The Unfortunate Naming of ‘Mulatto’.
Please, don’t get me wrong with the article title.
I love Mulatto, the rapper, and her music. Not kidding. I’ve spoken at length on my own personal social media page and at The Sunflower Girl Magazine about my deep appreciation for women and girls born and raised in the south.
In fact, please stream her latest project! But keep reading though.
Being born into Caribbean music and hip hop in a 90s New Jersey immigrant household with a studio in the basement, and now living in Virginia on my own for half of a decade now, I see how deep and insidious colorism is. It’s deeply personal for me. It’s generational. It’s made its way to my music.
Our attitude towards colorism makes it the unanticipated second fight against ignorance and racism. It is the second zipper of the backpack that we’re doing a terrible job at unpacking.
I like to make sure the reader knows where I’m coming from in all my articles: I’m a Jersey girl from the Caribbean, (just like Hip Hop, which is rooted and highly influenced by Jamaica, a fact that is hotly contested).
I’m from Haiti though. Haiti shares an island with the Dominican Republic, but before colonization, they were one. The island has a violent and racist past, with the DR’s actual policies outlining their ‘antihaitianismo’ and Haiti’s many missteps and misfortunes. As I said, deeply personal for me. Generational.
We all have different scars. I’ve spoken at length on my own personal social media page and at The Sunflower Girl Magazine about my deep appreciation for Caribbean women, East Coast women in hip hop, as well as girls born and raised in the south.
Among the hype of WAP for Cardi B and Meg thee Stallion, the protests were mainly against Kylie’s placement. On that front, I simply ignored the Kardashian for all she is worth. To me, she’s literally not even in the video. Simple. While that’s where some people focused, for me: it was the curious case of Big Latto. Beautiful, up and coming, braggadocious and charming. Mulatto, originally Miss Mulatto, was the inaugural winner of the Lifetime reality series The Rap Game at just 16 years old.
In the above video, she acknowledges that her name is a racial slur, but that she is actually reclaiming it back from people who used it to hurt her feelings, like the n-word which is also a slur classified as “sometimes offensive”. She acknowledges she gets flack for her name to this day and she probably will for everyday afterwards, including think pieces like these. I know slurs have modifying degrees, described as ‘always offensive’, ‘sometimes offensive’, ‘extremely outdated’, etc. One of the main reasons colorism is so prevalent, in both hip-hop and society, is because men enable it in many different ways…but funnily enough, as much as they say the word, I have never ever heard of a successful male rapper that called himself “Nigga”.
But to Mulatto, “it’s not that deep” and “it’s hard to express to people who don’t understand the struggles mixed people go through.” Hm. A slur? Calling people mules? Not that deep?
This is a very popular attitude within the pressure of an industry that lines women up by their grade on the last paper bag test. The reality of it definitely stings them.
The reality is born to a black father and white mother and raised in Georgia, the 2020 XXL Freshman is correct in assuming that she would have been classified in the US Census as a mulatto. But the treatment of black children during the words origin was based on the “condition of the mother”…meaning she would have been born free. Good news for you, girl.So hey, I’m not saying I’m completely sure that if her mother was black and her father was white, that her name wouldn’t still be Mulatto with the same pride… but I do wonder.
And according to Ferris State University’s Jim Crow Museum, a century ago, historian E.B. Reuter (1919) wrote:
“In slavery days, many of them[mulattoes]…were free and so enjoyed whatever advantages went with that superior status. They were considered by the white people to be superior in intelligence to the black Negroes, and came to take great pride in the fact of their white blood….When possible, they formed a sort of mixed-blood caste and held themselves aloof from the black Negroes and the slaves of lower status.”
So hey, again, I’m not saying I’m completely sure that if her mother was black and her father was white, that her name wouldn’t still be Mulatto… but I do wonder.
All racial minorities in the United States have been victimized by the dominant group, but again, according to the Jim Crow Museum, historically, mulattoes were not only accepted into the black community, but culturally revered often. Because of things like internalized colorism, ‘mulattoes’ were often leaders, nationally and in the neighborhood. Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, Elizabeth Ross Hayes, Mary Church Terrell, Thurgood Marshall, Malcolm X, and Louis Farrakhan were all ‘mulattoes’.
The reality of colorism, like racism & hip hop, is and has never been just American. However, if you’re looking for it in in United States, the reality of colorism is darkskinned black women receiving longer prison sentences than lightskinned black women for the same crimes. For a second, let’s forget colorism’s impact on careers, black family planning, and community mental health for now, as those side effects are what's often talked about…because the reality of colorism cannot is not centered on any one person’s childhood insecurities and family issues. Those aren’t what is centered. Instead, colorism centers events like darkskinned Haitians being systematically killed for being in the wrong town at the wrong time on the same island, simply for the crime of being so dark.
The reality of colorism, like racism and hip hop, is and has never been just American.
This month, after XXL released their 2020 Freshman List, Uproxx’s Hip-hop editor Aaron Williams’ released an article last week titled “Why ‘XXL’ Freshman Mulatto’s Rap Name Is Causing Controversy On Social Media”. Overall, I pretty much read it, sat back, nodded and said “yup…”
Alas, at one point, Williams states “I can’t fully support her because of how truly problematic her name is.”
That’s where I paused for a second.
So.. recap: yes, I call bullshit on all of her name justifications, like Williams did in Uproxx. I’m not buying the tragic mulatto stereotype from her. She is young and human, and I hope she realizes that she is going to have to do better. But as for not supporting her? I can’t say that.
After all, I call Mulatto “Big Latto” in my head and you can too.
Hip hop has always been the music of the oppressed. It is music about the ghetto, about police injustice, about being black in America. Women in hip hop were seen as objects by the men at its conception, but are rapidly understanding that can’t be that way anymore. Women and queer people moved in when men did and now we have shit to keep unpacking.
Women like Mulatto and Doja Cat clearly inspire other lightskinned women to rap. One example being fellow rising rapper Light Skin Keisha (why would you even… nevermind, girl) but since they do inspire, I agree that the bullshit they both pull (with a bad name choice and edgelord tendencies respectively) needs to be kept in check. These mixed women are navigating race on a tightrope. I don’t mind holding my breath. I don’t mind if there’s a net underneath. I don’t mind allowing them grace. Maybe I don’t have time for foolish things like naming yourself after one’s curl pattern stopping real progress for women in the industry. Maybe I’m growing up.
Because like I said during The Great Cancelling of Doja Cat, I don’t like hypocrites and abusers in power. How the hell do men in the industry like Trey Songz, Talib Kweli and Tory Lanez get away with being able to entrap, beat, rape, shoot and bully black women without consequence…you know…black women: the people we all seemed like we wanted to protect a few weeks ago…
I don’t even believe cancel culture is real that much these days since algorithms will still push Trey Songz and Tory Lanez on me. What kind of cancelling is that? Which one do I order? I want the one that’s big enough for them to receive the consequences for their own actions. Is it deluxe? Supreme?
Speaking of The Supremes, I grew up in love with Black Artist Movies: The Jackson 5, What’s Love Got to Do With It, Dreamgirls, etc. So even as a child, I knew well that fame can be an exposing curse, peeling back the things society has forgotten to heal. Humanity, not just youth, looks great on an artist. It is foolish to think that all of that celebrity privilege of being known goes directly where it should be invested.
Maybe I should rewatch the show but her calling herself Mulatto for a rap name like an 1833 US Census is honestly is always going to make me scratch my head. It’s important to understand where I’m coming from. Maybe it’s a regional thing, a heritage thing, a legacy thing, a personal thing. I acknowledge that Georgia’s racist history and New Jersey’s racist history are different.
Hey, maybe 50 Cent is right and I’m just a darkskinned black woman who will always be angry. And so what if I am? I make it look good and I help people.
I also acknowledge that people, attitudes, values, beliefs…these can and do all can change, and for good reasons. They change like names do (see Noname’s name change) so people think “its not that deep” but it quite literally is (see Rich Chigga’s name much needed name change to Rich Brian.)
So all I can do is listen to her. And hope she listens to the fans and does what she needs to do with that name by the end of 2021 because I know I’m not telling anyone to play some Mulatto music on my 25th birthday, please, Alyssa (like she’d ever read this… but I’m just saying, my ancestors would be embarrassed.) Perhaps the most disappointing part about the name is not in that this controversy was avoidable, but the fact that it wasn’t. There goes that exposing curse of fame: we need to 1. better understand colorism as a collective and 2. help our kids understand it so they can battle their demons.
Humanity, not just youth, looks great on an artist.
Hip hop turns 50 soon, the tests have changed, and the questions are starting to become what does it look like for us to, instead of dreaming of labels or a pedestal, face the community, recognize its changes and mistakes, and then nurture the right relationship with it ?But, like most living things, hip hop has also grown up. She’s taken so much ugly and given birth to so much beauty. This month, she turned 47 years old. Now she’s what’s mainstream in music. No one could have ever predicted this. In fact, they dismissed her and tried to predict her downfall. That’s what makes her not just beautiful but authentic, thriving with opportunities. The saddest thing being…in a world with so many muses, a beautiful, authentically talented girl was so broken that when she finally got her opportunity, could only think to name herself Mulatto.
