Vocabulary Terms


















Section
Review

Mike Pesant

Mulatto Offspring in American Society

As sexual activity among slaves and masters were a common component of plantation life, a population of racially mixed offspring began to develop. This emerging group of mulatto children presented a number of questions for the American society to answer: Were these children white or black? Should they be made to work on the fields with the other slaves, or live a life of luxury with their masters? In the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in South and Central America, large scale racial mixing was met with a need to distinguish and classify people according to their percentage of Negro or European blood. This led to a social hierarchy which gave preference to a European-born person and created a set of terms to identify the rest of the population. In addition to this, the offspring of Europeans and Indians were given their own classification as mestizos.

While the Spanish and Portuguese colonies had an intricate system of classifying racially diverse people and incorporating them into society, the English colonies did not create a system of ranking race. The term mulatto was not used in the United States. While for some   purposes people were sometimes recorded as being mulattos, for the most part Americans considered anybody with Negro ancestry to be a Negro. While it was beneficial to be white, these benefits were only available to those who were completely white. For a Negro, it was not truly advantageous to have a trace of European lineage. The Spanish and Portuguese colonies had worked their glossary of terms into their laws in order to distinguish how each classification would be considered before the law. The only reason English laws ever included the term mulatto was to establish that racially mixed blood did not exempt a person from slavery. In Central and South America, a process had been developed which slowly turned the descendants Negroes into white men. In the English colonies there was a firm barrier between whites and those of Negro ancestry. However, once a person had so little Negro blood remaining that they appeared white, society was forced to accept them as white. Americans inability to recognize a midway between white and black led to the development of a silent method of passing from being a Negro to a white man.

English society did not have any terms for mixed heritage and therefor were forced to borrow the Spanish word mulatto. In White Over Black, Jordan Winthrop explains the significance of this lack of English vocabulary:

“Another indication of the refusal of the English continental colonists to separate the ‘mixed breed’ from the African was the absence of terminology which could be used to define a hierarchy of status.” (Winthrop 168)

One of the few isolated cases in which mulattos were recognized in the United States was 1765 in Georgia. The Georgia legislature  passed laws which provided for the naturalization of free mulatto and mustee immigrants as white men. Many believe that this decision is based on the state’s small white and growing slave population. There was a need to increase the white population in order to prevent slave insurrection.

While the law may have rarely differentiated between a Negro and a mulatto, there is some evidence that slave masters often did. Some sources indicate that mulattos were preferred over Negroes as house servants or concubines. They also indicate that often mulatto slaves were more likely to learn a craft or skill instead of being sent to work in the field. Records even show that there were a remarkably high proportion of mulattos among emancipated slaves.

Almost all historians agree that incidences of favoritism towards mulattos occasionally occurred, however not all agree on why they occurred. While some racially diverse slaves may have been given special treatment and respect due to their European blood, another reason may have been because most mulatto children were the offspring of their master. This helps explain the paternalistic need to keep mulattos in the same house as their master, or for him to liberate his own children. Slave masters would sometimes do everything short of recognizing legitimacy in order to assist their children. In the West Indies, miscegenation was an accepted practice and slave owners could recognize mulatto children as their own. However, on our continent, they represented a practice which made masters feel guilty. As a result of this guilt, society looked down upon mulattos rather than recognizing them as part European.

The North American mulatto is the result of a custom which was generally ignored by society, the fruit of a forbidden passion. It was the public refusal to accept that miscegenation was occurring which dictated the place that the mulatto would find in the United States. Their unusual existence serves to show the peculiarity of the institution of slavery and the society which it maintained.

Works Cited

Tannenbaum, Frank. Slave and Citizen. Boston: Beacon Press, 1946. p.14

Winthrop, Jordan.White Over Black. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1962. p.166-178

Works Consulted

Gordon-Reed, Annette. Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997

Rosenblatt, Angel. La Poblacion Indigena de America. Buenos Aires: Institucion Cultrual de Argentina, 1945

Stampp, Kenneth M. The Peculiar Institution. New York: Vintage Books, 1956

Wade, Richard C. Slavery in the Cities. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964