Young Curly Black Haired Mulatto Girl Reveals On Old Stairs

United States
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. Although it is sometimes used to describe individuals of mixed European and African descent, it originally referred to anyone with mixed ethnicities; in fact, in the United States, "mulatto" was also used as a term for those who were African American and Native American ancestry during the early census years. Mulatto was also used interchangeably with terms like "turk", leading to further ambiguity when referring to many North Africans and Middle Easterners. In the 2000 United States census 6,171 Americans self-identified with mulatto ancestry.
In addition, the term "mulatto" was also used to refer to the offspring of whites who intermarried with South Asian indentured servants brought over to the British American colonies by the East India Company. For example, a Eurasian daughter born to an South Asian father and Irish mother in Maryland in 1680 was classified as a "mulatto" and sold into slavery. Although still in use, in the last half century 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, mixed-race, and multiethnic.