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Offensive?

I assume such a designate would be considered offensive as with the "n-bomb" although I've also heard my mixed race friends use the term. Can someone clear this up and add in the lede for ignorant people like me? It's not a word I would use by choice but it's in my lexicon thanks to Archer (the cartoon). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.24.18.184 (talk) 20:22, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Why would it be anything like the "n-bomb"? it isn't a derogatory term you know, it's just a racial classification. 220.238.69.169 (talk) 14:38, 4 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I fit by genome, and I don't find it especially so. Unlike 'mullato' or 'sambo', besides the roon whatever that is, it's just a fraction. 98.4.112.204 (talk) 09:46, 2 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Racial classification

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I've gone down a minor rabbit hole into archaic terms for mixed-race individuals, and this is what I've come up with: half white/black is mulatto, 1/4 black to 3/4 white is quadroon/terceroon, 1/8 black is octoroon/mustee, 1/16 black was quintroon/mustafino, and any less than that would be called a "nigger in the woodpile" in accordance with the one-drop rule. 3/4 black to 1/4 white is sambo/griffe, and 7/8 black was mango/sacatra. These terms were also applied to native ancestry; more specific to native/white mixes were métis, mestizo, and mestee, related terms used in various contexts and overlapping with the above; mestee in particular was used for greater proportions of white ancestry, with mustee & mustafino being derived from it. Other general terms include sang-mêlé (mixed-blood), creole, etc. This should cover most of it, although it's not exhaustive, and there are variations that go down to 1/32 or 1/64, as seen in the article.

As for "hexadecaroon", I never heard of that word until this article. Checking on google books, the other terms I listed lead to 19th century literature and other historical references, while "hexadecaroon" only leads to modern literature on race/colonialism. I think it may be a fanciful scholarly invention that wasn't used historically; thus, I've taken the step of switching out "hexadecaroon" from the lede in favor of quintroon.

I also changed the given definition of "terceroon", since I believe the source was incorrect. It does in fact refer to three generations remove, but this is counting the full-blooded ancestor as the first, making it equivalent to quadroon, not octoroon. This is stated here [1], and Wiktionary gives it as: (dated) A person with one white and one mulatto parent which fits my definition and agrees with other sources [2] (as an aside, it seems that while quadroon refers to one quarter, and octoroon one-eighth, quintroon refers to the fifth generation, which is also supported by etymonline [3]).

Questions/comments welcome. Xcalibur (talk) 14:09, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]