory, Puerto Ricans have automatic birthright American citizenship, and are considerably influenced by American culture. The population of Puerto Ricans is between 9 and 10 million worldwide, with the overwhelming majority residing in Puerto Rico and mainland United States.
The terms multiracial people refer to people who are of multiple races, and the terms multi-ethnic people refer to people who are of more than one ethnicities. A variety of terms have been used both historically and presently for multiracial people in a variety of contexts, including multiethnic, polyethnic, occasionally bi-ethnic, biracial, mixed-race, Métis, Muwallad, Melezi, Coloured, Dougla, half-caste, ʻafakasi, mulatto, mestizo, mutt, Melungeon, quadroon, octoroon, griffe, sacatra, sambo/zambo, Eurasian, hapa, hāfu, Garifuna, pardo, and Gurans. A number of these once-acceptable terms are now considered offensive, in addition to those that were initially coined for pejorative use.
In the colonial societies of the Americas and Australia, a quadroon or quarteron was a person with one-quarter African/Aboriginal and three-quarters European ancestry. Similar classifications were octoroon for one-eighth black and quintroon for one-sixteenth black.
Afro-Latin Americans or Black Latin Americans are Latin Americans of sub-Saharan African ancestry.
Latin Americans are the citizens of Latin American countries.
The United States has a racially and ethnically diverse population. At the federal level, race and ethnicity have been categorized separately. The most recent United States census recognized five racial categories, as well as people who belong to two or more of the racial categories. The United States also recognizes the broader notion of ethnicity. The 2000 census and 2010 American Community Survey inquired about the "ancestry" of residents, while the 2020 census allowed people to enter their "origins". The Census Bureau also classified respondents as either Hispanic or Latino, identifying as an ethnicity, which comprises the minority group in the nation.
Afro-Dominicans are Dominicans of predominant or total Sub-Saharan African ancestry. They are a minority in the country representing 7.5% or 642,018 of the population, according to the 2022 census.
Afro–Puerto Ricans, most commonly known as Afroboricuas, but also occasionally referred to as Afroborinqueños,Afroborincanos, or Afropuertorros, are Puerto Ricans of full or partial sub-Saharan African origin, who are predominately the descendants of slaves, freedmen, and free Blacks original to West and Central Africa. The term Afro-Puerto Rican is also used to refer to historical or cultural elements in Puerto Rican society associated with this community, including music, language, cuisine, art, and religion.
The Spanish West Indies, Spanish Caribbean or the Spanish Antilles were Spanish territories in the Caribbean. In terms of governance of the Spanish Empire, The Indies was the designation for all its overseas territories and was overseen by the Council of the Indies, founded in 1524 and based in Spain. When the Crown established the Viceroyalty of New Spain in 1535, the islands of the Caribbean came under its jurisdiction.
Caribbean Americans or West Indian Americans are Americans who trace their ancestry to the Caribbean. Caribbean Americans are a multi-ethnic and multi-racial group that trace their ancestry further in time to Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. As of 2016, about 13 million — about 4% of the total U.S. population — have Caribbean ancestry.
Marabou is a term of Haitian origin denoting Haitians of multiracial ancestry. The term comes originally from the African Marabouts. Marabous are mainly descended from intermingling between Africans, Europeans and Taino but may also have Indian and Chinese ancestry.
Multiracial Americans, also known as Mixed Americans, are Americans who have mixed ancestry of two or more races. The term may also include Americans of mixed-race ancestry who self-identify with just one group culturally and socially. In the 2020 United States census, 33.8 million individuals or 10.2% of the population, self-identified as multiracial. There is evidence that an accounting by genetic ancestry would produce a higher number.
Historically, Puerto Rico, which is now an unincorporated territory of the U.S., has been dominated by a settler society of religiously and ethnically diverse Europeans, primarily of Spanish descent, and Sub-Saharan Africans. The majority of Puerto Ricans are multi-ethnic, including people of European, African, Asian, Native American, and of mixed-ethnic descent.
Afro-Haitians or Black Haitians are Haitians who trace their full or partial ancestry to Sub-Saharan Africa. They form the largest racial group in Haiti and together with other Afro-Caribbean groups, the largest racial group in the region.
White Dominicans, also known as Caucasian Dominicans, are Dominican people of total or predominantly European ancestry. The 2022 Dominican Republic census reported that 1,611,752 people or 18.7% of those 12 years old and above identify as white, 731,855 males and 879,897 females. An estimate put it at 17.8% of the Dominican Republic's population, according to a 2021 survey by the United Nations Population Fund.
In the former Portuguese and Spanish colonies in the Americas, pardos are triracial descendants of Europeans, Indigenous Americans and Africans.
Colorism in the Caribbean describes discrimination based on skin tone, or colorism, in the Caribbean.
Mixed Dominicans, also referred to as mulatto, mestizo or historically quadroon or castizo, are Dominicans who are of mixed ancestry, these stand out for having brown skin. Representing 71.72% of the Dominican Republic's population, they are by far the single largest racial grouping of the country.
Strictly speaking, a "mulatto" is the first-generation offspring of a white and a Negro. Often regarded, even in the 19th century, as an offensive term, the word was frequently used to indicate a person of any mixture of caucasian and Negro ancestry.
De mulo, en el sentido de híbrido, aplicado primero a cualquier mestizo
Although the "mulatto" ad is supposed to be streetwise, authentic, and hip, the mixed-race character's use of an outdated, even offensive, term to refer to herself belies such assertions.
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