The English Oracle

How to refer to people of mixed race?

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Chapters
00:00 How To Refer To People Of Mixed Race?
00:39 Answer 1 Score 8
01:21 Answer 2 Score 3
01:56 Answer 3 Score 0
02:11 Answer 4 Score 3
02:19 Thank you

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Tags
#singlewordrequests #offensivelanguage

#avk47



ANSWER 1

Score 8


People. Pretty sure about 99.9% of all people are mixed to some extent.

If you find someone who is really mixed - like me - then I would use mutt.

You are referring to their skin color not race, because if a person had a black dad and white mom but appeared white the question may never come up - given you don't know the mom and dad. You are referring to when people have traits (mainly skin color) of opposing ethnicity.

Multi-ethnicity if I had to label a couple that looks different.

Global or integrated or diverse if you want something cool to say or code-talk. These words would have to have context.




ANSWER 2

Score 3


I believe the term you're looking for is multiracial

adj.

  1. Made up of, involving, or acting on behalf of various races: a multiracial society.
  2. Having ancestors of several or various races.

— source thefreedictionary.com

To address your second point, a person that is descended from black and non-black parent is often called a mulatto. As the Wikipedia article explains, the term has no firm definition, and it may not be not entirely free from negative connotations, but it's generally acceptable.




ANSWER 3

Score 3


one word I've seen and heard used many times is inter-racial if that helps.




ANSWER 4

Score 0


"People of mixed race" seems to be pretty good. I don't think you're going to find more specific words without annoying somebody (although "hapa" seems to be an inoffensive word for mixed Asian and not).