Mulatto is a term used to refer to persons born of one white parent and one black parent, or to persons born of a mulatto parent or parents. The term today is generally confined to an historical context, and English-speakers of mixed white and black ancestry seldom choose to identify themselves as "mulatto". The term is generally considered archaic, and may be taken as pejorative, especially in the United States, where "multiracial" and "biracial" are preferred. Those terms, however, may also apply to other racial mixtures.