Posted: Sun 19 Jun 2005 11:16 Post subject: "Mulatto Elite"
I keep reading the phrase "mulatto elite" but just who are they? Given that most African Americans are brown skinned and not black-skinned, and are mixed, who are the "mulatto elite" today?
Does anyone have a list? I guess Colin Powell could be on it. Condoleeza Rice is brown skinned and not black-skinned, so we could add her to the list.
Posted: Sun 19 Jun 2005 13:16 Post subject: Re: "Mulatto Elite"
triguy wrote:
I keep reading the phrase "mulatto elite" but just who are they?
I use the term only historically, to apply to former slaves who rose to become wealthy slaveowners, were accepted and married into White society, and whose descendants were accepted as White (at least, until Jim Crow). Specifically, I apply it only to South Carolinians and to a few nearby families in North Carolina and Georgia.
One could legitimately apply the term also to the wealthy biracial slaveowners of the Gulf coast, but I prefer to call the latter "Creoles" in order to highlight their cultural differences fom the former (Franco-Hispanic with two color lines versus Barbadian with one permeable color line.)
The best detailed delineation of people who today would be considered "Mulatto Elite" is Lawrence Graham, Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class (New York: HarperCollins, 1999). In essence, as I understand Graham, it designates a combination of wealth, breeding, education, Western cultural values, and a sense of responsibility towards those less fortunate.
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