Mulattoes

Before the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, White supremacy was a prevalent concept in American society. White supremacists held that White individuals were better than people of other races. Under slavery, mulattoes—people of mixed White and Black ancestry—were often accorded greater privileges than other enslaved people. The US Census Bureau counted Black and "mulatto" individuals separately on censuses between 1850 and 1930 due to pseudoscientific research that suggested mixed-race individuals had mental or physical conditions or disabilities but simultaneously were increasingly seen as a threat to White society following emancipation.

Laws passed by White legislators usually discriminated equally against mulattoes and people of unmixed African ancestry. However, over time, White leaders were generally more willing to interact with mulattoes than with darker-skinned Black Americans. Consequently, lighter skin was often perceived as an asset within American society, and several prominent Black leaders during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were of mixed ancestry.

This began to change, however, during the Civil Rights movement. Black Americans began to exhibit an increased sense of positive self-worth—Black pride—and to emphasize their African culture in their hairstyles, manner of dress, language, and artistic expression. Some Black Americans criticized the preferential treatment of light-skinned individuals, arguing that racial solidarity required embracing African features and heritage. Debates about colorism and racial identity emerged within the African American community, with some questioning the social advantages of lighter skin.

In time, as White supremacy diminished in US society, African Americans began to view mulattoes as simply Black Americans with light skin—More frequent media portrayals of Black Americans with lighter skin have continued to perpetuate that feature as a beauty ideal, however. Consequently, the word “mulatto” has lost its legal and social significance and slipped from general usage in the United States. Outside of Spanish and Portuguese-speaking nations, the phrase is considered outdated and offensive in most contexts.

By the mid‑2020s, discussions of multiracial identity and colorism in the United States became more nuanced and visible in academic research and popular culture. Census data from 2020 showed a significant increase in individuals identifying as more than one race, reflecting greater acceptance of multiracial identities and people’s willingness to claim complex heritages.

Bibliography

Alvaré, Bretton T. "Mulatto/a." Latino History and Culture: An Encyclopedia, edited by Carmen R. Lugo-Lugo and David J. Leonard, Routledge, 2014, pp. 360–61.

Brown, Kevin D. Color Matters: Skin Tone Bias and the Myth of a Postracial America, edited by Kimberly Jade Norwood, Routledge, 2014.

Davis, F. James. "Who Is Black? One Nation's Definition." Frontline. WGBH Educational Foundation, 2014.

"Multiracial Person / Persona Multirracial." U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, 14 May 2024, www.archives.gov/research/catalog/lcdrg/appendix/multiracial-person. Accessed 10 Oct. 2024.

Puente, Henry. “Racial Passing: Images of Mulattos, Mestizos, and Eurasians.” Images That Injure: Pictorial Stereotypes in the Media, 2011, pp. 121–32, doi:10.5040/9798400668470.ch-009.

Sheffer, Jolie A. "Mulattos, Mysticism, and Marriage: African American Identity and Psychic Integration." The Romance of Race: Incest, Miscegenation, and Multiculturalism in the United States, 1880-1930. Rutgers UP, 2012.

Ventura, Ilana M., and René D. Flores. “The ‘Rise’ of Multiracials? Examining the Growth in Multiracial Identification in the 2020 U.S. Census.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, vol. 11, no. 1, Jan. 2025, pp. 44–64, doi:10.7758/RSF.2025.11.1.03. Accessed 19 Jan. 2026.