Encyclopedia
Black is a term that commonly refers to the indigenous peoples of
Africa and their diasporic populations throughout the world. In addition, the term
aeta means black in tagalog and the term negrito means "little black one" in
Spanish. Though literally implying dark-skinned, black has been used in different ways at different times and places.
History
Pre-colonial
The earliest mention of people described as black can be found in
Ancient Egyptian writing and
Bible. Biblical references of the dark-skinned people in
Sudan and parts of
Arabia known as the
Kushites. The Egyptian word
Ksh meant
black-skinned and carried over to the
Hebrew word
Cush, which carried the same meaning. The term
Khmt, which they also called themselves, is generally agreed to mean
black land and/or
black people, the latter interpretation supported by the accounts of
Herodotus, who compared the Egyptians, Colchins and Ethiopians to
blacks or
Aethiops. The Greeks used the name
Aethiop, meaning
dark-skinned person, or the peoples of Africa, generally . In all cases, the words were applied to various peoples, ethnic origins and skin color. Although the word
Kush itself originally may have referred to particular ethnic groups or empires in the Sudan, throughout antiquity in the Near East, this word became the most commonly used word to describe African peoples with dark complexions. . In Ancient India, the
Sanskrit name of
Krishna literally meant
black or
dark-skinned person. Throughout India, other references to black people in the
Rig Veda scriptures indicate their presence in that region. Throughout the 9th - 14th century, Islamic colonization of East Africa and slave trading along the "Zanj" coast facilitated more of a black presence in Asia, and eventually the word abd became a word synonymous with black person. Trading between the people of Africa, Madagascar, and Indonesia gave rise to various similarities between the Madagascay peoples and some Indonesian groups, especially from Borneo. These interactions give a historical glimpse of the possible Equatorial relationships between black Africans, blacks in Asia, and possibly Australia. Research on this topic is nascent and has yet to show a verifable pattern despite strong signs . It is possible that the trading across the indian Ocean may give a first hand perspective of black interactions outside the hegemony of European colonialism and Islamization.
Colonial and modern era
At some point in Europe, the word negro was used.
Negrois derived from the Latin word
nigris, which means black in hue. In the colonial era, this concept of distinctively desribing dark skinned Africans was then applied in European discourse to multiple peoples around the world who subsequently would be called black as well. The Spanish word
negro came to be a synonym for indigenous, black
African peoples, Filipinos, Australian Aborigines, Sicilians, some Arabs and some people in the Indonesian archipelago. Eventually in the U.S. the term "negro" was adopted by whites as a more polite way of identifying a black African. After the 1960s this term became colloquial and offensive, and regarded as a hold over from a prejudiced and psychologically humiliating social period.
Negro or
Colored were once socially-acceptable terms, but are now considered archaic and offensive in English-speaking countries. "Black" was an offensive term, on the level of the perjorative term 'nigger', until the black power movement of the 1960's which strove to turn the negative meaning of black on its head, with the claim that 'black is beautiful.'
The
English word was spawned by the European colonization and conquest of non-Europeans. It solidified into popular culture during the
Enlightenment as one of the four major categories into which European philosophers tried to organize the newly discovered human diversity. The categories were based upon skin tone as perceived by Europeans of the time: Red , Yellow , White , and Black . Today, the term's usage differs slightly among former European colonies.
Latin Americans, former members of the
British Empire, and
Americans all use the term differently.
- Descent from indigenous Africans
- Phenotype and hair texture related to or derived from West African groups
- Skin color
- Self identification with the black identity and/or African culture.
Any combination of these four ways may comprise a black identity. Although the different peoples may or may not be related historically, socially they share certain similarities that are recently coming to light due to ease in accessing information. For example, with the internet, people in various parts of the world can speak directly to one another and learn of the Black presence in their region.
Who is black today?
Because it is more of a social classification label than a bonafide race, it cannot be objectively tested with consistent results. Similar to the difficult experience of unanimously agreeing on who is ethnicly Jewish, there is no scientific way to identify a "Black" person without excluding one segment that has historically been known as black. The criteria can be subjectively applied based on cultural and social customs, political reasons, or historical context. A black person in the U.S. would be considered non-black in Brazil, while a Colored person in South Africa would be considered Black in the U.K.. Finally any mulatto is usually considered black in the U.S. Some scientists have insisted on focusing more on DNA but this also creates more problems as Africans are extremely diverse genetically and intermixture among black people creates too many exceptions to the rules which they seek to impose.
- It is generally agreed that Equatorial Africans are unquestionably black, along with black African Americans. In fact, their "blackness" tends to be unquestioned, despite varying degrees of Native American and European admixture.
- Northeast Africans, while generally considered black in the West, are sharply divided in some areas due to religious and ethnic identity. Arab culture and the Islamization of East Africa have caused cultural divides and, in some cases, armed hostilities, between so-called Arabs who otherwise would be considered black in any other cultural millieu and other black Africans.
- In Latin America, many people of predominantly African descent consider themselves black under very specific conditions, whereas many mixed Afro-Latinos use other terms to describe themselves. On the other hand, their African heritage is often more strongly preserved and manifested than among other diasporic blacks. Their religious and social customs are much closer to Yoruba, Ife, and other groups than those of, for example, blacks in the U.S.
- In the Middle East, various unrelated groups of Africans and other black people inhabit the regions. Their appearance in the region varies considerably, and there is no stong unified sense of black identity there. Mostly East African in origin, their culture is distinct, with some even retaining African languages.
- In Southeast Asia, the Negritos of the Philippines, the Sentinelese and the Orang Asli of Malaysia
...
have retained the distinctive qualities that otherwise would be known as black characteristics. They share many physical features with continental Africans and are visually and culturally distinct from the Chinese and Sinoid peoples of the region.
- In India and Indonesia, the Papuans and Andamanese groups also have experienced social upheaval, economic hardship, displacement, violence, social and political marginalization and discrimination based on their social status and skin color.
- Australian Aborigines are one of the oldest, distinct human populations outside Africa known today. Their skin color is, on average, darker than that of the average Equatorial African.
Who is a member of African diaspora?
Most societies that apply the black label on the basis of a person's ancestry justify it as applying to members of the African diaspora. Between 1500 and 1900, approximately four million African slaves were transported to island plantations in the
Indian Ocean, about eight million were shipped to Mediterranean-area countries, and about eleven million were taken to the
New World. Their descendants are now found around the globe. Due to intermarriage and genetic assimilation, just who is a descendant of the African diaspora is not entirely self-evident.
British North America imported only about 500,000 Africans out of the 11 million shipped across the Atlantic. Nevertheless, the United States has been astonishingly successful at preserving two distinct genetic populations: one of mostly African ancestry, the other overwhelmingly European. All other New World states that imported African slaves have unimodal Afro-European genetic admixture scatter diagrams. Indeed, two thirds of white Americans have no detectable African ancestry at all . Only one-third of white Americans have detectable African
DNA from ancestors who passed through the endogamous color line from black to white. Furthermore, U.S. government's surveys continue to categorize on a strict color-line. The federal census has no provision for a "multiracial" or "biracial" self-identity and, until 2000, forbade checking off more than one box. The
EEOC has strict regulations defining who is black or white and implicitly denies the existence of mixed people.
At an intermediate level, in Latin America and in the former plantations in and around the Indian Ocean, descendants of slaves are a bit harder to define because virtually everyone is mixed in demographic proportion to the original slave population. In places that imported relatively few slaves , few if any are considered Black today. In places that imported many slaves , the number is larger, but all are still of mixed ancestry.
At the other extreme, the African slaves shipped across the Mediterranean to Europe promptly assimilated. Sub-Saharan DNA is scattered throughout the European population. Not every nation has been studied yet, but enough studies have been done that a picture is starting to emerge. The percentage of sub-Saharan DNA in Europe today ranges from a few percent to nil . It decreases as you go northwards from the Mediterranean. It apparently decreases as you go eastwards from the Atlantic. For details, see Sub-Saharan DNA admixture in Europe.
Although African DNA is present everywhere in Europe, it is too thinly scattered, even along the Mediterranean coast, to affect physical features. Hence, despite this easily detected but diluted African ancestry, virtually no one considers today's Europeans to be descendants of the African slave Diaspora.
A few examples of populations who are seen as Black or who see themselves as Black because they descend from native Africans are: African Americans, some Latin Americans, and most residents of the Republic of South Africa.
African Americans — or visit
African American.
Afro-Latin Americans — Among the Afro-Latin American populations in South and Central America there are populations that identify as
negros. Some with high levels of admixture as well. The difference is that, contrary to the USA, membership in the Black ethnicity is usually by upbringing and not by an imposed concept of one-droppism.
Afro-Arabs — Various people of the Middle east whose ancestors were also brought during the colonial slave trade period established communities in Yemen, Pakistan, and India. Many share the similar name "Saeed" , which is also the name of the Southern Egyptians , who exhibit strong African and Equatorial origins and a distinct culture from the northern Egyptians of the Delta.
Beyond Africa
Some groups have embraced a black self-designation despite their lack of modern African ancestry. Due to their physical appearance which generally relates to their ability to be perceived as Equatorial Africans, and their social and ethnic distinction in their home countries, they are considered legitimately black to some degree, although many other African descendants may have their reservations. Due to the gains of the
U.S. Civil Rights Movement of 1955-1975 some oppressed and marginalized populations around the world, even without African ancestry, have chosen to label themselves as "black." This is disputed by those who equate "blackness" only with equatorial African ancestry and argue that non-Africans cannot be legitimately black.
Tamils are an ethnic group of Southeast Asia, generally extremely dark-skinned, with Australoid features. They are in many ways similar to the aboriginal people of Australia. The Tamils are thought to be the descendants of the ancient Dravidians, who were known to be black. In 2003, geneticist Spencer Wells traced the DNA of San bushmen of the
Kalahari to a man in
Tamil Nadu in southern
India. Wells surmised that in one of the earliest human outmigrations from Africa, people traveled from Africa to India, across then shallow waters and now submerged land bridges to Australia. Often associated with the oppressed
Dalit, or Untouchable, caste in India, many Tamils have looked to the American Civil Rights and Black Power movements for inspiration. And while Dalit is a caste, rather than an ethnic group, it is heavily comprised of dark-skinned Indians, and mostly Tamils, who because of their dark skin and caste designation have suffered social, political and economic oppression and marginalization. Tamils are identified throughout their history as black people by other East Indians and by some colonial powers. Many present-day Tamil intellectuals self-identify as black.
V.T. Rajshekar, a prominent Dalit leader wrote a book titled
Dalits, the Black Untouchables of India. Afrocentrist historian Runoko Rashidi holds that "large sections of the Dalits would be seen as black people if they lived anywhere else," and that the connections between Africans and Tamils "go beyond phenotype." Some have adopted an Afrocentric worldview, which holds that Tamils are an African people. The Dalit Panthers emulate the
Black Panther Party of the U.S. Aside from similar historical experiences, many Tamils generally would be viewed as black in the
United States, simply because of their Africoid appearance.
Black Dutch According to researcher James Pylant, based on his extensive survey of American families claiming Black Dutch as part of their heritage:
"There are strong indications that the original "black Dutch" were swarthy Germans. Anglo-Americans loosely applied the term to any dark-complexioned American of European descent. The term was adopted as an attempt to disguise Indian or, infrequently, tri-racial descent. By the mid-1800s, the term had become an American colloquialism, a derogative term for anything denoting one's small stature, dark coloring, working-class status, political sentiments, or anyone of foreign extraction."
He also writes: "In contrast to the Anglo-surnamed Melungeons, nearly 60% of American families reporting black Dutch tradition bear surnames that are either decidely German or possibly Americanized from Germanic origin."
Black Irish is a term used by some descendants of Irish emigrants to describe their ancestors. The term is found in
Australia,
Canada,
Great Britain and the
United States. It refers to the possessing of dark hair and eyes as opposed to the caricature of Irish people with red hair, pale skin, and blue or green eyes, a difference which is possibly due to less Scandinavian or Germanic ancestry being found in people on the west of
Ireland . The term is often accompanied by a claim that the darker features are due to Iberian descent. The term "Black Irish" was also historically used to stigmatize the lower class segments of the Irish population prone to alcoholism and brawling and the Irish as a whole struggled to be considered White. In a review of the book
How the Irish became White,
Publishers Weekly wrote: "Just how, in the years surrounding the Civil War, the Irish evolved from an oppressed, unwelcome social class to become part of a white racial class is the focus of Harvard lecturer Ignatiev's well-researched, intriguing although haphazardly structured book."
Negrito — The
Negrito from the
Philippines are, more or less, known as black in the Anglicized Philippines, sue to the Semang and Veddoid ancestry. Like the term Negrito, the term
Aeta was an imposed term, the result of later migrations. Two major branches apparently made their appearance in the archipelago 30,000 to 20,000 years ago, one traveling up the eastern flank of the islands to end up on the Pacific side of the
Sierra Madre and comprising the Alta, Arta and Agta groups; the second branch appears to have moved up the western side, with some groups similarly ending up in northern
Luzon. This branch includes the Sambal, Dumagat, Ata, Ati, Atta, Sinauna and Batak. Another ended up in Mindanao . At least 25 Negrito groups are known, many sharing the same name. ta, Aeta, Ata, Atta, Agta, etc.,are thought to come from the general Tagalog word
itim, meaning
black). Many find this term to be offensive, because it ignores their own tribal identification. Nevertheless, despite their closer genetic affinities with certain Asian populations, they are virtually indistingiushable phenotypically from continental Africans.
Australian Aborigines —
Indigenous Australians are the first inhabitants of the
Australian continent and its nearby islands, continuing their presence during
European settlement. The term includes the various
indigenous peoples commonly known as
Aborigines, whose traditional lands extend throughout mainland Australia,
Tasmania and numerous offshore islands, and also the
Torres Strait Islanders whose lands are centred on the
Torres Strait Islands which run between northernmost Australia and the island of
New Guinea. Since colonialism, the English have referred to them as black due to their darker complexion, and they have adopted the name as an ethnic term, much like Afro-Americans:
- Wimbledon champion Evonne Goolagong, of the Wiradjuri people of New South Wales, is described as "the first black woman sporting hero in Australian folklore" and included in lists of black athletes, as in the book Black Gold.
- Anthony Mundine has been nicknamed "the black superman."
- Oodgeroo Noonuccal/Kath Walker , of the Noonuccal people of Moreton Bay, east of Brisbane, referred to herself and other aboriginals as "black." She quoted her father as calling her "black."
- Half-aboriginal Charles Perkins was subjected to discrimination against black aboriginals and subsequently has involved himself in black politics. .
- Aden Ridgeway, of the Gumbaynggir people of New South Wales is described as "a black politician."
Most critics of a global black identity agree that it is crafted politically to unite diverse groups by racializing the experience of discrimination; however, many adherents insist that it is a reaffirmation of a common-sense understanding of what it means to be black, something which was commonly understood prior to the use of DNA analysis or techniques of modern science. "When the empirical referent of many of these umbrella terms is explored, both theoretical and methodological problems become apparent, as exemplified by the generic use of the term 'black' to delineate a common experience of discrimination based on physical appearance. This is a meaning not shared by a substantial proportion of the people so described in such usage, amounts to third party imputation of meaning and strengthens the perception of highly diverse groups in racial terms."
As one researcher put it, "The Fourth National Survey of Ethnic Minorities decided to survey South Asian and Chinese opinion on this issue by asking respondents, ‘Do you ever think of yourself as being black?’. Only about a fifth of over 1500 persons in the South Asian groups answered ‘yes’ , and just one Chinese person out of 118. Such findings question the sustainability of such usage and may hasten the demise of political blackness."
Admixture
In the Americas, people of mixed descent identify themselves in various ways. Admixture plays a strong role in articulating black identity in America. In the U.S., a child of a black parent and white parent can consider themselves to be half-black, fully black, exclusively black, or not black at all. In other settings, one is still black while they may or may not also consider being white . This experience is due in some contexts to the one-drop rule that was perpetuated in America. However, many take the approach of existing fully as Black socially due to the social perceptions of people with noticeable African features and ancestry. The public social experiences among mixed black people and black people considered unmixed does not vary greatly due to the concentration or lack of admixture, the social experiences change based strictly on one's facial appearance. It is common for a person who considers themself to be exclusively black to appear less African in their appearance than one who is born of a white parent and black parent. Although it is not common, there are black families who exhibit features and a phenotype considered Caucasoid. Although this can be due to a variety of factors, admixture is usually considered the primary cause. Since American and to a lesser degree Western perceptions of color are based more on outward appearance , it is quite possible for a predominantly black person to experience less stigma from whites for being black than a mixed person whose phenotype simply through chance exhibits a stronger African expression.
There are competing theories as to which approach is considered most legitimate with people of mixed descent; whether or not one should simply consider themselves black, mixed, bi-racial, half-black, or not black at all. It is generally understood that the person's own experiences and perceptions have the most say in this. On the other hand, social perceptions of blackness among Americans help shape these opinions, and many black people whose features resemble non-black people of color elsewhere may choose to disavow themselves of being inherently black. Bear in mind, socially, the ability to pass only occurs among those mixed children whose features and skin color is considered "light" enough to do so, which is why black society as a whole considers this to be reprehensible. The black identity for most is worth respecting like Jewishness, Arabic, Chaldean, Kurd, Slavic, etc., and it's seen as indicative of a lack of integrity to merely renounce it due to a person's outward appearance. In this context, blackness is certainly more of a cultural and ethnic identity than strictly a skin color.
To be considered
African American in the
United States of America, not even half of one's ancestry need be Black. The nation's answer to the question "Who is black?" long has been that a black person is any American with any known African ancestry. This definition reflects the long experience with
racism, white supremacy,
slavery, and, later, with
Jim Crow laws.
In the
Southern United States, it became known as the one-drop rule, meaning that a single drop of "black blood" makes a person "black". Some courts have called it the traceable amount rule, and anthropologists call it the hypodescent rule, meaning that racially mixed persons are assigned the status of the subordinate group. Prior to the one-drop rule, different states had different laws regarding color; in
Virginia, for example, a person was legally black if he or she had at least one-sixteenth black ancestry and in Alabama one only had to be of 3% African ancestry to be considered Black. This is in sharp contrast to Brazil, where only 6% of the population is considered Black despite tha fact that a third of the country's gene pool is of
sub-Saharan origin. Many Latino immigrants to America are shocked to discover they've become Black the moment they set foot on U.S. soil. "In this country, if you are not quite white, then you are black," said Jose Neinstein, a native white Brazilian and executive director of the Brazilian-American Cultural Institute in Washington. But in Brazil, he added, "If you are not quite black, then you are white." The one-drop rule was implemented by states in the southern United States during the early to mid-1880's. This definition eventually emerged from the American South to become America's national definition, generally accepted by whites and blacks -- but for different reasons.
White supremacists, whose motivation was
racist, considered anyone with African ancestry tainted, inherently inferior morally and intellectually and, thus, subordinate.
During
slavery, there was also a strong economic incentive to maximize the number of slaves. The designation of anyone possessing any trace of African ancestry as "black", and, therefore, of subordinate status to whites, guaranteed a source of free or cheap labor during
slavery and for decades afterward.
The one drop rule however is not applied consistently in America. Despite the evidence of African ancestry among at least one American president, the U.S. is still waiting for their first black president.
Admixture outside of an African or Aboriginal context usually has the effect of almost neutralizing a person's or their society's perception of them being black, as blackness is viewed more as a social identity based on skin color. So it is much easier for a child of mixed white and black african ancestry to be viewed as black than it is for a child of mixed white and Dalit ancestry to be viewed as black, even if both children looked identical.
Official usage differs among former European colonies
There are subtle differences among former colonial cultures in how the term is used. Once-colonial cultures, such as those of the Spanish and Portuguese, that lacked an endogamous barrier between the descendants of Europeans and the descendants of Africans seldom use the term as an ethno-racial label. Those with weak or three-caste endogamous barriers, such as the French, Dutch, and British distinguish between black and Coloured.
In the only land with a single, broad two-caste color line, the United States, the term has been used to denote a semi-voluntary, ethnic self-identity. During slavery, terms such as
mulatto,
quadroon,
octoroon, etc., commonly were in use because there was an economic incentive to classify blacks by their degree of white admixture. Even after slavery, anti-black color bias among some blacks as well as whites maintained the usefulness of such distinctions. Regardless of ethnic admixture, however, in the U.S., the one-drop rule still applied. Even the whitest-looking octoroon, if his or her African lineage were known, was still considered black. This has changed to a degree with the recent and growing use of the term
biracial in the U.S. to describe individuals of mixed parentage.
Former Iberian colonies
Latin American societies, including those of the Spanish Caribbean, have always lacked endogamous color lines. Every
Hispanic resides on an Afro-Amerind-European continuum where status depends on wealth, breeding, education, and political power as well as phenotype. Latin American countries typically have three economic classes: A lower class of agricultural peasants and urban poor; a middle class of landowning farmers and urban craftsmen; and an upper class of wealthy professionals, educators, or the politically powerful. The structure has a strong hereditary component. It is rigid, offers little social mobility, and is often harsh or unjust. Nevertheless, despite significant class/skin-tone correlation, it has no color line in the sense of endogamy. Enforced Black/White endogamy is impossible in Latin America because nearly every Hispanic has immediate blood relatives who are more African-looking and others who are more European-looking than himself. Spanish contains about a dozen words to denote various blends of Afro-European appearance:
prieto, criollo, blanquito, mulato, moreno, trigueño, mestizo, jabao, marrano, etc. Brazilian Portuguese has an equivalent set of terms. Yet, none of these terms has the denotation that "black" has in
English,
French, or
Dutch. In fact, the word
negro/a in many Latin American countries is seldom used to denote appearance. It is simply a common term of endearment, like the English
honey. It is used by affectionate couples, even those who look entirely European.
Former British colonies
In a famous case an Indian Briton,
Dadabhai Naoroji, stood for election to parliament for the Liberal party in 1886. He was defeated, leading the leader of the Conservatives, Lord Salisbury to remark that "however great the progress of mankind has been, and however far we have advanced in overcoming prejudice, I doubt if we have yet got to the point of view where a British constituency would elect a black man". This led to much discussion about the applicability of the term black to South Asians. Naoroji was subsequently elected to parliament in 1892, becoming the first M.P. of Indian descent. See
Black British for more information.
In South Africa,
Coloured denotes both an intermediate group between White and Black , and the
Khoisan who are lighter skinned indigenous southern Africans. During the
Apartheid-era, for example, segregation and endogamy were enforced between each of its four groups: Black, White, Coloured and Asian. This often confused
African-American visitors, who tried to associate with locals who were members of South Africa's Coloured group. The problem was that the Black group in the United States includes what South Africans consider two distinct groups: Black plus Coloured. In apartheid South Africa, association between members of the Black and Coloured endogamous groups was forbidden. Even today, after the ending of apartheid, South Africa's four endogamous groups, whose segregation was formerly enforced by criminal law, still maintain largely separate political allegiances, cultures, languages and customs. Nevertheless, South Africa's social barriers are more permeable than in the United States. During apartheid, South Africans routinely switched group membership by requesting it from their local Race Classification Boards. Although the bureaucracy was cumbersome and inconsistent, it enabled change. Individuals were often classified differently from their siblings and parents, and some people changed more than once. South Africans could appeal local reclassification decisions to the national Population Registration Board, thence to the Supreme Court. Like U.S. draft boards of the 1970s, South Africa’s local Race Classification Boards reflected local public opinion and often found it helpful to cooperate with those wanting to upgrade from Black to Coloured or Coloured to White. School principals of schools for children of the White endogamous group could keep up enrollments by getting some Coloured children reclassified as White members, but if they pushed too hard, they risked having the whole school reclassified as a school for members of the Coloured endogamous group.
Coloured people in the
British West Indies also form an intermediate group between Europeans and those of strong African appearance. Neither status within the group nor movement between groups was ever as institutionalized as in South Africa. Nevertheless, their membership criteria differ both from the United States and from South Africa. Europeans in the British West Indies often marry locals who physically appear to be European but have known partial African ancestry. Similarly, White clubs were closed to members of the Coloured group in the early colonial period, and members of this middle group were not allowed to vote, hold public office, hold military commissions, marry members of the White group, or inherit significant property from a member of the White group, but by the year 1733, these restrictions had been lifted for the intermediate group in
Jamaica,
Barbados, and
Trinidad. The restrictions continued in effect for Blacks until the twentieth century.
Legislation, court decisions, and social custom in Jamaica, Trinidad, and Barbados treated members of the Coloured group as distinct from members of the Black group. According to one scholar, "The English… encountered the problem of race mixture in very different contexts in their several colonies; they answered it in one fashion in their West Indian islands, and in quite another in their colonies on the continent," and, "The contrast offered by the West Indies is striking." In post-emancipation Jamaica, the beleaguered White population allied with the Coloured elite to keep down the free Blacks. A Barbadian historian wrote, "In August 1838, some 83,000 blacks, 12,000 coloureds, and 15,000 whites, embarked on a social course which the ruling elite hoped to charter." A historian of Trinidad wrote, "The people of colour were marginal to Caribbean society: neither black nor white, neither African nor European…." Today, West Indian immigrants to England assimilate into mainstream society within a generation or two.
Another way that terminology in the former British Empire differs from, say, Iberian or U.S. customs, is in applying the term to populations that were not part of the African Diaspora of 1500-1900. Most former colonial cultures apply Black only to descendants of the African Diaspora of 1500-1900, but former British colonials, in contrast, apply the label to all colonial subjects of distinctly darker complexion than Europeans. Australian society labels
Indigenous Australians as Black.
In the U.S.
An
African American is a member of an ethnic group in the
United States whose ancestors, usually in predominant part, were indigenous to
Africa. Many African Americans also have
European and/or
Native American ancestry as well. The term tends to refer to West African ancestries; not, for example, to white or Arab African ancestry, such as Moroccans or white South Africans. This is so even though there is huge genetic variation among the various inhabitants of sub-Saharan Africa, as much if not more so as among the afforementioned groups. It is not clear if an American descendant of a
Khoisan,
Ethiopian, or Somali immigrant to America would be considered part of this community, as their ancestors were not brought as slaves to the Americas from Western
Africa, like the majority of Americans of African ancestry, and they have distinct phenotypic characteristics from West Africans. Members of the African Diaspora from non-African countries such as
Jamaica,
Haiti,
Cuba or the
United Kingdom are theoretically referred to by their nation of origin and not African American unless they immigrate to the United States, but once a person of the African Diaspora becomes a permanent U.S. resident, then it is generally assumed that they are "African American."
The U.S. usage of
Black is unique, in that it evolved as a preferred racial term in antithesis to the former term "Negro." Membership has been only partly voluntary because Americans of European appearance have often been identified as Mulatto, and/or White and/or Negro and/or Black by US Census officials, sometimes within the span of three decades. Persons like
Walter White and Gregory Howard Williams, who were virtually as fair as any European, self-identified as "Negro" despite being of overwhelming European genetic admixture, like millions of so-called White Americans. Today the term "Black" and "African-American" are often used interchangeably by both Black and White. The 2000 federal census offered the option of choosing more than one preconcieved designated ethno-racial identity. Also, U.S. traditions follow a one-drop rule that rhetorically claims that anyone with even the slightest trace of distant African ancestry is Black—a tradition found nowhere else on earth; but a tradition that African-Americans helped create in the 1830s North and have consistently embraced.
Many within the U.S. accept only people of recent sub-Saharan ancestry as Black. Even though the term Black does not strictly encompass sub-Saharan Africans , many do not consider people outside of the recent African diaspora as Black. For various reasons, Americans dispute the self-identity of Asians, Pacific Islanders, and others who claim to see themselves as Black.
The phrase
people of color sometimes is used as a euphemism for
black in exhortations of global non-white solidarity in the face of global whiteness, but this specific usage is apparently not widespread. According to one researcher, "The use of this term [people of color] appears to depend strongly on context and location, being largely confined to the USA and increasingly in a radical political context." However, the 20% is reflective of the overall acknowledgement of the black presence currently in the region. Bear in mind the questionaire was not exclusively given to those in Asia who others consider to be black, but to a wide variety of South Asians, most of which would be universally understood to be not black. Considering that there are nearly a billion inhabitants even a smaller amount would entail a population greater than that of the black population in the USA.
The converse is also true. Some peoples today who are clearly genetic descendants of the African diaspora do not see themselves as black in any ethno-political sense, and instead adopt self-identities aligned with religion or language. Among these are the people of the Mascarene Islands in the Indian Ocean and the inhabitants of highland
Madagascar.
Who looks black?
Probably the most controversial answer to the question "who is black?" is "whoever looks black." This is because, although most who use the label rationalize it in terms of physical appearance, there is little objective consistency in this regard. That different cultures can assign the same individual to opposite "races" may be hard to grasp. And yet North Americans, Haitians, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Barbadians, Jamaicans, and Trinidadians all have different subconscious and automatic perceptions of just what features define who belongs to which "racial" label. Although their appearances may overlap considerably, their social concepts of race will compel them to explain the physical similarities with paradoxical results.
The impact of colonialism
According to Harry Hoetink, one can predict where each New World culture draws the color-line based upon its own colonial history. He suggests that three similar socioeconomic classes formed in most settlements during the New World colonial period. Once the importation of African labor became widespread, Western Hemisphere colonies that lacked significant numbers of Native Americans tended to fall into a three-tiered social structure. The top layer comprised a small number of European land-owning planters who produced agricultural products for export using large numbers of African slaves. The slaves themselves made up the bottom layer. Finally, in most European colonies , an intermediate group arose, composed of free subsistence farmers, who were allowed to opt out of the plantation economy in return for serving as militia in the event of slave insurrection. In each colony, the color line came to be defined by the appearance of typical members of the intermediate class. Anyone more European-looking was seen as White; anyone darker was considered black. Historical contingency decreed that this intermediate group would have a large admixture of African appearance in
Santo Domingo, less so in
Trinidad and
Brazil, even less in
Cuba and
Puerto Rico, and be completely European-looking in
Virginia and
South Carolina. Hoetink demonstrated that, "One and the same person may be considered white in the
Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico, and 'coloured' in
Brazil,
Martinique, or
Curaçao; this difference must be explained in terms of socially determined somatic norms. The same person may be called a 'Negro' in
Georgia; this must be explained by the historical evolution of social structure in the
Southern United States."
Psychological interpretations
In addition, researchers in the cognitive sciences have shown that cultures do not ostracize out-groups because they look different; they look different because they are out-groups. Children of each culture can "correctly" categorize strangers by age three. They can reliably match each "racial" category with its social term or word by about age five. Most American children internalize the hypodescent rule by about age ten. And they can confabulate a rationalization for hypodescent by early adulthood. Although the number and meaning of "racial" categories and of the traits that delineate them vary dramatically among cultures, children learn their own culture's rules and categories shortly after learning to walk. Clearly, the cognitive system employed is as adaptable to culture, and yet is as hardwired in the brain, as is language itself.
A series of experiments conducted by Robert Kurzban, subsequently confirmed by
John Tooby and
Leda Cosmides show why this is. Sex, age, and "otherness" are the three fundamental attributes that the mind encodes in an automatic and mandatory manner. For example, long after all memory has been lost of the occupation, name, clothing, or hair of a stranger to which one was briefly exposed, one can recall that the individual was "a white woman" or a "black male child." But age and sex are independent of culture. "Otherness" is not. Kurzban and later investigators demonstrated that the ability to recall a stranger's "otherness" actually detects a culture's social coalitions or alliances. Over the past hundred millennia or so, humans have become adept at detecting competing social groups. The discrimination of facial features enables a child to identify whether a stranger is genetically related . This ability is strongly selected because one is less likely to be killed and devoured by a relative than by a member of an opposing group. Recall that we evolved as hunting apes for two million years before our brains expanded five-fold in the past 120 millennia . One must take the long view when studying adaptive cognition.
Physical peculiarities shared among black people
Skin tone, hair coarseness and the like are clues by which Americans identify a stranger's "otherness" and so determine whether a stranger "looks black" to them, but other cultures use clues that are unrelated to the U.S. endogamous color line: height, hair-length, clothing, facial features , even a person's smell . This point is easily misunderstood and has even been reported as suggesting that humans are hardwired to recognize "race." The fact is that in no culture does the need/ability to recall a stranger's "otherness" correlate with Americans' unique perception of "race," unless you stretch the meaning of "race" to denote simply "otherness." In the United States, for example, where the term "race" is applied to differentiate those of Asian ancestry, subjects quickly forget whether the stranger was
Japanese,
Native American,
Indian,
Irish,
Italian, or Pakistani, but Americans do not forget on which side of the U.S. endogamous color line he seemed to be. In short, it is easily demonstrated within minutes that subjects notice and subconsciously remember even the most apparently insignificant differences in facial features if they happen to correlate with "otherness." On the other hand, even glaring facial differences, such as skin-tone darkness, are quickly forgotten if they are irrelevant to "otherness." In short, "who looks black" is answered differently by different people.
Problems with usage of black
Some African people, especially on the continent of Africa , as well as many African-American historians consider it disrespectful to describe people with a label based solely on a colour, especially when it does not accurately reflect the physical appearance of Africans people. It is also cited that the etymological root of that label is derived from the word Negro, and thus offers the same issues as the word Negro did. Further more
“black” is a very loose and un-scientific form of ethnic classification and is made problematic because many
non-African groups are\were also called “black” by conquering Europeans. The term has also acquired a stigma because it's been used to describe those on the bottom rung of the social ladder like the Black Untouchables of India and the Black Irish who were considered lower class. Many significant personalities of the African world from
Malcolm X to John Henrick Clarke have advocated for the usage of
African-American instead of black. This campaign became popularized when
Jesse Jackson in the 1980’s encouraged
African-American be used in place of black. As John Henrick Clarke and others have argued the term
black does not fully articulate the history and geo-political reality of African people. Also the usage of terms like "black African" are considered inaccurate as from a numbers point of view, most Africans by default would be considered "black" and hence the term "black" in front of African is redundant.
Terms no longer in common use
The term Negro , which was widely used until the 1960s, has become increasingly considered passé and inappropriate, derogatory or simply ignorant. It is still fairly commonly used by older individuals and in the Deep South and in Latin America.
Negroid was a term used by European anthropologists first in the 18th century to describe indigenous Africans and their descendants throughout the African diaspora from an archaeological point of view. The term is controversial and imprecise because of its inference of grouping people based on vary limited variations in skull shapes and sizes . African intellectuals have substituted the term Africoid which, unlike Negroid, encompasses the phenotypes of all indigenous African peoples.
Other largely defunct, seldom used terms to refer to African Americans of mixed descent are
mulatto and colored.
Footnotes
See also
Groups
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