Black people - Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Asian2duracell (talk | contribs) at 15:32, 4 March 2007. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 15:32, 4 March 2007 by Asian2duracell (talk | contribs)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

Black people or blacks is a racial, political, social or cultural classification of people. No people are actually black in skin color. Many people who are considered Black have dark-colored skin. A variety of sociopolitical and biological factors are used to define categories of black people.

Some assert that only people of relatively recent African descent are black while others argue that black may refer to individuals with dark skin color regardless of ethnic origin.

As a social construct, "Black" has had different meanings at different points in history, and currently means different things in different societies. As Europeans colonized America, Africa, and Asia, they developed specific ways based on African ancestry or dark skin to codify oppression. Some of these definitions remain, formally or informally, in use, and define patterns of legal or informal discrimination. Blacks themselves have claimed the word and choose to use it to define themselves, and in some cases, their struggle against discrimination. The use of the term in those instances has become political.

African ancestry perspective

The concept of black as a proxy for African descent can be traced to Swedish botanist, physician and zoologist Carolus Linnaeus who divided humankind into four main races, loosely based on geographic distribution: europeaus (white race), asiaticus (yellow race), americanus (red race) and afer or african (black race). According to Linnaeus' pseudo-scientific model, the black male could be defined by his skin tone, face structure, and curly hair. He assigned various fanciful attributes to each of his four categories, clearly favoring the "race" europeaus. Today, Linneaus generally is widely regarded as a racist.

Agreement/Disagreement of Cultural and Physical Anthropologists with the statement that "There are biological races in the species Homo sapiens" 1985 vs. 1999
	Cultural %		Physical %		Combined %
	1985	1999	1985	1999	1995	1999
agree	30	14	50	24	39	18
neutral	17	6	10	7	14	7
disagree	53	80	40	69	47	75

Linnaeus's protege, Johann Blumenbach (considered the founder of anthropology) added the "Malay" brown race, which included the Polynesians and Melanesians of the Pacific Islands, as well as the aborigines of Australia. By the nineteenth century, Georges Cuvier's division of humans into Caucasian, Mongolian and Negro (the Spanish word for "black") achieved widespread acceptance.

By the time Carleton S. Coon published his more elaborate system of races (Capoids, Congoids, Caucusoids, Mongloids, Australoids) in The Origin of Races in 1962, anthropologists' adherence to theories of race were already in decline. By the end of the 20th century, race was widely dismissed as a social contruction by some, in part because the recent single-origin hypothesis implied that human groups had diverged too recently for significant differences to have evolved. However, some people still believe that human genetic variation is geographically structured, and that there is at least some validity in racial classifications. A few contemporary academics still allude to notions of race and/or evolutionary biology when defining black people:

Psychiatrist Sally Satel (of the conservative American Enterprise Institute) has stated:

The entities we call ‘racial groups’ essentially represent individuals united by a common descent — a huge extended family, as evolutionary biologists like to say. Blacks, for example, are a racial group defined by their possessing some degree of recent African ancestry (recent because, after all, everyone of us is out of Africa, the origin of Homo sapiens).

University of Western Ontario psychology professor J. Phillipe Rushton (of the controversial Pioneer Fund) has stated: "In both everyday life and evolutionary biology, a 'Black' is anyone most of whose ancestors were born in sub-Saharan Africa" But since all humans are originally from sub-Sahran Africa, Rushton believes only the descendents of those who were born there between 4000 and (to accomodate recent migrations) 20 generations ago are negroid-a term Rushton uses synomonously with "black". Rushton's estimate was made in 1996 based on then estimates of when human populations split.

The company "DNAPrint Genomics" analyzes DNA to determine the exact percentage of Indo-European, sub-Saharan, East Asian, and Native American heritage someone has and assigns the to the categories White, Black, East Asian, Native American, or mixed race accordingly however the tracing of biogeographic ancestry needn't imply an endorsement of biological race.

Still, such exact definitions are frequently criticised. In a book review of Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We Are Afraid to Talk About It, Youngstown State University English professor Stephen L. Sniderman criticized author Jon Entine for his lack of consistency in his definition of blackness:

The most significant flaw in Entine’s argument, though, involves his use of black, a problematic word that he should have handled much more carefully. From the title to the final sentence, that term, unfortunately, means whatever suits Entine’s purpose. He ostensibly defines the term in his introduction: "Elite athletes who trace most or all of their ancestry to Africa are by and large better than the competition" (emphasis added). But that's certainly not the definition he uses to identify black athletes throughout the book. When he includes superstars with light brown skin (such as Muhammad Ali, Maury Wills, Joe Louis, and O.J. Simpson) in the category he labels black, he offers no evidence that they "trace most or all of their ancestry to Africa."

U.S. sociologist Troy Duster and ethicist Pilar Ossorio have stated that: "Some percentage of people who look white will possess genetic markers indicating that a significant majority of their recent ancestors were African. Some percentage of people who look black will possess genetic markers indicating the majority of their recent ancestors were European."

More often, blackness as defined by ancestry is much less exact. Psychologist Arthur Jensen states, "American blacks are socially defined simply as persons who have some degree of sub-Saharan African ancestry and who identify themselves (or, in the case of children, are defined by their parents) as black or African-American" According to professor R Bhopal, a black is

A person with African ancestral origins, who self identifies, or is identified, as Black, African or Afro-Caribbean (see, African and Afro-Caribbean). The word is capitalised to signify its specific use in this way. In some circumstances the word Black signifies all non-white minority populations, and in this use serves political purposes."

Dark skin perspective

Further information: ]

Scientists now believe that first humans lived in Africa between 100,000 to 200, 000 years ago. About 80,000 years ago a group of them crossed the Red Sea and proceeded to populate the rest of the world. Dark skin helped protect against skin cancer that develops as a result of ultraviolet light radiation causing mutations in the skin. Furthermore dark skin prevents a B vitamin, folate, from being destroyed. In short in the absence of modern medicine and diet, a person with dark skin in the tropics would live longer, be more healthy and more likely to reproduce than a person with light skin. Scientists point to the fact that white Australians have some of the highest rates of skin cancer as evidence of this expectation . Conversly, as dark skin prevents sunlight from penetrating the skin it hinders the production of vitamin D₃. Hence when humans migrated to less sun-intensive regions in the north, low vitamin D₃ levels became a problem and lighter skin colors started appearing. The people of Europe, who have low levels of melanin, naturally have an almost colorless skin pigmentation, especially when untanned. This low level of pigmentation allows the blood vessels to become visible and gives the characteristic pale pink color of white people. The difference in skin color between black and whites is however a minor genetic difference accounting for just one letter in 3.1billion letters of DNA. code Because Africans are not the only ethnic groups who possess dark skin, some prefer to define black in terms of skin color, and reject African ancestry definitions as too narrow:

Sri Lankan activist Nirmala Rajasingam has stated "I think the idea of a Black identity was inspired by the Civil Rights movement in the US. Unfortunately, now Black is identified with people of African origin only, but it didn’t used to be that way. It was used as a political term of people of color uniting to fight racism". Rajasingam considers most standard definitions of black too narrow:

It was a failure because it divided the Black community into its constituent parts.. into Jamaican or Punjabi or Sri Lankan Tamil and so on, rather than build up Black unity.. But you know, there are young Asians who would like to call themselves Black, but the African youth will say 'You are not Black, you are Asian. We are Black'. Similarly, there are young Asians who will say 'We are not Black, we are Asian.'. So it has all become diluted and depoliticized.

Lewis R. Gordon, director of the Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought at Temple University, has said

Not all people who are designated African in the contemporary world are also considered black anywhere. And similarly, not all people who are considered in most places to be black are considered African anywhere. There are non-black Africans who are descended from more than a millennia of people living on the African continent, and there are indigenous Pacific peoples and peoples of India whose consciousness and life are marked by a black identity.

Psychiatrist Ikechukwu Obialo Azuonye has argued that "being dark skinned is a widespread phenomenon which does not define any specific group of human beings. The tendency to reserve the designation black to sub-Saharan Africans and people of their extraction is manifestly misinformed".

Afrocentric perspective

Afrocentric scholars provide a middle ground between those who limit blackness to African descent and those who extend it to all dark skinned people by arguing that both view points are correct in that all dark skinned peoples are fundamentally Africoid in phenotype, regardless of how long their ancestors may have lived outside of Africa.

Senegalise historian and anthropologist Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop states:

There are two well-defined Black races: one has a black skin and woolly hair; the other also has black skin, often exceptionally black, with straight hair, aquiline nose, thin lips, an acute cheekbone angle. We find a prototype of this race in India: the Dravidian. It is also known that certain Nubians likewise belong to the same Negro type... Thus, it is inexact, anti-scientific, to do anthropological research, encounter a Dravidian type, and then conclude that the Negro type is absent.

Afrocentrist historian Runoko Rashidi has argued that all dark-skinned ethnicities are part of a "global African community."

Some genetic studies challenge Afrocentric theories that Australians, Indics and Papuans are Africoid. Other writers such as Ruggles Gates argued that such peoples were archaic Caucasoid offshoots. Modern DNA research challenges this categorizing however, and places peoples lilke Australoids closer to regions near Australia and India such as Southeast Asian populations, rather than Africa,. A number of scholars have often noted phenotypical similarities between the Australoid and Indic peoples and those of Africa, such as skin color, hair texture etc.

Controversies

Even among people who agree on which of the three above perspectives to subscribe to, a number of debates about black identity still persist:

Black Vs. Multiracial

According to the United States' colloquial term one drop rule, a black is any person with any known African ancestry. In his 1991 book Who Is Black?, sociologist F. James Davis argued that this definition is

inextricably woven into the history of the United States. It incorporates beliefs once used to justify slavery and later used to buttress the castelike Jim Crow system of segregation. ... Most Americans seem unaware that this definition of blacks is extremely unusual in other countries, perhaps even unique to the United States, and that Americans define no other minority group in a similar way.

The one drop rule does not apply outside of the United States, and in other countries it sometimes applies in reverse. Just as a person with physically recognizable sub-Saharan ancestry can claim to be black in the United States, someone with recognizable Caucasian ancestry may be considered white in Latin America. Even individuals with enough African ancestry to make them as dark as Sidney Poitier can pass for white if they appear to have at least one physically visible trait commonly attributed to whites, such as straight hair or narrow facial features.

According to Jose Neinstein, a native white Brazilian and executive director of the Brazilian-American Cultural Institute in Washington, in the United States, "if you are not quite white, then you are black." However, in Brazil, "If you are not quite black, then you are white." Neinstein recalls talking with a man of Poitier's complexion when in Brazil: "We were discussing ethnicity, and I asked him, 'What do you think about this from your perspective as a black man?' He turned his head to me and said, 'I'm not black,' . . . It simply paralyzed me. I couldn't ask another question."

The Washington Post described a Brazilian-born woman named Martins, who for 30 years before immigrating to the United States considered herself a morena. Her skin had a caramel color that is roughly equated with whiteness in Brazil and some other Latin American countries. "I didn't realize I was black until I came here," she explained. "'Where are you from?' they ask me. I say I'm from Brazil. They say, 'No, you are from Africa.' They make me feel like I am denying who I am."

The same racial culture shock has come to hundreds of thousands of dark-skinned immigrants to the United States from Brazil, Colombia, Panama and other Latin nations. Although most lack the degree of African ancestry required to be considered black in Brazil, they have enough to be seen as black the second they set foot on U.S. soil. According to the Washington Post, their refusal to embrace the United States' definition of black has left many feeling attacked from all directions. Many African Americans believe the Latino immigrants are denying their blackness; white Americans discriminate against them as if they were black; and lighter-skinned Latinos dominate Spanish-language television, even though a majority of Latin people possess some African or Indian ancestry. Many of these immigrants feel it is hard enough to accept a new language and culture without the additional burden of transforming from white to black. Yvette Modestin, a dark-skinned native of Panama who worked in Boston, said the situation was overwhelming: "There's not a day that I don't have to explain myself."

Professor J.B. Bird has said that Latin America is not alone in rejecting the United States' notion than any visible African ancestry is enough to make one black: " In most countries of the Caribbean, Colin Powell would be described as a Creole, reflecting his mixed heritage. In Belize, he might further be described as a 'High Creole', because of his extremely light complexion."

Many people in the United States are increasingly rejecting the one drop rule, and are questioning whether even as much as 50% black ancestry should be considered black. Although politician Barack Obama self-identifies as black, 55 percent of whites and 61 percent of Hispanics classified him as biracial instead of black after being told that his mother is white. Blacks were less likely to acknowledge a mulitiracial category, with 66% labelling Obama as black.

Although the United States’ one drop rule originated as a racist attempt to keep the white race pure, in the 2000s, some of its biggest defenders have been African Americans, such as American studies and music professor Jon Michael Spencer. Spencer (who teaches at the University of Richmond) has argued that attempts to relinquish the one drop rule in favor of multiracial categories is "the postmodern conspiracy to explode racial identity". Spencer has claimed that blacks and whites in Africa view him as 'colored' rather than black because he has a brown complexion.

He has said that he worries that federal relief funds for blacks will dwindle if their officially registered population declines.. He has said that he also fears that new multiracial classifications will sap the black community of skill and vigor. In an New York Newsday article about the nascent multiracial movement, he stated: "If the multiracial movement had taken root, or a 'mulatto' category had been kept throughout the 20th century, black progress might have been no progress at all." Spencer has stated:

As some multiracialists begin down the road of racial bigotry by cock-a-doodling about their alleged specialness, certainly in part to bolster the identity and self-esteem of themselves or that of their mixed-race children, they subtly assault the identity and self-esteem of black Americans.

Jared Taylor's white nationalist publication American Renaissance has argued that the one drop rule serves Afrocentric interests, arguing that "without the one drop rule, not even the most brazen of them can claim that Nefertiti, Jesus, Rameses, and Beethoven were "black." Taylor has been criticized in the mainstream press as "the cultivated, cosmopolitan face of white supremacy."

Dinesh D'Souza cited the following as examples of how the one drop rule has been used to broaden the definition of blackness: Martin Bernal (a professor of Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Studies at Cornell University), arguing that the ancient Egyptians were black in the sense that they wouldn’t be served coffee in a restaurant in the segregated South. and Cheikh Anta Diop arguing that the French, Spanish, Italians and Greeks may all be considered black.

Coloureds

This extended family has too much non-African descent to have been classified as black under South Africa's former apartheid laws.

In South Africa during the apartheid era, the population was classified into four groups: Black, White, Asian (mostly Indian), and Coloured. The Coloured group included people of mixed Bantu, Khoisan, and Europeean descent (with some Malay ancestry, especially in the Western Cape).

The apartheid bureaucracy devised complex (and often arbitrary) criteria in the Population Registration Act to determine who belonged in which group. Minor officials administered tests to enforce the classifications. When it was unclear from a person's physical appearance whether a person was to be considered coloured or black, the pencil test was employed. This involved inserting a pencil in a person's hair to determine if the hair was kinky enough for the pencil to get stuck.

When asked to explain the difference between Blacks and Coloureds, a South African official replied: "Well, Coloureds are always mixed bloods ... and you know them by their language and by their looks." When it was suggested that Blacks can also be mixed, he replied:

Er, yes but ... not really. They may be mixed with other Black 'tribes,' but they are not mixed with whites, because if they were mixed with white they would be classified as 'coloured.' ...and up until now a person with any mixed blood would certainly 'go' for the coloured classification. It would be impossible for him to pass as white, and there would be no reason to try and pass as Black because being colored naturally gave a person more opportunities — better schooling, better housing, social mobility...

Desert debate

Template:2000 Race US Census map As noted above, those who equate black with African descent often have a narrow range of Africa in mind, commonly known as black Africa or sub-Saharan Africa and this perspective is very roughly reflected in American law. The U.S. census race definitions says a black is a person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa. It includes people who indicate their race as "Black, African Am., or Negro," or who provide written entries such as African American, Afro American, Kenyan, Nigerian, or Haitian. However, the Census Bureau notes that these classifications are socio-political constructs and should not be interpreted as scientific or anthropological.

Mostafa Hefny is white under US law due to his place of origin, but self-identifies as black.

However self-identifying as black is not enough to be considered black under U.S. law if one does not originate in a strictly defined region of Africa. Egyptian immigrant Mostafa Hefny, who describes himself as dark-skinned with kinky hair, is legally white in the United states. The U.S. Office of Management and Budget defines blacks as having origins with the black racial groups of Africa, and whites as having origins with original peoples of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, including Egypt.

Mostafa insisted that he is more black than Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer and retired Gen. Colin Powell: "I was born and raised in Africa and they were not". "And yet they are classified as Black and I am classified as White." Although Mostafa admits the region of Africa he comes from is North of the Sahara, he claims that he is black because his ancestors were from the ancient kingdom of Nubia, now part of Egypt and Sudan. Mostafa has attempted to sue the U.S. government to get his racial identity changed.

Cultural writer and filmmaker Owen 'Alik Shahadah has agreed that sub-Saharan is too limiting when defining blackness: "the notion of some invisible border, which divides the North of Africa from the South, is rooted in racism, which in part assumes that a little sand is an obstacle for African people. This barrier of sand hence confines/confined Africans to the bottom of this make-believe location, which exist neither politically or physically." Shahadah has argued that the term sub-Saharan Africa is a product of European imperialism: "Sub-Saharan Africa' is a byword for primitive African: a place, which has escaped advancement. Hence, we see statements like 'no written languages exist in Sub-Saharan Africa.' 'Egypt is not a Sub-Saharan African civilization.'

Role of the Bible

Further information: ]

According to some historians, the tale in Genesis 9 in which Noah cursed the descendants of his son Ham with servitude was a seminal moment in defining black people, as the story was passed on through generations of Jewish, Christian and Islamic scholars. According to columnist Felicia R. Lee, "Ham came to be widely portrayed as black; blackness, servitude and the idea of racial hierarchy became inextricably linked." Some people believe that the tradition of dividing humankind into three major races is partly rooted in tales of Noah's three sons repopulating the Earth after the Deluge and giving rise to three separate races.

The biblical passage, Book of Genesis 9:20-27, which deals with the sons of Noah however makes no reference to race. The reputed curse of Ham is not on Ham, but on Canaan, one of Ham's sons. This is not a racial but geographic referent. The Canaanites, typically associated with the region of the Levant (Palestine, Lebanon, etc) were later subjugated by the Hebrews when they left bondage in Egypt according to the Biblical narrative. The alleged inferiority of Hamitic descendants also in not supported by the Biblical narrative, nor claims of three races in relation to Noah's sons. Shem for example seems a linguistic not racial referent. In short the Bible does not define blacks, nor assign them to racial hierarchies.

Historians believe that by the 19th century, the belief that blacks were descended from Ham was used by southern United States whites to justify slavery. According to Benjamin Braude, a professor of history at Boston College, "in 18th- and 19th century Euro-America, Genesis 9:18-27 became the curse of Ham, a foundation myth for collective degradation, conventionally trotted out as God's reason for condemning generations of dark-skinned peoples from Africa to slavery."

Author David M. Goldenberg contends that the Bible is not a racist document. According to Goldenberg, such racist interpretations came from post-biblical writers of antiquity like Philo and Origen, who equated blackness with darkness of the soul.

Emphasis on racial classifications

As noted above there are several scholarly approaches and methods to defining black peoples and this is a matter of ongoing debate. Several writers have called for a wider view of black genetic diversity, similar to that followed with other populations, although they focus on African peoples and do not include Australoid or Indic groupings. Studies in this area should acknowledge the wide range of variation within the "black" group, argue Kittles and Keita in The Persistence of Racial Thinking and the Myth of Racial Divergence as opposed to putting them into apriori groupings. On a broader scale, part of this call challenges all racial categorizing (including that involving Australoid or Indic populations) given the low percentage (6-10%) of human genetic variation accounted for by race.Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page). As Brown and Armelagos (2001) put it: "In light of this, the low proportion of genetic variance across racial groupings strongly suggests a re-examination of the race concept. It no longer makes sense to adhere to arbitrary racial categories, or to expect that the next genetic study will provide the key to racial classifications." Such approaches challenges some traditional schools of racial categorizing, as well as some Afrocentric formulations.

Beyond Blackness

Owen 'Alik Shahadah has criticized the term black itself, saying:

as a political term it was fiery and trendy but never was it an official racial classification of peoples who have a 120,000 year old history. Indians are from India, Chinese from China. There is no country called Blackia or Blackistan. Hence, the ancestry-nationality model is more respectful and accurate: African-American, African-British, African-Brazilian, and African-Caribbean.

Shahadah has stated, "in addition, because it is a term placed on us, we have no bases for its control, and hence they are able to say; 'Ancient Egyptians weren't black.' Black has no meaning; except the meaning they place on it, if and when they chose."

Spelling

There is some controversy as to whether the word black should be capitalized when referring to a racial group. Section 8.43 of the Chicago Manual of Style calls for the use of lowercase letters when referring to race by color (e.g. black people, white people). Some scholars feel that such racial terms denote a special significance, especially the term black, and thus elect to capitalize.

Population information and distribution

There is no agreed upon definition of who is black so few current global estimates of the black population are available. The population reference bureau has the population of sub-Saharan Africa at 767 million in 2006. Currently there are a number of non-indigenous peoples who living in sub-Saharan Africa. Examples include 4-5 million of European descent, 1 million of Indian descent in South Africa, and 800,000 of Indian descent in Mauritius. Information from country profiles of the CIA factbook shows that the total non-indigenous population of sub-Saharan Africa is no more than 10 million.

In the Americas there may be as many as 150 million people living in the Americas who are part of the African Diaspora, no more than half identify themselves as Black. Many Afro-descendants, particularly in Latin America are multiracial of black, Amerindian and white lineage. In Brazil for instance, only 5.4% of the total population identify themselves as black.

Some consider the dark skinned peoples of Oceania black. Papua New Guinea, New Caledonia and surrounding islands have indigenous populations of approximately 6 million. The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimated the population of Indigenous Australians to be 469,000 in 2006.

Gallery

The following individuals are black by virtually all definitions cited in this article.

Michael Jordan
Dinka tribesmen, Sudan Dinka tribesmen, Sudan
Oromo Ethiopian boys
Kofi Annan
Somali hip-hop artist K'naan Somali hip-hop artist K'naan
San woman San woman
Portia Simpson Portia Simpson
Condoleezza Rice

The following individuals are considered black by some, multiracial by others: <gallery> Image:SenatorBarackObama.jpg|Barack Obama Image:AnaZuyoung.jpg|Blasian girl Image:Chavez World Social Forum 2005.jpg|Hugo Chavez Image:SaulHudson.jpg|Slash (musician)