My final question of the night is....

[Warph]

My final question of the night is, why, in 2009 America, are mulattoes invariably identified as blacks    

Surely there is nothing wrong with being a mulatto.    There is no stigma attached, as once there was.  It merely refers to those who have one white parent and one black.  There are many notable individuals who are mulattoes, including Halle Berry, Derek Jeter, Lisa Bonet and Barack Obama.  Tiger Woods, on the other hand, is a true amalgamation, being one-quarter Chinese, one-quarter Thai, one-quarter black, one-eighth Native American and one-eighth Dutch.  And, yet, with the possible exception of the New York Yankee shortstop, why do we insist on identifying all of them as black

It's as if there is something shameful about their being half or even one-eighth white.  If there is, I'd sure like to know what it is.  If, on the other hand, there isn't, why do some people insist on acting as if there were

So why, in 2009 America, are mulattoes invariably identified as blacks

[Diane Amberg]

Because mulatto sounds like something you would order at Starbucks? That's a good question. What do they call themselves?

[pamsback]

My guess would be.....human

[larryJ]

In scratching my head (dandruff) I think mulattos were considered black even though they had a white parent because in the South years ago, anyone who had a black ancestor was considered black.  They may have had ten white ancestors and one black ancestor, but they were considered black by Southern standards.

Then there is this from Wikipedia:

Mulatto existed as an official census category until 1930. In the Southern United States, mulattoes inherited slave status if their mothers were slaves. As for free mulattoes, in Spanish and French-influenced areas of the South prior to the Civil War (particularly New Orleans, Louisiana), a number of mulattoes were free and slave-owning.[22] Although it is commonly used to describe individuals of mixed European and African descent, it originally referred to anyone with mixed ethnicity's; in fact, in the United States, "mulatto" was also used as a term for those of mixed white and Native American ancestry during the early census years.[23][24][25][26] Mulatto was also used interchangeably with terms like "turk", leading to further ambiguity when referring to many North Africans and Middle Easterners.[27]

In addition, the term "mulatto" was also used to refer to the offspring of whites who intermarried with South Asian indentured servants brought over as to the British American colonies by the East India Company. For example, a Eurasian daughter born to an Asian Indian father and Irish mother in Maryland in 1680 was classified as a "mulatto" and sold into slavery.[28] Although still in use, in the last decade or so the term mulatto has fallen out of favor among some people and may be considered offensive by some in the United States. Today the preferred terms are generally biracial, multiracial, multi-ethnic and hybrid.

Glad to help out, Warph!

Larryj