Nomenclature[]
Um, I realize the book has used the term "mongrel race" literally to describe the admixture of diverse peoples in the modern Ghiscari, but I have tried to refrain from using it (unless directly quoting the book description for the "in the books" section). It really shouldn't be in the infobox.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 22:19, March 19, 2014 (UTC)
- Maybe this is because you're not a native English speaker, but in the United States....yes it can be offensive, depending on context. It's similar to calling a biracial person a "mutt" but a little more offensive. Both are dog breeding terms, not necessarily used for people. It's sort of like calling someone "half-breed" to their face: entirely accurate from a technical standpoint, but sort of offensive (unless a biracial personal is comfortable using this themselves, but even then they might not like others doing it). Obama famously referred to himself as a "mutt", jokingly, when he adopted a shelter dog early in his presidency: http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/11/chewing_over_ob.html
- The basic idea being that if you are literally emphasizing that a group is very "mixed" racially, you might be able to say "mutt" ...maybe "mongrel", if you were being very literal, but it's increasingly uncommon. Even Obama was only really able to use "mutt" without causing uproar because he was referring to himself.
- That being said, the KKK and other White Supremacist groups over the years have frequently used "mongrel" as a descriptor for mixed-race people, which they perceive as Miscegenation. It's in movies like Mississippi Burning: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095647/quotes
- I don't know what the Spanish equivalent of this is. While "Mestizo" literally means just "mixed", "mutt" and particularly "mongrel" are terms applied to dog breeding more than people. Is "Mestizo" considered offensive these days?
- I used to use the term "polyglot" to refer to a mixed and diverse society, until I realized that "polyglot" specifically means a mixture of just languages, not of peoples and ethnicities.
- So I wanted to lean more towards "mixed". I don't know: what do other people think of "mongrel"?--The Dragon Demands (talk) 17:39, March 20, 2014 (UTC)