Half caste

[Pam70]

This has been troubling me for over a week. A colleague and I were discussing Wife Swap last week and she referred to one of the wives as being half caste.

I hate the term half caste and would never refer to DS or DD as such nor would I ever want them to hear someone call them such.

I didn't say anything to my colleague then and am now wondering if I should. Bear in mind that we live in Northern Ireland which is still relatively new to the idea of multiculturalism.

I don't think she said it in malice or in a derogatory way, it just rolled off her tongue presumably because she has no other term for mixed race?

But if she's using it and she's in her 30s, what hope have I that DS won't be referred to or called such at school by other kids or other parents?

I can remember being extremely upset the first (and actually only) time someone referred to DD1 as being half caste. As so many people have said - they are not half of everything - and in fact they get to celebrate twice as much coming from mixed religious background as well as all the rest. We tell our children they are mixed race or dual heritage - they have two of everything where others only have the one :languages, cultures, countries of origin, traditions, celebrations...I nthink you've just got to be and remain positive...it catches on.

iuf half caste is out is red out also?

OMIGOD!!! Deeply perjorative! Lol!!! :-)

For example, the only time I've ever been called red is when some Bajan street guy that was hassling me was shouting it at my (swiftly) departing back! (in conjunction with the noun for a female dog, no less.......)

I sincerely hope no-one ever calls me red in this country. Do people use that term nastily here?

Never even heard that term before other than as a colour or in 'seeing red' Dare I ask what it means?

Red?! Am I missing something - what does red mean?

red= half caste, molatto, what ever you want to call it - west indian term. have been called it several times by black people. red people are nasty people, red people are feisty people blah blah blah. one of those expressions like 'anything blacker than you is sin' that are used by black people to deride those of mixed race or darker skin colour - Never took it that personally because of how ridiculous it was. technically there is a right shade of black and if you aint it you are a target.

my sister calles herself jokingly
a nought point five!

my 3 year old says I am choclate, daddy is butter and she is pumpkin

I don't ever ever describe my children to themselves or to anyone else by the colour of their skin and I refuse to fill in all those forms demanding to know my skin colou, don't see that it helps anybody really know me

Thanks MFT, lived in London all my life and never heard it before.

when I was young in the 70's and 80's it was a fairly common place term. generally from west indian 'relocators'.

haven't read the whole of the thread, but was yesterday talking to a Nigerian doctor, who said that in Nigeria the term "half-caste" is complimentary- as lighter skin is seen as beautiful.

which I think, tissy, says it all!

A compliment to some (the light skinned) and an insult to the others (the dark skinned).

My dds are of mixed heritage, but they don't describe thenselves as anything, they just say where Mummy and Daddy are from if asked.

My dd1 was described by a nurse when she was born as "mixed breed" ! Wasn't pleased with that as it made her sound like a puppy!

I hasten to add that I didn't use the term!

The doctor in question referred to a patient as half-caste (not in her hearing, thank goodness!), and was surprised when I pulled him up about it!

He seriously wasn't aware that it could be considered offensive

Vino - 'mixed breed'? Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. She should have her mouth washed out with soap - that's the era she must be from, surely?

And Marslady, your last is absolutely spot on!

never thought you would tissy my love!

my midwife put caucasion on my booking form. She didnt even ask ethnicity, I just watched in amazement as she completed it.

I've only just looked at this thread and it may well be that I've missed the boat on this discussion but I couldn't resist adding to the debate so here goes:

As a person of mixed heritage or race (I know the term has its own problems but if we take it as a given that we are all of one race and I am using race as a euphemism for ethnic origin) even before the advent of policitcal correctness, as a child in the 1970's and a teenager in the 1980's I was upset, unhappy then offended by the term half caste.

Once I knew what it meant I was even more so. My parents (black mother, white father) had always brought me up to be proud of my heritage. I think that to blame PC -ness about people being offended by the term (whether it is about themselves, their partners, friends or their children) is simply a failure to acknowledge just how derogatory and offensive it is. Those who have used the term to refer to themselves and who have been happy to have it used about them may not have been aware of the racist origins of the term. Either that, or I am sorry to say they need to go back to school! To be fair, I have noticed that in areas such as the Midlands/Nottingham/Leicester (where I often travel for work) the term is used a lot more than where I am from (London), so there may be regional variations as to the use and awareness about the term. Ditto with the term "coloured".

My feeling is that society as a whole sometimes finds it easier to classify people as one thing or another. Which is why those of us with African blood (who obviously look non-white) may sometimes find ourselves referred to as black. I don't have a problem with that personally, but some black people I know would not agree that I am.

It can be a challenge to embrace that duality as part of one's identity, but I think that it is a challenge to be embraced. It is up to us to define who and what we are and while others may be slow to catch on people must learn to stop being lazy and think about the language they are using and what it really means. I once had a heated discussion with a guy who was attempting to chat me up by calling me a mulatto. He couldn't understand why I was so offended so I had to tell him. "Would you like to be referred to by a word that means mule in English with all the connotations it carries?"

I don't know if any of you saw the sports page of yesterday's Observer but there was a very interesting article about mixed race people in sport and in particular, football (where they still seem to live in the dark ages, no pun intended).

Anyway, I didn't mean to go on so long but I am genuinely surprised that people are still using this term. As far as I'm concerned it has never been acceptable but it's good to know the views that are out there.

Good luck all!

when dd was 5 she came home and announced that she had 'missed grace'. one of her friends had told her that's what she was. took a while to figure out what was meant.

I am 'half-caste'. I have an english father-white and a south american mother-black. This term has never bothered me and in this climate of political correctness, it does not stop the outright racism that people who are of differenct ethnicity sometimes endure.
I don't especially like the term 'black' but I can't stop people using it and in the UK we don't have a the more palattable term - Afro-American. Black-British is no better than just saying Black person.
I am mixed race, half-caste, bi-racial..... What does annoy me is if another person of colour berates me for calling myself a half-caste. It is my choice to call myself whatever I wish. They still don't have all the categories on the equal opps and ethnicity forms. I am not black nor white, not mixed African or mixed Carribean, if I am to be true to my ethnicity I can only tick - black other box on the monitoring form.

that's fine if you choose to call yourself 'half caste,' as long as you understand what a horribly degrading term it is. there are far nicer ways to describe yourself. my mother is english and white, my father is north african. when asked i say i am half english and half moroccan. when i need to 'tick a box,' i tick other mixed.

Personally I don't think half-caste is a horribly degrading term. Wg,Ner, Pki etc are offensive but hc is not in the same profane league. I know that many people don't like the term because they feel that it is a term widely used in the generations where people called ethnic minorities 'coloureds'. The word ngger is widely used in American street slang and by popular rappers and hip hop artists. It is their choice to use that term to describe one another. As far as I am concerned I am made up of half of my mothers genes and half of my fathers. By calling myself half-caste that doesn't make me half a person.
If I call myself mixed other, mixed race or something more acceptable to those who feel degraded by the two words half-caste does that really alter the perception of those that judge me on the colour of my skin? I don't think so.
I see half-caste as the old fashioned word for mixed race. Maybe next decade we will call ourselves the mid browns.

Slightly at a tangent to the main conversation but I find categorising mixed race people who are say half Carribbean and half English as black quite annoying. It over-emphasises one half of someone's background and ignores the other half. Whichever way round that happens it isn't good.

If I draw a parallel - my son is half Indian and half English. If the same applies he would just be called Indian which is ridiculous as he clearly isn't 100% Indian. And yes if someone called him half-caste I'd be really annoyed.

Absolutely agree there is a divide between different areas of the UK and that cities and especially London seem more enlightened and terms like half caste and coloured much less likely to be used if at all.

Kikki, you have every right to describe yourself however you want, however DizzyBint is right - I hope you know and understand the historical provenance of your choice.

As for me, I reject any reference to caste as it is applied to me, my children or anyone else. And that includes you. You are physically bi-racial, you are mixed race, (I assume you 'look' black, as in 'not white') but you are NOT half caste. No-one is.

Hope you don't mind.

I don't see a problem with the name at all, what's to be offended about? My dp thinks it's absolutely fine.

At the risk of repeating earlier messages and praying in aid a bit of leeway because I am not from South Asia, I think it goes in general terms like this: historically in the Indian sub-continent the caste system divided people into higher and lower castes. The lighter skinned groups of people tended to be members of the higher castes: those with greater financial means and social standing (e.g. Brahamins). The darker skinned people belonged to the lower castes. The "untouchables" (those whose job it was to clean up sh*t) at the very bottom, with the darkest skin.

Mixing of lower and higher castes was not encouraged and as I understand it, even today, attempts to promote rights for lower caste people have met with some hostility in Indian society.

The term "half-caste" IN ITSELF suggests that the person referred to is somehow unwhole, a half-breed (the pure waters have been muddied, if you like), even if the person using the term does not mean to suggest any such thing. THAT is why so many of use are offended by it. I can appreciate why many people who do not connect the term to this meaning have no problem with it, but as far as I'm concerned and where I come from it is unacceptable. I would certainly challenge anyone who used it to refer to me.

My mother is black South African and for many years she had to live under the Apartheid system, a gross example of how a state-enshrined caste system can ruin lives.

I'm not saying it's anything like that here (in fact in relative terms I think we are very lucky in the UK), nor that language can change the fact that racism exists, but I don't think it helps to simply leave the term to live on, otherwise we would still be referring to black people as "negroes", another example of a term which is not as aggressively insulting as "Ni**er", but offensive because it suggests that black people are another species, when we are all one species.

My dh is also of mixed race/dual heritage. When our baby is born it will be of black African, black Jamaican white English origin. And we'll both be damned if anyone calls him ot her half caste. Hopefully, by the time our child is old enough to have to deal with all that stuff, the term will have all but died out, and not before time!

Hope this doesn't sound too pompous but it's a subject I feel really strongly about and I'm glad I'm not alone.

i would go so far as to say if this term is used in certain areas