Several years ago, a southern black friend and I were talking about a classmate. I had remarked about how pretty I thought she was and what a beautiful skin-tone she had. My friend said, very casually, "Oh, you know she mulatto, right?"

This was stated by my friend as statement of fact, and I did not take her meaning to be derogatory. I wasn't trying to fish for information about our classmate, and the fact that she had mixed parentage (is that ok to say?) seemed obvious. She was a beautiful girl with fantastic coloring.

Honestly, until reading this conversation, I never knew "mulatto" was considered derogatory.

I just wanted to throw that in and thank the Buffistas for once again teaching me something.

Some people use the term to mean one black parent, one white. Some people use it more, uh, shadily, and tie a million things to it.

Don't use it carelessly, and for god's sake don't even get started into the coffee world with it, where the race-mixing metaphor already lives.

I wasn't trying to fish for information about our classmate, and the fact that she had mixed parentage (is that ok to say?) seemed obvious. She was a beautiful girl with fantastic coloring.

Honestly, until reading this conversation, I never knew "mulatto" was considered derogatory.

Nor did I, really. Is there a non-offensive term? Or are you just supposed to say "mixed" or something? And look, you even thought that might be bad. Is it wrong to make an observation ?

Is there a non-offensive term?

Biracial seems to be used pretty neutrally, at least to my ear. I could be wrong, of course.

Bi-racial and mixed work. Except I'm technically both, but actually not what anyone usually means by either term.

How would you describe someone half Asian, half white? Or half Asian, half black? Do you need a different word? Why?

The black/white terms touch some really historically breeding program bad places.

Is there a non-offensive term?

Biracial seems to be used pretty neutrally, at least to my ear. I could be wrong, of course

Different people definitely have different acceptability thresholds. A Creole friend of mine was dating a woman who had a Black mother and an Irish father. She used to tell him he shouldn't consider himself biracial for complicated cultural reasons.

This same friend once read someone the riot act for asking him if he was a mulatto. It was quite a rant. Might have been the root of my discomfort with the DQ creation, come to think of it.

I'm not sure that we have a satisfactory term at this point. In research projects, if you ask teenagers/young adults for their racial/ethnic background an increasingly high percentage say that none of the standard categories fit. People who have one parent who self-identifies as Black and one parent who self-identifies as White seem comfortable with Biracial as a term because they have one parent from each race. But people who have two mixed-race parents often don't see themselves as Biracial, because their parents don't come from different cultural or racial backgrounds. They prefer 'other.'

How would you describe someone half Asian, half white?

for me, someone to whom it applies, I go with hapa or bi-racial or mixed.

Or half Asian, half black? Do you need a different word? Why?

Don't need a different word. again, for my world.

They prefer 'other.'

HATE other. HATE it a lot, primarily because it's so... well, yucky. "Oh, you can't conceive of what I am? I am other."

Thank god on the census you can just pick as many races as apply to you.

How would you describe someone half Asian, half white? Or half Asian, half black? Do you need a different word? Why?

I have a friend who's half white, a quarter black, and a quarter asian. She considers herself to be "Caublasian."

As I recall, the Census Bureau has the damnedest time trying to deal with race/ethnicity. It's important to quantify, because it can change congressional districting and federal funding, and like that, but incredibly hard. The census in 2000 was the first one with "mixed race" as a category, right? And I don't believe it asked you to break it down beyond that. (The Other box was still available.)

Over the years, they've tried all manner of ways to quantify Hispanics/Latinos/people of South and Central American heritage, as a category overlapping with race. If they said only "Hispanic", then people from Spain did check the box, but people from Brazil didn't. At one point in the late 70s, they used the term "South American", until they realized Anglo white people in Alabama were checking that box in all innocent error.

It's an ongoing conundrum.