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Comment by mikeash | Hacker News Reader

There certainly are genetic differences around the world, but they line up only vaguely with race. If race were about genetics, then there would be a ton of different races in Africa, and we'd probably lump all other people under one "non-African" race.

My favorite way to illustrate the arbitrary nature of race is to ask what the race is of our current (alas, soon to be former) president. Typically the answer is "black." Yet his mother was "white." If it were genetic, we'd say he was mixed, but we're still operating under the influence of old arbitrary rules where having just a small amount of black ancestry makes you "black."

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The answer to your question is 'black' because of political correctness. This is a great example of why it's pernicious - as it robs us of ability to describe the world.

There is actually a more appropriate term - 'mulatto' which was specifically created to describe people born to black / white parents. Today it's considered 'dated and offensive', so we don't have a 'polite' and 'correct' way to describe the ethnicity of our (current) President.

Would you deny the existence of dog breeds because there exist labradoodles or any other mixes?

Wow, blaming political correctness for the idea that black ancestry makes someone black. You might find this to be enlightening:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypodescent#Hypo.2Fhyperdescen...

The idea that a mixed-race person is considered to be a member of only one of their parents' races long predates people's unwillingness to use "mulatto."

And the idea that people must call him "black" because they're not allowed to say "mulatto" is absurd. "Mixed" would describe it without causing any offense, as would "half white, half black."

I remain amazed at how insistent some people are that the lingering consequences of centuries of racial injustice in this country are somehow caused by "political correctness" in the past few decades.

Even before mulatto fell out of use, most white people called anyone with "a single drop of black blood" black. I grew up an a racist part of the southern US, and I assure you that my neighbors would have considered "mulatto" to be a kind of black person.

Strangely, we still do that. Imagine if a 'single drop of white blood' (whatever that means) meant you were white. Then America would be 99% white?

You know, every time I hear somebody complain about "political correctness" they follow it up by saying something really ugly and inaccurate. Then they complain, "gee, isn't it too bad that people don't let us use these dated terms anymore?". The reason we don't use the term "mulatto" is that there are a whole bunch of wrong assumptions rolled into that word. That there is any such thing as mixed vs pure race, for instance. The distinction is wrong. I mean, yeah it takes away your ability to describe the world a certain way, but it's because that way of describing the world is historically linked with murder, genocide, and slavery!

I'm not a native English speaker and to me this word has none of the connotations you describe. I'm with

'Residents of Spain, Latin America, the Caribbean, and some countries in Africa freely use the term mulatto, or its cognates in other languages, usually without any suggestion of insult'

The term mulatto is almost intrinsically offensive, as the two most likely etymologies mean "mule" or "foreign". It has a strong pejorative connotation.We have several polite terms for the President and others of mixed ancestry, like "multiracial", which is more accurate, comprehensive,and descriptive than "mulatto"

How is multiracial more accurate when it equally describes someone who's amerindian / chinese as european / african?

If you could propose a more PC term than mulatto (which specifically describes someone with white/black parents), I'd take it - but I don't think there is any.

In the US, when mulatto was in more widespread use, the term was used to describe Turks as well as persons of white/south Asian and white/ Native American backgrounds. So it is not necessarily more specific, in practice. I think the best reason not to use the term when in North American circles is that those it refers to generally strongly dislike it because of its poisoned historical past, which created an implicit comparison between mixed people and sterile mules, or more generously, strangers in their own land. Imagine if the colloquial term for Americans of Irish/German ancestry was "banana slug" or "interloper".

I find it difficult to believe anybody would throw out "black" as a race. That's about as specific as saying my heritage is "white".

From: http://www.arogundade.com/is-barack-obama-black-or-mixed-rac...

Barack Obama's ... was born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii. His parents were of contrasting ethnic backgrounds. His mother, the late Stanley Ann Dunham, was born in Wichita, Kansas. She was an American of English and Irish ancestry. Obama’s father, the late Barack Obama Sr., was born in Kenya’s Nyanza Province. He was of African heritage, belonging to an ethnic group called the Luo. They make up Kenya’s third largest ethnic group, with other members scattered across eastern Uganda and northern Tanzania.

Just google "first african american president" and watch the results roll in. "African American" is just a modern euphemism for "black," or at least "black American."

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