How do you categorise someone who is not 100% white nor 100% black, without offending that person?

This is the debate that I walked into the other day, when a woman pointed at me and told her son: ‘That is a half caste.’

Why she did that I will never know, but it left me feeling hurt that the phrase is still being used.

Why so hurt? The answer is in the meaning of the words. If you research the definition of half caste, it says ‘a person of mixed racial descent.’

Fair enough, but read the synonyms and it tells you: amalgam, bastard, combination, composite, compound, cross, crossbreed, half-blood, half-breed, mongrel … to name just a few.

Caste was first used in India in the sixteenth century to describe the Hindu system of hierarchy. The term half-caste indicates how pure you are racially and echoes the days of colonial slavery when words such as mulatto, quadroon and octoroon were commonplace in sales ledgers and even in post-emancipation days in the old United States census.

John Agard, from Guyana makes some brilliant points in his poem ‘Half caste‘:

Read full article here…

>> Donah Sibanda <<

• Afatasi: Mixed ancestry between Samoan and White
• Afrasian: Mixed ancestry between an African and Asian
• Afro-Asian: Mixed ancestry between an African and Asian
• Afro-European: Mixed heritage between Africa and Europe
• Africasian: Mixed ancestry between an African and Asian
• Ainoco:Mixed ancestry between White and Japanese
• Amerasian: Mixed ancestry between American and an Asian
• Amalgamation: Archaic term for the intermarriage and interbreeding of different ethnicities or races
• Anglo-Asian: Mixed ancestry between an English and Asian
• Anglo-Burmese: Mixed ancestry between Burmese and European
• Anglo-Indian: Mixed ancestry between an English and Indian
• Atlantic-Creole: Mixed ancestry between European and African
• Bastard: A person of mixed blood
• Baster: People with a mixed racial and ethnic heritage
• Biracial: People of white and black origins
• Blackanese: Mixed Black and Asian
• Blackinese: Mixed ancestry between Black and Chinese
• Blacktino: Mixed of Black and Latino
• Black Dutch: People with mixed racial. cultural and ethnic heritage
• Black Indians: Mixed heritage between African and Native American
• Blasian: Mixed ancestry between Black and Asian
• Blaxican: Mixed ancestry between Black and Mexican
• Brown Skin: A political, racial, ethnic, societal, and cultural classification not limited to people of mixed heritage.
• Bruin-ou: People with a mixed racial, cultural and ethnic heritage
• Bruinmense: People with mixed racial, cultural and ethnic heritage
• Burgher People: Mixed ancestry between Europeans and Sri Lankans
• Bushie: People with a mixed racial, cultural and ethnic heritage
• Cablinasian: Causcasian/Black/American Indian/Asian Mix
• Caboclo: Mixed ancestry between White and Amerindian
• Cafuzo: Mixed ancestry between Black and Amerindian
• Capie: People with a mixed racial, cultural and ethnic heritage
• Castizo: Mixed ancestry between White and Mestizo
• Chewish: Mixed ancestry between a Jew and Chinese
• Chestnut Ridge People: see Melungeon
• Chindian: Mixed ancestry between the Chinese and Indian
• Cholo: Mixed ancestry between American Indian and Black African
• Chino: Mixed Asian and African American ancestry
• Coffee Coloured: People of mixed race with a brownish skin texture
• Colored: People of mixed blood or black
• Coloured: People with a mixed racial, cultural and ethnic heritage
• Con lai: Half-breed
• Coolie: Mixed ancestry between Black and Asian Indian
• Creole peoples: Locally-born people with foreign ancestry
• Creoles of color: Mixed-race blacks residing in the Gulf Coast and Louisiana area of the pre-existing indigenous population of Spanish Guinean originating from the island of Fernando Pó
• Daburu: The mix of races, cultures and ethnicities
• Dougla: Mixed race typically African and Asian India
• Eurafrican: African and European ancestry
• Eurasian: Mixed ancestry between a European and Asian
• Jingoism: Judging one’s own country as superior to others – an extreme type of nationalism.
• Gado Gado: Mixed
• Goffals: Mixed ancestry between Ndebele/Shona and White
• Griqua: People with a mixed racial, cultural and ethnic heritage
• Haafu or Hafu:  Half Japanese
• Halfbloed: Mixed Blood
• Half-blood: A person of mixed blood
• Half-breed: A person of mixed blood
• Half-caste: People of mixed caste
• Half-Chat: People of white and black origins
• Halfling: People with a mixed ancestry, racial, cultural and ethnic heritage
• Halfrican: Half African/ Half White
• Halvsie: Mixed Japanese Hapa: Half Hawaiian or half Asian, half Caucasian
• Hapa: A person of mixed Asian or Pacific Islander racial/ethnic heritage
• Hasian: Half Asian
• Honhyeol: Mixed blood
• Hotnot: People with a mixed racial, cultural and ethnic heritage
• Hun xue: Mixed blood
• Hybrid: Fusion or mix of race, ancestry, race, culture and ethnicity
• Indo: Mixed ancestry between a European and an Asian
• Kablungajuit: Mixed ancestry between White and Inuit
• Kailoma or Vasu: Mixed ancestry between European and Fijian
• Kleurling: People with a mixed racial, cultural and ethnic heritage
• Lai Má: American mix
• Lobo: Mixed ancestry between Black and Amerindian
• Louisiana Creole: People of mixed ancestry
• Luk kreung: Mixed racial heritage, literally means half-child
• Lumbee: Products of mixed unions
• Malaynese: Mixed ancestry between Malay and Chinese or Japanese
• Marabou: Mixed ancestry between black African/European and an Amerindian, specifically the native Taíno
• Melungeon: Mixed European, African, and Native American ancestry
• Miscegenation: Mixing of different racial groups
• Métis: A person born to parents who belong to different groups
• Mischling: Mixed person
• Mixedasians: Mixed Person
• Mixed: People of mixed origins
• Mixed ancestry: People of mixed ancestry
• Mixed-Bloods: Individuals of mixed European and Native American ancestry who are not of Hispanic descent
• Mixed race: People of white and black origins
• Mongrel: Fusion or mix of ethnicity
• Morisco: Mixed ancestry between Caucasian and Mulatto
• Mudblood: A person of mixblood
• Mulatto: Mixed ancestry between white European and black African
• Mule: Fusion or mix of horse and donkey
• Multiethnic: People of mixed ethnicity
• Multiracial: People of white and black origins
• Mutant: A mutation or mix between race, culture and ethnicity
• Mutt: Fusion or mix of ethnicity
• Nguoi Lai: Mixed-race person
• Octoroon: Mixed ancestry between a Quadroon and a European
• Pardo: Mixed ancestry between for black and white
• Passing: A person of mixed-race heritage assimilating to the white majority
• Peranakan: Indonesian Chinese
• Pointee: Mixed ancestry between an African and Caucasian
• Polygeneric: Neologism from Greek, poly-, (many) and genera (races)
• Quadroon: Generally three quarters white and one quarter black
• Quintroon: Mixed ancestry between an octoroon and a white parent
• Race of the Future: All the races are blending to become one race in the future
• Rojak or Rujak: Mixed vegetable/fruit salad
• Romani people: An ethnic group of Europe tracing their origins to medieval India
• Gypsies: An ethnic group of Europe tracing their origins to medieval India
• Redbone: Racially mixed ethnic groups in the the Sabine River region of Louisiana and Texas
• Réunion Creoles: A name given to those born on the island, of various ethnic origins on Reunion Islands
• Rhineland Bastards: Afro-German children of mixed German and African parentage
• Sri Lankan Moors: People of mixed heritage in Sri Lanka
• We-Sorts: People of “mixed-race” origins who claim descent from the Piscataway Native American population
• Zambo: Mixed ancestry between Black and Amerindian

>> Ross Rayners <<

For some uniquely and proudly South African neologism visit www.kakduidelik.co.za

Now another has joined our ranks. The actress Sophie Okonedo, who received a best supporting actress nomination for Hotel Rwanda, has every prerequisite for official tragic status. As the London Evening Standard said, she fought ‘against the odds’: an absentee Nigerian father, a struggling Jewish mother, a project housing upbringing. Despite her insistence that she is at ease with her heritage, she’s being fast-tracked as Britain’s Halle Berry. It is dangerous territory. Berry is rarely mentioned without reference to her “against the odds” life story, which includes spending her childhood not black enough for black folks and too touched with the tar brush for those picky whites. Are you seeing a pattern here?

No sooner had double gold medallist Kelly Holmes crossed the finishing line at Athens last year than the media had her lined up as a subtle, triumph-over-miscegenation story. OK, not so subtle if you consider that Holmes’s post-Athens cuttings reveal that she’s the mixed-race child of a shiftless Jamaican father raised on a project housing estate in south-east England.

Read the full article here…

>> Helen Kolawole <<

If you are half-Japanese you are Haafu; if you are African Indian you are Dougla; if you are half Samoan you are Afatasi. All round the globe, a fat and happy glossary of terms for multiracial persons is emerging; but those of us of mixed race are suffocating in this fleshy, welcoming, rainbow-coloured group hug. Of course, such affection and attention is well overdue. While other countries – and even continents – are respectfully trying to describe their racial mix, Scotland is not evolving in this area: Paki is still pretty much the umbrella term.

Both black and white have a sense of their own history but there is no real trace of the mixed-race peoples of this racially polarised world. The past has not honoured us. There is no Martin Luther King Jr for mixed breeds, but there is Jimi Hendrix. What we have in terms of beginnings dovetails somewhere between slavery and immigration, but old-fashioned terms like Eurasian, Mulatto, Half-Chat and Mud blood now seem outdated. We started out as “children of the plantation”, of course, those embarrassing reminders of forced sex who were excommunicated as half-caste (meaning half-cooked, like sloppy clay in a broken oven). In the overwhelmingly white Britain of the 1960s we emerged as the triumphant result of sexual indiscretion and supposed racial deviancy.

Now mixed-race people are the fastest growing minority in America and the UK; our previous form forgiven like a bad-mannered moment at the dinner table of a wealthy patron, kindly forgotten now that we have status.

Read full article here…

>> Anvar Khan <<