Is there a word for "a person from another race"?

Question

I am searching for a word that means ‘of another race’ to be used in context of a sentence such as

"She was deeply protective to her [of other race] foster children."

"They shunned the [other race] people."

The definition of race that I am referring to can be best defined as follows(from Google definitions):

each of the major divisions of humankind, having distinct physical characteristics. "people of all races, colours, and creeds" synonyms: ethnic group, racial type, (ethnic) origin "the school has pupils of many different races"

Here the 'other race' may mean just one race, or several. Through my research I was unable to locate such a word, except directly using the racial identity e.g. white, Native American etc., which is not what I want to achieve.

To add further clarification, the 'other race' in this context does not necessarily refer to an ethnic minority. Actually first example was based on a contradictory situation in the tv series Strange Empire, where a Metis woman is foster mother to two orphaned white girls.

To answer several questions raised in the Meta discussion:

While 'people of another race' can be very well referred to by their race or nation, I want to emphasize on the distinction of race, not the particular race.

For example,

"The rich, white mining owner ruthlessly overworked the (people of other race) labourers."

vs

"The rich, white mining owner ruthlessly overworked the Black, Mexican and Chinese labourers."

The standard words such as foreign, outsider, alien, etc. are not acceptable because a person from another race is not necessarily any of these. A Native American in the US is not a foreigner, outsider or alien.

Answer 1

There is a word miscegenate, from the Greek for "mixed race" (misce-, -genus) which would provide a clue.

The Greek for other is allos, which provides prefixes allo- (as in allophone) and the Latin al- (as in alibi).

So a word one could coin is allogenate or possibly allogenous or allogeneous.

In fact, allogenous is mapped on to allogeneous in OED:

rare before 19th cent.
Different or distinct in kind; (in later use freq.) spec. belonging to or consisting of a distinct ethnic group.

Allogeneous would appear to be exactly the word:

1666 G. Thomson Λοιμοτομια i. 18 We are thus beset on every side with such an allogeneous, pernicious matter, that doth frequently infest us.
2007 Callaloo 30 653 Making the presence of allogeneous groups (especially African ethnicities) on Italian soil suddenly visible.

Its use would suppose that the readership is sufficiently well-versed to extract its meaning, and something like racially-different or ethnically distinct is certainly more accessible.

Answer 2

I don't think there is an appropriate one-word adjective to use in your sentences. You could consider using racially different to mean that they are of different race.

The Racially Different Psychiatrist—Implications for Psychotherapy

The race of the therapist can play a significant role in the manifestation of transference and counter-transference phenomena in inter-racial psychotherapy. References to the race of therapist may be the first sign of a developing transference relationship. Failure to appreciate the impact of racial difference can impede therapeutic progress while sensitive confrontation may be a valuable tool in the recognition and communication of emotionally charged feelings in therapy.

[Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry]

Your examples:

She was deeply protective of her racially different foster children.

They shunned the racially different people.

But it would be more idiomatic to use

She was deeply protective of her foster children of another (different) race.

They shunned the people of another (different) race.

Answer 3

Commenting to the attempt to coin (or perhaps resurrect) the terms "allogenate(n.) or possibly allogenous(adj.) or allogeneous(adj.)". In the medical field the word "allogeneic" (or allogenic") is standard terminology for biological material coming from a person who is not genetically identical to the recipient. The antonyms in either direction are "autologous" for derived from self and "xenogeneic" (from other species).

Race is severely problematic to define rigorously. There is skin color which in dermatologic practice has a "type" system for the degree of melanin pigmentation on a 5 unit scale. There are minor variations in epicanthal folds. There was an entire field of study, now mostly discredited, cataloguing minor facial and skeletal variations There are differences in cultural and national origin. In American use of the last century it was fairly common to hear or see the term "colored" for any "non-White" person. This had a disparaging connotation and was retooled to "person of color", despite the glaringly obvious fact the everyone has color.

Answer 4

For the specific case of adoption and foster children, the term is "mixed race". See, for example, http://www.bbc.com/news/education-12513403 or https://adoption.com/forums/thread/363328/torn-about-mixed-race-adoption/

She was very protective of her mixed-race foster children.

(Yes, this doesn't necessarily make sense if taken literally. If the parents are white and all the children are black, the children are not of mixed races but of only one race. Presumably the idea is that the family as a whole is now of mixed race, even though the adjective is applied to the children and not the family. In any case, a lot of accepted terms are not necessarily literally accurate if you take apart the individual words. Like the last computer I bought came with a sheet of safety warnings that included a statement that I should not try to put it on my lap to use it because it produces a lot of heat and I could burn myself. But it was marketed as a "laptop computer".)

I don't think it's an accepted term outside the context of families. Like if an Asian boss had one employee and that employee was Hispanic, would we say, "The Asian employer and his mixed race employee ..."? Or if he had many employees, some Asian, some white, some black, some Hispanic, and you said, "The Asian boss discriminated against his mixed race employees", would that be understood to mean he discrimainted against the non-Asians as opposed to the Asians? Maybe in context that would be the only meaning that would make sense.

You can also say that an individual person is of mixed race, meaning that he has one parent of one race and the other parent of another race, or different races mixing further back, so there could be ambiguity there.

Answer 5

If the foster mother is white or is herself from an ethnic minority group, the following phrase, ethnic minority group, is probably the best solution, and one least likely to cause offence or misunderstanding.

1. She was deeply protective towards her foster children from ethnic minority groups.

ethnic minority
a ​group of ​people of a ​particular ​race or ​nationality ​living in a ​country or ​area where most ​people are from a different ​race or ​nationality

Google book results for "children from" ethnic minorities e.g. “Bilingual children from ethnic minority groups in the Netherlands are less successful in secondary schools than are Dutch children of the same age.”

The expression also fits in nicely with the OP's second example

2. They shunned the ethnic minorities.

If, however, the children fostered are Caucasian but not their foster mother, and if they are living in a predominantly Caucasian country such as Canada—as the OP's belated edit suggests—than the term ethnic minority would be inappropriate because the foster children ‘belong’ to the largest ethnic group; i.e. White people

The term "white race" or "white people" entered the major European languages in the later 17th century, in the context of racialized slavery and unequal status in European colonies. Description of populations as "white" in reference to their skin color predates this notion and is found in Greco-Roman ethnography and other ancient sources.
_Wikipedia

In the aforementioned scenario, the OP has several options open before them. Once the cultural identity of the foster mother is established the children can simply be described as being ‘white’

• She was deeply protective of her white foster children.

If the OP wishes to emphasize that the foster mother is of a different race.

• She was deeply protective of her racially different foster children

If the OP wishes to avoid the undeniable negative connotations associated with the word racial, and in its place use a single word, Andrew Leach's suggestion would be confusing

She was deeply protective towards her allogeneous foster children

The noun race has to be added in order to clarify. I looked in Google Books and there is not one instance where the expression ‘allogeneous children’ is used. I searched for ‘allogeneous people’ and found nine examples, four of which are from the same source.

1. Inorodtsy:
   Inorodsty, is a legal term used in the Russian Empire in reference to non-Slavic population of the empire. Literally meaning ‘of different descent/nation’, it is sometimes translated as allogeneous (people) (cf. ‘allogenes’) and sometimes as ‘aliens’.

2. In 1913 the Empire counted 70 million Russians proper, together with 90 million 'allogeneous people'

3. Communism in Romania in the inter-war and immediate post-war periods was represented by two groups: a) allogeneous people (including Jews) and b) locals (Romanians)

4. Of course, the idea that the burial was that of a Tei culture member who was buried by the rite of the allogeneous people cannot be excluded.

5. In mid-13th century it counted some 55,000 inhabitants, of whom 150,000 allogeneous people 30. One century later, it mounted to 900,000, including 65 per cent Romanians.

6. Before the continuous increase of this utterly allogeneous people in Washington, alured by their inversely disproportionate employment by the District and Central Governments...

The OP's second examples would be

They shunned the allogeneous people.

A reader who is versed in the meaning of allogeneous might well understand that the people or foster children were non-Slavic; or, from different cultures and not of a different skin colour.

In the third example provided by the OP, the overworked and exploited labourers working for the “rich, white mining owner” are of different nationalities made up of ethnic minority groups.