Half-caste  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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Half-caste is a term for a category of people of mixed race or ethnicity. It is derived from the term caste, which comes from the Latin castus, meaning pure, and the derivative Portuguese and Spanish casta, meaning race. It can sometimes be used or seen as an offensive term (particularly in New Zealand and the Pacific Islands and parts of Asia), but this is not universal.

See also

General concepts

• Race (human classification)
• Caste
• Miscegenation

Historical applications of the mixed-caste concept

• Between white/European and black/African:

• Mulatto
• Quadroon
• Octoroon

• Between white/European and Native American / American Indian:

• Mestee

• Métis, a people descended from fur traders (Scottish and French-Canadian) and their native wives

• Mestizo, a word common in Latin America, particularly Mexico

• Between white and Indian:

• Kutcha butcha
• Anglo-Indian
• Luso-Indian
• Burgher people, Sri Lankan people of partly European ancestry
• Eurasian (mixed ancestry)
• Indo people (similar group in the Dutch East Indies)

• Other:

• Mischling (Nazi German term for persons defined under the Nuremberg Laws as being non-Jewish but as having a significant amount of Jewish ancestry/"blood")

• In literature:

• Half Caste (poem)
• Half-elf (also "halfling" under some uses of the term), a human–elf hybrid featured in many works of fantasy literature and, as a character class and/or a description of a non-playing character, in many role-playing games derived from or inspired by the fantasy genre