Opinion: Nobody’s Mulatto in America
Since Sunday night when I saw the CNN documentary “Who’s Black in America?” which will be re-aired this Saturday at 8 p.m., I haven’t stopped thinking about its subject matter: the racial definition and self-definition of a large number of Americans as well as the prejudice based on skin color among African Americans themselves.
The documentary’s host is Soledad O’Brien, the recognized reporter and anchor of the morning show Starting Point at CNN. She is the daughter of a black Cuban mother and an Australian of Irish descent father. To us she looks Latina. A beautiful mulata clara, typical of the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, the muse of many a song or poem.
CNN’s Soledad O’Brien is the daughter of a Cuban mother and an Irish dad. (Photo by Adam Fagen via Flickr, Creative Commons License)
However, she defines herself as black. She says her mother told her once, “don’t let anyone tell you you’re not black.”
Throughout the whole program, several of the interviewees, mostly children of bi-racial couples, made the point that being black has nothing to do with the color of your skin. Almost all said they felt offended whenever anyone asked “What are you?”
President Obama, as a child, with this mother Ann Dunham. (Photo via Flickr, Creative Commons License)
The word mulatto, which refers specifically to a person whose parents are one black and the other white, is never mentioned in the documentary. Here African Americans consider it an insult due to its origins that go back to the times of slavery.
And with good reason. The word mulatto (from the Spanish mulato) allegedly refers to the mule, a hybrid animal resulting from the crossing between a horse and a burro. Due to racism and the subordinate position of slaves, mostly Africans, the burro was seen as the black person and the horse as the white.
Not that in Latin America we have overcome racial conflicts imposed by colonization – far from it – but at least in the Caribbean, with the passage of time, the word mulato has been losing its rancid smell of rejection and congenital inferiority. It has almost become a symbol of the “cosmic race,” the wonderful mixture that is essentially Latin American culture.
But unlike the United States, in Latin America many turned a blind eye to light skinned mulattoes and eventually accepted them as white. That’s what the well-known saying “Where’s your grandma?” comes from – meaning that you just had to dig a little around the roots of anyone’s family tree to unearth a black grandmother or great-grandmother.
Here, in a country with a growing multi-cultural and multi-racial population, there’s an obsession to define everybody and everything in just black and white terms, which leaves many young people of mixed background in a traumatic racial identification limbo.
Perhaps it’s time for the children of biracial parents, such as President Obama and Soledad O’Brien, to rescue the word mulatto, just like gays have re-appropriated formerly pejorative terms such as “queer” and “dyke” and thus removed the stigma attached to them. By saying with pride “I’m a mulatto” they would also acknowledge each of their white and black parents.
Just sayin’…
I agree with you i saw the show and i was shock to know how africcan american dislike the dark one
Hello Neighbors, Friends, and Professional Contacts,
I hope that work is going and pray for the continued success. Can anyone actually enable me to meet Mrs. O’Brien? I mainly would like to connect with Soledad, because she really misses the mark on many aspects of adequate reporting of the African-American experience in America. I spoke to others who feel the same and by emphasizing the problems and not addressing systemic root causes is a true injustice to Black folks.
Would “Black” folks at CNN avoid addressing true plights if his or her job was at stake? What are the root causes for judicial injustice and inequality in America? The reports are not balanced. How may I meet with her? They say that we should admonish or scrutinize each other in public or the open like on blogs and what not, but folks like Soledad isolate themselves so far from regular folks like us; we have to conduct a public outcry all over the internet against folks just to reach her or him.
After my most recently unfortunate breakup of my last relationship, I did some refreshing self-reflection. During my studies, not only did I uncover several learning points, but I discovered a lot about relationships in general. Here is a very humorous and facetious novel that I came across. I hope that you share the link with your friends and family. The brothers will simply laugh. Every sister needs to hear this. Every sister should to hear this prior to entering another relationship:
“The End of Men”
Click “Launch Track”
http://www.friendsofeli.com/html/listen.php
or for a faster connection – click
http://www.friendsofeli.com/live/
then click listen
There are very many public policies and laws that have grave impact on the socio-economic wellbeings of the African-American culture by emotional and financially incentivizing behavior that breed lack of empathy, dehumanization, and objectification. If any network is interested, I would like to work with a network to produce a show that would address how lack of empathy, dehumanization, and objectification continues to further destroy America. Due to biasness and negligent portrayal of African-Americans by the media, other cultures have safety-nets.
Lack of Empathy, Dehumanization, & Objectification: How does this forge the African-American Experience?
Please feel free to forward this e-mail as you liberally see fit.
Warm Regards,
Eli
http://www.friendsofeli.com/live/video_popup.php/Relationships.pdf?id=70&download=1&bipass=1&start_dl=1
http://www.friendsofeli.com/html/listen.php
Soledad O’Brien is in denial, she is a mixed race individual, mulatto to be exact, and self denial will not change that.
The United States suffers from a serious problem and that is the insistent denial of the mixed race individual, especially when it pertains to individuals that are of the white/black mix. I don’t understand why accepting the existence of mixed race people is still such an issue? Why use language deception, intentional psychological fallacies warped through cunning use of language, in order to pretend that something doesn’t exist or that its not important?
I have such a hard time understanding the reasoning for this in this age, since the reason why in the past mixed race individuals were denied an identity, was to deny the possibility of racial miscegenation. It played a role in discouraging not only further racial mixing between whites and blacks, but also the inevitable questioning on white supremacy itself.
The United States needs to get over this and simply accept reality, a mixed race person is mixed race, always has been and always will be.
The past, with most of its racial laws, including the One-Drop-Rule, which was a law targeted at mixed race individuals and the main reason for the destruction of the mixed race identity, has to be left in the past.
The present and future generations deserve to live in a country that is truly great, and there is no greatness in deceit and denial.