Half-caste

For other uses, see Half-caste (disambiguation).

Half-caste is a term used to describe people of mixed race or ethnicity.^[1] Caste comes from the Latin castus, meaning pure, and the derivative Portuguese and Spanish casta, meaning race. The term is often incorrectly believed to have some sort of relationship with the Indian caste system, but the fact that children born to mixed Indian and British parentage were termed either Eurasian or Anglo-Indian rather disproves this theory. It was in common usage, and considered an entirely acceptable adjective for people, from at least between the mid-19th century and mid-20th century. Today, the term is much more prominent in commonwealth countries than in the United States, possibly indicating that its usage came about after America's independence. Whether or not the term is offensive is a matter of considerable debate, and opinions vary throughout the Anglophone world.

In Australia, the term was historically used to describe the offspring of White colonists and the Aboriginal natives of the continent. It is immortalized in the Half-Caste Act, whereby the Australian government could seize such children in order to, in theory, provide them with better homes than those afforded typical Aborigines. As a result of such questionable acts, and their association with the moniker, half-caste is nowadays deemed an offensive term in Australia. Further, the terms Aboriginal and Indigenous in the Australian context no longer require that a person described as such have a certain proportion of Indigenous heritage.^{[citation needed]} Terms such as half-caste or part-Aboriginal are no longer considered politically correct.^{[citation needed]}

In today's United Kingdom, the term primarily applies to those of mixed Black and White parentage^[2], but such was not always the case. In just about any area that fell under the crown's dominion, the term was made use of, and anyone of mixed Caucasian and conquered races could be properly described as being half-caste. As such, it did not necessarily carry any stigma with it. In Colonel Percy Fawcett's memoirs, written in the early 1900s, he describes Peruvian half-caste women (an admixture of indigenous Peruvians and Spanish conquistadors and colonists) in an entirely positive light, praising them for their beauty, poise, and dignity^[3].

It is important to note that most imperial cultures devise terms for the mixed-race children of the conquering culture and the conquered culture. The Spanish devised a significantly more complicated system than did the English, consisting of Mulattoes, Mestizos, and many others; the French used terms such as Métis, which is in common use today; and Americans have used myriad different terms, including the adoption of the Spanish Mulatto, and the semi-mythical Jackson Whites and Melungeons.

See also

• Caste
• Half Caste (poem)
• Mestee
• Métis
• Mestizo
• Mulattoes
• Quadroon

References

1. ^ [1] Memidex/WordNet
2. ^ [2]
3. ^ Exploration Fawcett, Overlook TP, 1590204301