Mulatto

Mulatto is a term commonly used to refer to a person who is born from one white parent and one black parent, or more broadly, a person of any "mixed" ancestry.

The term is not commonly used any more but is generally considered archaic because of its association with slavery, colonial and racial oppression; accepted modern terms include "mixed" and "biracial".

Mulattos may also include admixture of Native Americans, or indigenous groups of South America, and African Americans according to Henings Statutes of Virginia 1705, which 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 Indigenous and the child, grand child, or great grand child, of a negro shall be deemed, accounted, held and taken to be a mulatto."

In colonial Latin America, mulato could also denote an individual of mixed African and Native American ancestry.  However, today those who are mixtures of indigenous peoples of the Americas and Black Africans are called Zambos while those who are mixtures of African American and Native American are called Black Indians and sometimes are solely classified or identify as African American.

To further complicate matters, in early American history the term mulatto is also seen regarding Native American and European mixed offspring, and certain tribes of Indians of the Inocoplo family referred to themselves as mulatto as well.

Studies carried out by the geneticist Sergio Pena conclude the average white Brazilian is 80% European, 10% Amerindian, and 10% African/black. Another study, carried out by the Brazilian Journal of Medical and Biological Research, concludes the average white Brazilian is (>70%) European. Mulattoes represent a significant part of the population of various Latin American and Caribbean countries: Dominican Republic (73%) (all mixed race people), Brazil (49.6% mulattoes, mestizos/mamelucos and blacks), Belize (25%), Cuba (24.86%),Colombia (25%), Haiti (15-20%).

The term mulatto (mulato in Portuguese) does not carry a racist connotation and is used along with other terms like moreno, light-moreno and dark-moreno. These focus more on the skin color than on the ethnicity, although they can refer to hair color alone - e.g. "light-moreno" would be "caucasian brunette". Such terms are also used for other multiracial people in Brazil, and they are the popular terms for the pardo skin color used on the 2000 official census.

Creole woman of color with black servant, New Orleans, 1867

During the European colonization of the Americas, the rape of African slave women was not held to be a crime under Colonial Law. Under chattel slavery, white slave masters often raped their female subjects, producing varying degrees of mulatto offspring. Depending on the offspring's phenotype, they would continue living as slaves (as their mothers), specifically in the Southern United States, mulattoes inherited slave status if their mothers were slaves. Some offspring were afforded the life of passing for white. This practice continued throughout the course of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, involving many generations, producing posterity with varying degrees of sub-Saharan and European genetic ancestry and a very broad range of phenotypes. For example, present-day descendants of these offspring can appear solely sub-Saharan in lineage, including having extremely afro-textured hair, or possess purely Nordic physical traits. This type of legacy has produced the debatable sub-Saharan/Caucasian admixture that exists among Americans today, as well as in populations in other parts of the world.

As for free mulattoes, in Spanish- and French-influenced areas of the South prior to the Civil War. Some white slave owners, who continued the legacy of slave rape, were also of mixed ancestry. This posterity, enduring changing social and political climates in American history, often interbred and intermarried among other populations, such as Native Americans; and some resulting from miscegenation, such as Black Indians (see Melungeon). These circumstances further contributed to the modern day genetic melting pot in America.

Contemporary Era

Further information: Multiracial American

Mulatto existed as an official census category until 1930. Although it is sometimes used to describe individuals of mixed European and African descent, it originally referred to anyone with mixed ethnicities; in fact, in the United States, "mulatto" was also used as a term for those who were African American and Native American ancestry during the early census years. 

Porschla Coleman

(aka Porschla Kidd)

Jasmine Sanders 

Ethnicity : Black Father  / German Mother

Hair color : Dark blonde

Eye color : Blue

Place of Birth : Germany

Sabina Karlsson

Nationality : Swedish

Hair color : Red / brown

Eye color : Brown

Ethnicity : Swedish / AfricanHeight

Michelle Carvalho

Nationality : Brazilian

Hair color : Light brown

Eye color : Green

Pencil test (South Africa)

The pencil test is a method of assessing whether a person has Afro-textured hair. In the pencil test, a pencil is pushed through the person's hair. How easily it comes out determines whether the person has "passed" or "failed" the test.

This test was used to determine racial identity in South Africa during the apartheid era, distinguishing whites from coloureds and blacks. The test was partially responsible for splitting existing communities and families along perceived racial lines. Its formal authority ended with the end of apartheid in 1994. It remains an important part of South African cultural heritage and a symbol of racism.

Background 

The Population Registration Act required the classification of South Africans into racial groups based on physical and socio-economic characteristics. Since a person's racial heritage was not always clear, a variety of tests were devised to help authorities classify people. One such test was the pencil test.

The pencil test involved sliding a pencil or pen in the hair of a person whose racial group was uncertain. If the pencil fell to the floor, the person "passed" and was considered "white". If it stuck, the person's hair was considered too kinky to be white and the person was classified as "coloured" (of mixed racial heritage). The classification as coloured allowed a person more rights than one considered "black," but fewer rights than a person considered white.

An alternate version of the pencil test was available for blacks who wished to be reclassified as coloured. In this version, the applicant was asked to put a pencil in their hair and shake their head. If the pencil fell out as a results of the shaking, the person could be reclassified. If it stayed in place, they remained classified as black.

Effects 

As a result of the pencil test, combined with the vagueness of the Population Registration Act, communities were split apart on interpreted racial lines. In some cases, members of the same family were classified into different groups, and thus were forced to live apart.

In one famous case, a somewhat dark skinned girl named Sandra Laing was born to two white parents. At age 11, she was subjected to a pencil test by "a stranger" and subsequently excluded from her all-white school when she failed the test. She was reclassified from her birth race of white to coloured. Sandra and the rest of her family were shunned by white society. Her father passed a blood-type paternity test, but the authorities refused to restore her white classification.

Reputation and legacy 

Although the pencil test ended with the end of apartheid in 1994, the test remains an important part of cultural heritage in South Africa and a symbol of racism worldwide. For example, a Southern Africa newspaper described incidents of mobs "testing" the nationality of suspected (black) foreigners as a "21-st century pencil test". Another South African commentator describing the same incidents called them "a gruesome re-creation of the infamous pencil test of the apartheid regime".

In 2003, a The New York Times writer called the pencil test "perhaps the most absurd" of the many "humiliating methods [used] to determine race". Frommer's calls the pencil test "one of the most infamous classification tests" of apartheid. Others have referred to it as "degrading" and "humiliating" and an "absurdity".

In the 2009 film 'Skin",

A man sticks a pencil into the young Sandra's short hair, a re-creation of the “pencil test” used by some government boards to judge race.  The film was based on Sandra Laing.  A woman who was born to white parents but reclassified as Coloured during the apartheid era in South Africa as she has dark skin.

Sandra is the feature of the documentaries In Search of Sandra Laing (1977), Sandra Laing: A Spiritual Journey (2000) and Skin Deep: The Story of Sandra Laing (2009).

Sandra was born in Piet Retief, a small conservative town in apartheid South Africa. Both Sandra's parents and all her grandparents were white. Her older brother was also white but Sandra and her younger brother had African features. Sandra's parents were both members of the National Party and supporters of the Apartheid system.

During apartheid, schools were segregated; however, since both her parents were white, she was sent to an all-white school. Her parents hoped that as she got older she would get lighter; however, instead she grew darker and her hair became more tightly coiled. At boarding school she was shunned by the other students because of her skin color.

Legal battles

When Sandra was 10 years old, the school authorities expelled her from her all-white school based on the complexion of her skin and a failed pencil test. She was escorted home by two police officers who refused to tell her what she had done wrong. Her parents fought several legal battles to have her declared white. Her father underwent a blood typing test for paternity in the 1960s, as DNA tests were not yet available. The results were compatible with him being her biological father.

Later years

Since she was shunned by the white community, Laing's only friends were the children of black employees. At age 15, she eloped with a black South African to Swaziland. She was jailed for three months for illegal border-crossing. Her father threatened to kill her and broke off contact with her. They never met again and she remained estranged from her family, with the exception of secret trips to visit her mother at times when her father was away from the home. When her parents moved away from Piet Retief, the clandestine visits were no longer possible and Laing lost contact with her family completely.

Years after the death of her father, Laing managed to track down her mother, Sannie, in a nursing home shortly before the woman died in 2001, but a succession of strokes had stolen Sannie's memory. A book called When She Was White by Judith Stone reports that Sannie did remember Sandra and was happy to see her. As of 2009, Sandra Laing's brothers, both of whom were still alive, were maintaining their refusal to have any contact with her, though she said in an interview that she continued to hope they would some day have a change of heart.

(Sandra Laing with Ella Ramangwane, who portrayed her as a child, and Sophie Okonedo played her as an adult)

Sandra Laing with her parents. 

Sandra with her children

Young Sandra Laing

Skin Bleaching

Before

After

If you look at the after, you can also see that he had a nose job as well.

Jacqueline Oda Santillan (aka Jinky Oda), Entertainer/Actress

Sanaa Lathan altered to appear lighter?  or skin bleaching skin?

One-Drop Rule

The one-drop rule is a historical colloquial term in the United States for the social classification as Negro of individuals with any African ancestry; meaning any person with "one drop of Negro blood" was considered black.

Halle Berry has a White Mother and a Black Father.  Berry identifies herself as Black.

In the United States, the concept of the one-drop rule has been chiefly applied by White Americans to those of sub-Saharan black African ancestry in the aftermath of slavery, as they were trying to impose white supremacy. The poet Langston Hughes wrote in his 1940 memoir:
You see, unfortunately, I am not black. There are lots of different kinds of blood in our family. But here in the United States, the word 'Negro' is used to mean anyone who has any Negro blood at all in his veins. In Africa, the word is more pure. It means all Negro, therefore black. I am brown.

Both before and after the American Civil War, many people of mixed ancestry who "looked white" and were of mostly white ancestry were legally absorbed into the white majority. State laws established differing standards. For instance, in 1822 Virginia law stated that to be defined as "mulatto" (that is, multi-racial), a person had to have at least one-quarter (equivalent to one grandparent) African ancestry. This was a looser definition than the state's 20th-century "one-drop rule" under the 1924 Racial Integrity Act. This defined a person as legally "colored" (black) for classification and legal purposes if the individual had any African ancestry. Social acceptance and identification were generally the key.

The Melungeons are a group of multiracial families of mostly European and African ancestry whose ancestors were free in colonial Virginia. They migrated to the frontier in Kentucky and Tennessee. Their descendants have been documented over the decades as having tended to marry persons classified as "white". Their descendants became assimilated into the majority culture from the 19th into the 20th centuries.


Jim Crow laws reached their greatest influence during the decades from 1910 to 1930. Among them were hypodescent laws, defining as black anyone with any black ancestry, or with a very small portion of black ancestry. Tennessee adopted such a "one-drop" statute in 1910, and Louisiana soon followed. Then Texas and Arkansas in 1911, Mississippi in 1917, North Carolina in 1923, Virginia in 1924, Alabama and Georgia in 1927, and Oklahoma in 1931. During this same period, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Utah retained their old "blood fraction" statutes de jure, but amended these fractions (one-sixteenth, one-thirty-second) to be equivalent to one-drop de facto.

Before 1930, individuals of visible mixed European and African ancestry were usually classed as mulattoes, or sometimes as black and sometimes as white, depending on appearance. Previously, most states had limited trying to define ancestry before "the fourth degree" (great-great-grandparents). In 1930, the Census Bureau stopped using the classification of mulatto, so evidence of the long existence of mixed-race people was lost.

Not only did the one-drop rule disregard the self-identification of people of mostly European ancestry who grew up in white communities, but Walter Plecker ordered application of the 1924 Virginia law in such a way that vital records were changed or destroyed, family members were split on opposite sides of the color line, and there were losses of the documented continuity of mixed-race people who identified as Native American. Over the centuries, many Native American tribes in Virginia had absorbed people of other ethnicities through marriage or adoption, but maintained their cultures. Suspecting blacks of trying to "pass" as Indians, Plecker ordered records changed to classify people only as black or white, and ordered offices to reclassify certain family surnames as black. Since the late 20th century, Virginia has officially recognized eight American Indian tribes; they are trying to gain federal recognition. They have had difficulty because decades of birth, marriage and death records were misclassified under Plecker's application of the law. No one was classified as Indian, although many individuals and families identified that way and were preserving their cultures.

In the case of mixed-race Native American and European descendants, the one-drop rule in Virginia was extended only so far as those with more than one-sixteenth Indian blood. This was due to what was known as the "Pocahontas exception". Since many influential First Families of Virginia (FFV) claimed descent from the American Indian Pocahontas and her husband John Rolfe of the colonial era, the Virginia General Assembly declared that an individual could be considered white if having no more than one-sixteenth Indian "blood" (the equivalent of one great-great-grandparent).

Lena Horne


Rashida Jones
In December 2002, the Washington Post ran a story on the one-drop theory. In the reporter's opinion: "Someone with Sidney Poitier's deep chocolate complexion would be considered white if his hair were straight and he made a living in a profession. That might not seem so odd, Brazilians say, when you consider that the fair-complexioned actresses Rashida Jones ('Parks and Recreation' and 'The Office') and Lena Horne are identified as black in the United States."[14]
According to Jose Neinstein, a native white Brazilian and executive director of the Brazilian-American Cultural Institute in Washington, in the United States, "If you are not quite white, then you are black." However, in Brazil, "If you are not quite black, then you are white." Neinstein recalls talking with a man of Poitier's complexion when in Brazil: "We were discussing ethnicity, and I asked him, 'What do you think about this from your perspective as a black man?' He turned his head to me and said, 'I'm not black,' . . . It simply paralyzed me. I couldn't ask another question."[14]
The Washington Post story also described a Brazilian-born woman who for 30 years before immigrating to the United States considered herself a morena. Her skin had a caramel color that is roughly equated with whiteness in Brazil and some other Latin American countries. "I didn't realize I was black until I came here," she explained.[14] "'Where are you from?' they ask me. I say I'm from Brazil. They say, 'No, you are from Africa.' They make me feel like I am denying who I am."
The same racial culture shock has come to hundreds of thousands of dark-skinned immigrants to the United States from Brazil, Colombia, Panama, and other Latin American nations. Although many are not considered black in their homelands, they have often been considered black in US society. According to the Washington Post, their refusal to accept the United States' definition of black has left many feeling attacked from all directions. At times, white and black Americans might discriminate against them for their lighter or darker skin tones; African Americans might believe that Afro-Latino immigrants are denying their blackness; and they think lighter-skinned Latinos dominate Spanish-language television and media. A majority of Latin Americans possess some African or Native American ancestry. Many of these immigrants feel it is hard enough to accept a new language and culture without the additional burden of having to transform from white to black. Yvette Modestin, a dark-skinned native of Panama who worked in Boston, said the situation was overwhelming: "There's not a day that I don't have to explain myself."[14]


Rice and Powell (on the left) are considered black in the US, Bush and Rumsfeld (on the right) are considered white.
Professor J.B. Bird has said that Latin America is not alone in rejecting the historical United States' notion that any visible African ancestry is enough to make one black: "In most countries of the Caribbean, Colin Powell would be described as a Creole, reflecting his mixed heritage. In Belize, he might further be described as a 'High Creole', because of his extremely light complexion."[15] This shows that the perception of race, particularly concerning people of African heritage, is relative to different societies and individuals.
An interesting anecdote to consider was that during this whole period, Puerto Rico had laws like the Regla del Sacar or Gracias al Sacar where a person of black ancestry could be considered legally white so long as they could prove that at least one person per generation in the last four generations had also been legally white. Therefore people of black ancestry with known white lineage were classified as white, the opposite of the "one-drop rule" in the United States.[16]
Racial mixtures of blacks and whites in modern America[edit]

Given the intense interest in ethnicity, genetic genealogists and other scientists have studied population groups. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. publicized such genetic studies on his two series African American Lives, shown on PBS. The specialists summarized United States population figures this way:
58 percent of African Americans have at least 12.5% European ancestry (equivalent of one great-grandparent);
19.6 percent of African Americans have at least 25% European ancestry (equivalent of one grandparent);
1 percent of African Americans have at least 50% European ancestry (equivalent of one parent) (Gates is one of those, he discovered); and
5 percent of African Americans have at least 12.5% Native American ancestry (equivalent to one great-grandparent).[17]
Mark D. Shriver, a molecular anthropologist at Penn State University, has studied population with a team of researchers. In 2002, they published results of a study regarding the racial admixture of Americans who identified as white or black. They recorded the individual's self-identification and analyzed the genetic make-up of their chromosomes. Their results are estimates and might not be completely accurate.[18] Other researchers have also done population studies.
Shriver surveyed a 3,000-person sample from 25 locations in the United States and tested subjects for genetic make-up. Among those who self-identified as white, the black racial admixture was about 0.7%; which is the equivalent of having 1 black and 127 white ancestors among one's 128 5×great-grandparents. Nationwide, Shriver estimates that 70% of white Americans have no African ancestors (in part because of the greatly increased immigration from Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries). Among the 30% who do have African ancestry, Shriver estimates their black racial admixture is 2.3%; the equivalent of having had 3 black ancestors among their 128 5×great-grandparents.[18]
Blacks are more racially mixed than whites, reflecting historical experience in the United States, including the close living and working conditions among colonial indentured servants, both black and white, and slaves, when many married or formed unions. Most of the free African-American families in Virginia in colonial years were the descendants of white women and African men. After the American Revolutionary War, their descendants migrated to nearby states along with other Virginia pioneers.[19] The admixture also reflects conditions under slavery, when white planters or their sons, or overseers, often raped African women.[citation needed] There were also freely chosen relationships among individuals of different or mixed races.
Shriver's study is not complete. In his study, of those persons who identified as black, their total ancestry reveals 18% white ancestry, the equivalent of having 22 white ancestors among their 128 5×great-grandparents. About 10% of blacks have more than 50% white ancestors. Population studies by researchers other than Shriver have found that in general, blacks had an average white ancestry of 25–30%.
Shriver points out that his survey found different admixture rates by region, which would also reflect historic patterns of settlement and change, both in terms of populations who migrated and their descendants' marriages. For example, the black populations with the highest average white ancestry lived in California and Seattle, both destinations during the Great Migration of 1940-1970. Blacks sampled in those two locations had more than 25% white European ancestry on average.[18]
Allusions[edit]

Charles W. Chesnutt, who was of mixed race and grew up in the North, wrote stories and novels about the issues of mixed-race people in southern society in the aftermath of the Civil War.
The one-drop rule and its consequences have been the subject of numerous works of popular culture. In the musical Show Boat, Steve, a white man who is married to a mixed-race woman (considered black), is pursued by a Southern sheriff, who is going to arrest Steve and charge him with miscegenation. Steve pricks his wife's finger and swallows some of her blood. When the sheriff arrives, Steve asks him whether he would consider a man to be white if he had "negro blood" in him. The sheriff replies that "one drop of Negro blood makes you a Negro in these parts". Steve tells the sheriff that he has "more than a drop of negro blood in me". After being assured by others that Steve is telling the truth, the sheriff leaves without arresting Steve.[20][21]
See also[edit]

Cherokee Freedmen
Hispanic and Latino Americans
List of topics related to Black and African people
Mestee
Mestizo
Mischling
Mixed Race Day
Pencil test
Racial hygiene
References[edit]

Notes
^ In 1855, John Bigelk, nephew of Big Elk, described a Sioux attack in which the mixed-race man Logan Fontenelle, son of an Omaha woman and a French trader, was killed: "They killed the white man, the interpreter, who was with us." As the historian Melvin Randolph Gilmore noted, Bigelk called Fontenelle "a white man because he had a white father. This was a common designation of half-breeds by full-bloods, just as a mulatto might commonly be called a [black] by white people, although as much white as black by race."[4]
Quotes
^ "Ten years later [referring to its 2000 report], TJF [Thomas Jefferson Foundation] and most historians now believe that, years after his wife's death, Thomas Jefferson was the father of the six children of Sally Hemings mentioned in Jefferson's records, including Beverly, Harriet, Madison and Eston Hemings."[3]
^ "To be defined as 'mulatto' under Virginia law in 1822, a person had to have at least one-quarter African ancestry." (This is the equivalent to one grandparent.)[2]:68
Citations
^ a b Conrad P. Kottak, "What is hypodescent?", Human Diversity and "Race", Cultural Anthropology, Online Learning, McGraw Hill, accessed 21 April 2010.
^ a b c Joshua D. Rothman, Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and Families Across the Color Line in Virginia, 1787–1861 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 2003).
^ a b c "Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: A Brief Account", Monticello Website, accessed 22 June 2011.
^ Melvin Randolph Gilmore, "The True Logan Fontenelle", Publications of the Nebraska State Historical Society, Vol. 19, edited by Albert Watkins, Nebraska State Historical Society, 1919, pp. 64-65, at GenNet, accessed 25 August 2011.
^ Langston Hughes, The Big Sea, an Autobiography (New York: Knopf, 1940).
^ Paul Heinegg, Free African Americans in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Delaware, 1999–2005.
^ "All Niggers, More or Less!", The News and Courier, 17 October 1895.
^ Joel Williamson, New People: Miscegenation and Mulattoes in the United States (New York, 1980), p. 93.
^ Pauli Murray, ed. States' Laws on Race and Color (Athens, 1997), 428, 173, 443, 37, 237, 330, 463, 22, 39, 358, 77, 150, 164, 207, 254, 263, 459.
^ Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race, 1916.
^ For the Plecker story, see J. Douglas Smith, "The Campaign for Racial Purity and the Erosion of Paternalism in Virginia, 1922–1930: 'Nominally White, Biologically Mixed, and Legally Negro'", Journal of Southern History 68, no. 1 (2002): 65–106.
^ For Drake, see Virginia R. Dominguez, White by Definition: Social Classification in Creole Louisiana (New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University, 1986).
^ A.D. Powell, Passing for Who You Really Are, Palm Coast, 2005, ISBN 0-939479-22-2.
^ a b c d washingtonpost.com: "People of Color Who Never Felt They Were Black".
^ FAQ on the Black Seminoles, John Horse, and Rebellion.
^ Jay Kinsbruner, Not of Pure Blood, Duke University Press, 1996.
^ Henry Louis Gates, Jr., In Search of Our Roots: How 19 Extraordinary African Americans Reclaimed Their Past (New York: Crown Publishing, 2009), pp. 20–21.
^ a b c Steve Sailer, "Race Now": Part 2: "How White Are Blacks? How Black Are Whites?", UPI, Steve Sailer Website.
^ Paul Heinegg, Free African Americans in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Delaware, 1999–2005.
^ Show Boat (1951) Overview, Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved 2008-03-21.
^ Make Believe – Show Boat – Synopsis, from the 1993 Canadian cast recording, Theatre-Musical.com. Retrieved 2008-03-21.
Further reading[edit]

Daniel, G. Reginald. More Than Black? Multiracial Identity and the New Racial Order. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 2002. ISBN 1-56639-909-2.
Daniel, G. Reginald. Race and Multiraciality in Brazil and the United States: Converging Paths?. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press. 2006. ISBN 0-271-02883-1.
Davis, James F., Who Is Black?: One Nation's Definition. University Park PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-271-02172-1.
Guterl, Matthew Press, The Color of Race in America, 1900–1940. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-674-01012-4.
Moran, Rachel F., Interracial Intimacy: The Regulation of Race & Romance, Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003. ISBN 0-226-53663-7.
Romano, Renee Christine, Race Mixing: Black-White Marriage in Post-War America. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-674-01033-7.
Savy, Pierre, « Transmission, identité, corruption. Réflexions sur trois cas d’hypodescendance », L’homme. Revue française d’anthropologie, 182, 2007 (« Racisme, antiracisme et sociétés »), pp. 53–80.
Yancey, George, Just Don't Marry One: Interracial Dating, Marriage & Parenting. Judson Press, 2003. ISBN 0-8170-1439-X.
External links[edit]

New Life for the "One Drop" Rule
PBS – Multiracial America – Who is black? One nation's definition
PBS – Brazil in Black and White
"Battles in Red, Black, and White: Virginia's Racial Integrity Law of 1924", University of Virginia
Lawrence Wright, "One Drop of Blood", The New Yorker, 24 July 1994
John Terrence A. Rosenthal, "Batson Revisited in America's 'New Era' of Multiracial Persons", Law Review 33:1, Seton Hall University
Categories: African–Native American relationsAfrican-American historyHistory of African-American civil rightsKinship and descentMultiracial affairsNative American historyRace in the United States
Navigation menu
Create accountLog inArticleTalkReadEditView history

Main page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
Donate to Wikipedia
Wikimedia Shop
Interaction
Help
About Wikipedia
Community portal
Recent changes
Contact Wikipedia
Toolbox
Print/export
Languages
Español
한국어
Norsk bokmål
Português
Русский
Українська
Edit links
This page was last modified on 16 June 2013 at 03:35.
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Wikipedia

Creole

In Louisiana especially, Creoles of color had long formed a third class during the years of slavery. They had achieved a high level of literacy and sophistication under French and Spanish rule, becoming educated, taking the names of white fathers or lovers, and often receiving property from the white men involved with their families. Many became artisans, property owners and sometimes slaveholders themselves. Unlike in the Upper South, where free African Americans varied widely in appearance, free people of color in New Orleans and the Deep South tended to be light-skinned, the children of more generations of European ancestry. The privileges of Creoles of color began to be curtailed after the Louisiana Purchase, when American slaveholders arrived who tended to view all people of color as of one class: black, or, not white.

Paper Bag Party

Paper bag parties are African-American social events at which only individuals with complexions at least as light as the color of a brown paper bag were admitted. The term also refers to larger issues of class and caste within the African-American population.

From 1900 until about 1950 in the larger black neighborhoods of major American cities, "paper bag parties" are said to have taken place. Some organizations used the "brown paper bag" principle as a test for entrance. People at many churches, fraternities and nightclubs would take a brown paper bag and hold it against a person's skin. If a person was lighter or the same color as the bag, he or she was admitted. People whose skin was not lighter than a brown paper bag were denied entry.

There is, too, a curious color dynamic that sadly persists in our culture. In fact, New Orleans invented the brown paper bag party — usually at a gathering in a home — where anyone darker than the bag attached to the door was denied entrance. The brown bag criterion survives as a metaphor for how the black cultural elite quite literally establishes caste along color lines within black life.

This is one of the ways that blacks with European ancestry (so called 'High-Yellow Negroes' or Creoles in Louisiana) attempted to isolate and distinguish themselves from those who were mostly African.

Even in contemporary American society, psychological studies have shown African-American and white participants both demonstrate colorism, in which they perceive light-skinned blacks to be smarter, wealthier, and happier than those of darker skin.

 Started up a blog on these topics a few years ago. It's a shame. Believe a lot of non-sense started like that because of mulattoes or light skin women being excluded or treated as outsiders for the longest within their community. Am not saying that it was right, but I believe that is why it happened. We have always had a wall between the dark and light in our community. We did not put it there, but we must tear it down.

High Yellow (yaller, yeller)

High yellow, occasionally simply yellow (dialect: yaller, yeller), is a term for persons classified as black who also have a high proportion of white ancestry. It is a reference to the golden yellow skin tone of some mixed-race people. The term was in common use in the United States at the end of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th century. It is often considered offensive. It is reflected in such popular songs of the era as "The Yellow Rose of Texas".


Etymology

"High" is usually considered a reference to a social class system in which skin color (and associated ancestries) is a major factor, placing those of lighter skin (with more European ancestry) at the top and those of darker skin at the bottom.  High yellows, while still considered part of the African-American ethnic group, were thought to gain privileges because of their skin and ancestry. "Yellow" is in reference to the usually very pale yellow undertone to the skin color of members of this group, often due to admixture with Europeans.

Skin color

Many high yellows are as light skinned as Europeans, and even lighter than some Europeans. Their specific skin hue is generally the result of European ancestry from sexual unions with Africans during the colonial and 19th-century period in the United States during the long history of slavery. In other cases, some African descendants simply have naturally lighter-skinned genes than most other Africans, without admixture.
One ethnic group for which light skin is characteristic are the indigenous tribes of the Khoi and San of South Africa. They have noticeably pale, yellow-toned skin, yet have some of the oldest indigenous African DNA on the continent. (They were not among the groups who were most frequently transported as slaves to North America.)

(He favors Asians to me as well)

The khoi-san are people of southern African extract hypothesized to the be the oldest closet relatives to the earliest human population. They include the khoikhoi and the san peoples.

(So Beautiful!)

Their akeen features include pepper corn hair, bronze to light brown skin, eyefolds and lean builds but short in statue 

Scientific studies conclude that natural human skin color diversity is highest in Sub-Saharan African populations because of the highly diverse population; many Sub-Saharan Africans and their descendents may be naturally extremely light skinned, with others in their family being naturally extremely dark skinned. In addition, Africa has had its own long history of admixture among peoples, especially with Arabs in coastal and other regions of Africa nearest to the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa where the people came into contact. (Relethford 2000).

Use as social class distinction

In an aspect of colorism, "high yellow" was also related to social class distinctions among people of color. In post-Civil War South Carolina, according to one account by historian Edward Ball, "Members of the colored elite were called 'high yellow' for their shade of skin", as well as slang terms meaning snobbish.  In New Orleans, the term "high-yellow" was associated with Creole "brahmins".  In his biography of Duke Ellington, a native of Washington, D.C., David Bradbury wrote that Washington's:
social life was dominated by light-skinned 'high yellow' families, some pale enough to 'pass for white,' who shunned and despised darker African-Americans. The behaviour of high yellow society was a replica of high white, except that whereas the white woman invested in tightly curled permanents and, at least if young, cultivated a deep sun tan, the colored woman used bleach lotions and Mrs. Walker's "Anti-Kink" or the equivalent to straighten hair.

In some cases the confusion of color with class came about because some of the lighter-skinned blacks came from families of mixed heritage free before the Civil War, who had begun to accumulate education and property. In addition, some wealthier white planters made an effort to have their "natural" sons (the term for children outside marriage created with enslaved women) educated or trained as apprentices; some passed on property to them. For instance, in 1860, most of the 200 subscription students at Wilberforce College were the mixed-race sons of white planters, who paid for their education.

These social distinctions made the cosmopolitan Harlem more appealing to many blacks. The Cotton Club of the Prohibition era "had a segregated, white-only audience policy and a color-conscious, 'high yellow' hiring policy for chorus girls". It was common for lighter-skinned African Americans to hold "paper bag parties," which admitted only those whose complexion was lighter than that of a brown paper bag.

In her 1942 Glossary of Harlem Slang, Zora Neale Hurston placed "high yaller" at the beginning of the entry for colorscale, which ran: "high yaller, yaller, high brown, vaseline brown, seal brown, low brown, dark brown".

Applied to individuals

The French author Alexandre Dumas was the son of a French mulatto general (born in Saint-Domingue but educated by his father in France) and his French wife. He was described as having skin "with a yellow so high it was almost white". In a 1929 review, TIME magazine referred to him as a "High Yellow Fictioneer".

Art and popular culture

The terminology and its cultural aspects were explored in Dael Orlandersmith's play Yellowman, a 2002 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in drama. The play depicts a dark-skinned girl whose own mother "inadvertently teaches her the pain of rejection and the importance of being accepted by the 'high yellow' boys." One reviewer described the term as having "the inherent, unwieldy power to incite black Americans with such intense divisiveness and fervor" as few others.

The phrase survives in folk songs such as "The Yellow Rose of Texas," which originally referred to Emily West Morgan, a "mulatto" indentured servant apocryphally associated with the Battle of San Jacinto. Blind Willie McTell's song "Lord, Send Me an Angel" has its protagonist forced to choose between three women, described as "Atlanta yellow," "Macon brown," and a "Statesboro blackskin".

 Bessie Smith's song "I've Got What It Takes", by Clarence Williams, refers to "a slick high yeller" boyfriend who "turned real pale" when she wouldn't wait for him to get out of jail.

 Curtis Mayfield's song "We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue" makes reference to a "High yellow girl".

As recently as 2004, white R&B singer-songwriter Teena Marie released a song titled "High Yellow Girl," said to be about her daughter Alia Rose, who is biracial.

 The related phrase "high brown" was used in Irving Berlin's original lyrics for "Puttin' on the Ritz".

Rapper Jay-Z refers to his wife, singer Beyoncé Knowles, as "my high yellow broad," in his 2009 song "Off That," from the The Blueprint 3 album.

Problems of 'Looking White'

Pulled from an article featured [ Jack Slater for Ebony (July 1982) ]

Bernadette Swann has always found herself imprisoned in her fair skin. Often being mistaken as White and declared unacceptable as Black. She has always lived as Black and wants to be seen as Black. Her mother is of Argentine descent and her father is an original member of the singing group 'The Platters'.

When modeling long ago, clients would reject her saying that she was too light skin and that she would photograph too white and may therefore be found offensive.  In the 1950s both actresses Dorothy Dandridge and Ellen Holly dealt with these same issues.  The excuses are a yawn.  

Swann has been mistaken for being Chicana (people actually spoke to her in Spanish), Mexican-American, Mexican, Central American, Brazilian, Portuguese or Jamaican.

Bernadette felt at the time that 'Whites' related to her better than 'Blacks'. She can relate to either side though. With Black Women she felt that they found it hard to relate to her. In her thinking she thought "maybe they feel threatened because I am closer to being white."  Without a clue on why she gets treated this way, she could only assume that because one may be an attractive, bright, light-skinned woman,  they think you have it easy.  When it is a struggle no matter the skin tone.

Bernadette (l) Pam (r), both have had girls attempt to cut off their hair. Someone who would do this has to be jealous and have self hate.

One of her best friends is Pam Norris, who also has light skin.  Norris' theory on why some darker Black women dislike their fair-skin sisters is that their own insecurities are often projected onto those who are light skin.  Some Dark Skin Women may feel that a Light Skin Woman "thinks she is better than me".  They (Dark) actually think, that they (Light) think, that they(Light) are better than they (Dark) are.  That they (Light) are more privileged as a Black and that they have that same attitude. In many cases that is not even true.  

Norris goes on to share another example "Well look, he went on and got him a light-skinned woman."

Some light skin women, mate with someone darker to try and prevent their children from going through the difficulties they did when they were growing up as a fair skin child.  

Bernadette had remarried in 1993 to boxing legend Sugar Ray Leonard.