Changes

Human skin color varies from a melanin-rich dark brown (called "black"), to a lighter brown or "red", to "yellow" and to a pinkish tan called "white".

Human skin color varies from a melanin-rich dark brown (called "black"), to a lighter brown or "red", to "yellow" and to a pinkish tan called "white".

A person who is born of both black and a white parent was usually called "mulatto" in the United States, well past the end of the American Civil War. Racial terms like mulatto and quadroon (one black grandparent, three whites) fell into disuse thereafter.

A person who is born of both black and a white parent was usually called "mulatto" in the United States, well past the end of the American Civil War. The term was also commonly used in the English- and Spanish-speaking Carribean nations.  Racial terms like mulatto and quadroon (one black grandparent, three whites) fell into disuse thereafter, in part because of the insulting roots of the word: "mulatto" is derived from the Spanish word for "mule.".