The actual incidence of multiracial admixture and heritage is believed to be far higher than is commonly reported, although there is evidence that this is changing as people are becoming more comfortable with revealing personal multiracial heritage. Census records and other studies also show the real number of multiracial individuals to be increasing in the United States along with an increase in marriages across race lines. Other surveys also reflect this trend in many modern nations. The term multiracial may also be used to refer to groups or populations where individuals of more than one race are counted as a part of a whole group. In this sense of the word, 'multiracial' refers to a racially heterogeneous rather than a homogeneous group or population.
According to U.S. sociologist Troy Duster and ethicist Pilar Ossorio:
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.In the United States:
"Many state and local agencies comply with the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) 1997 revised standards for the collection, tabulation, and presentation of federal data on race and ethnicity. The revised OMB standards identify a minimum of five racial categories: White; Black or African American; American Indian and Alaska Native; Asian; and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander. Perhaps, the most significant change for Census 2000 was that respondents were given the option to mark one or more races on the questionnaire to indicate their racial identity. Census 2000 race data are shown for people who reported a race either alone or in combination with one or more other races."
Terms like mulatto for people of partly African descent and mestizo for people of partly Native American descent are still used in English , but mostly when referring to the past or to the demography of Latin-America. Half-breed is a now old-fashioned and pejorative term used for people of partial Native American ancestry. Mestee, once widely used, is now used mostly for members of old mixed-race groups, such as Melungeons, Redbones, Brass Ankles and Mayles. In South Africa, and much of English-speaking southern Africa, the term Coloured was used to describe a mixed-race person but also Asians not of African descent. While the term is socially accepted, it is becoming an outdated term owing to its apartheid historical significance.
In Latin America, where mixtures are frequently tri-racial, a panoply of terms developed during the colonial period, including terms such as zambo for persons of indigenous-African descent. Charts and diagrams intended to elaborate these terms were common, and the famous Casta Paintings in Mexico and to some extent Peru, sought to illustrate the terms by how people of various blendings might appear. frequently, census categories reflect these ideas, but in modern censuses, for example, in Brazil, all persons of multiracial heritage tend to be thrown into the single category of "pardo".
In English, the terms miscegenation and amalgamation have been used for race-mixing. These terms are now often considered offensive and are becoming obsolete. The terms mixed-race, biracial or multiracial are becoming generally accepted.
In 2010, the number of Americans who checked both "black" and "white" on their census forms was 134 percent higher than it had been a decade earlier.
According to James P. Allen and Eugene Turner from California State University, Northridge, by some calculations in the 2000 Census the actual multiracial population that is part white, by far the largest percentage of the multiracial population, is as follows: the largest part of the white bi-racial population, is white/Native American and Alaskan Native, at 7,015,017, followed by white/black at 737,492, then white/Asian at 727,197, and finally white/Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander at 125,628.
The stigma of a mixed race heritage has decreased significantly in the United States, but is not completely gone. One sign of progress in this area was the election of President Barack Obama, who had a White mother and an African father. People of mixed-race heritage can now be listed in the U.S Census by any combination of races whereas before Americans were required to select from only one category. For example they may now choose more than one race from the following list:
"White" (or "Caucasian"), "Black" (or African American), "Asian", "Native American" or "Alaska Native", "Native Hawaiian", other "Pacific Islander" or "Some other race".
Many mix raced Americans now also use the term biracial. The U.S. has a growing multiracial identity movement, reflective of the lessening stigma and discrimination. Miscegenation or interracial marriage, most notably between whites and blacks, was historically deemed immoral and illegal in most states in the 18th, 19th and first half of the 20th century. California and the western US had similar laws to prohibit White-Asian American marriages until 1967 (Loving v. Virginia decision by the US Supreme Court) which overturned all remaining anti-miscegenation laws in the US.
The United States is one of the most racially diverse countries in the world. The American people are mostly multi-ethnic descendants of various immigrant nationalities culturally distinct until assimilation and integration took place, unevenly at at different periods of history, depending on the American region. The "Americanization" of foreign ethnic groups and the inter-racial diversity of millions of Americans is not a new phenomenon but has been a fundamental part of its history, especially on frontiers where different groups of people came together.
The President of the United States, Barack Obama, is a multiracial American, as he is the son of a Luo father from Kenya and a European American mother. While he does acknowledge the heritage of his parents, he identifies as African-American.
During the time of Slavery in the United States a very large but unknown number of American slaves of African descent escaped to Canada, where slavery was illegal, via the underground railroad. Many of these people married in with European-Canadian and Native-Canadian populations, although their precise numbers, and the numbers of their descendants, are not known.
Another 1.2% of Canadians officially are Métis (descendants of a historical population who were partially Aboriginal-- also called "Indian" or "Native American" in other North and South American countries mixed with European, particularly French, English, Scottish, and Irish ethnic groups). Although listed as a single "race" in Canada, the Metis are therefore multi-racial. In particular the Métis population may be far higher than the official numbers state, due to earlier racism causing people to historically hide their mixed heritage. This however is changing although many Canadians may now be unaware of their mixed race heritage, especially those of Métis descent.
This brings Canada to a total "recognized" mixed population of 2.7%, greater by percentage than that of the United Kingdom and the United States.
In Latin America, racial mixture was officially acknowledged from colonial times. There was official nomenclature for every conceivable mixture present in the various countries. Initially, this classification was used as a type of caste system, where rights and privileges were accorded depending on one's official racial classification. Official caste distinctions were abolished in many countries of the Spanish-speaking Americas as they became independent of Spain. Several terms have remained in common usage.
Race and racial mixture have played a significant role in the politics of many Latin American countries. In most countries, for example Mexico, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, and Belize, a majority of the population can be described as biracial or multiracial (depending on the country). In Mexico, over 80% of the population is mestizo.
The Mexican philosopher and educator José Vasconcelos authored an essay on the subject, La Raza Cósmica, celebrating racial mixture. Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, who is himself of Spanish, indigenous and African ancestry, has made positive references to the mixed-race ancestry of most Latin Americans from time to time.
The most common multiracial groups are between African and European (mulato), and Amerindian and European (caboclo or mameluco). But there are also African and Amerindian (cafuzo), and East-Asian (mostly Japanese) and European/other (ainoko, or more recently, hafu). All groups are more or less found throughout the whole country. Brazilian multiracials with the following three origins, Amerindian, European and African, performs the majority. It is said today that 89% or even more of the "Pardo" population in Brazil has at least one Amerindian ancestor (most of brancos or White Brazilian population have some Amerindian and/or African ancestry too and most Brazilians know about national mixed-race huge majority despite of nearly half of country population self-labeled Caucasian appearance at censuses, see Race in Brazil). In Brazil, it is very common for Mulattoes to admit that they do not have any Amerindian ancestry, though studies have found that if a Brazilian multiracial can trace their ancestry to nearly 8 to 9 generations back, they will have at least one Amerindian ancestor from their maternal side of the family, which will explain many of their physical features and characteristics.
Since multiracial relations in Brazilian society have occurred for many generations, some people find it difficult to trace their own ethnic ancestry. Today a majority of mixed-race Brazilians do not really know their ethnic ancestry. Due to their unique features that makes them Brazilian-looking like skin color, lips and nose shape or hair texture, they are only aware that their ancestors were definitely Portuguese, African and/or Amerindian. There is also a high percentage of Brazilians of Jewish descent (10,000,000-30,000,000), mostly found in the northeast of the country who cannot be sure of their ancestry as they descend from the so-called "Crypto-Jews" (Jews who practiced Judaism in secret while outwardly pretending to be Catholics, also called Marranos or New-Christians, often considered Portuguese); according to some sources, 1 out of every 3 families to arrive there from Portugal during the colonization was of Jewish origin. There is a high level of integration between all groups. However, has been existed a great social and economic difference between European descendants (found more among the upper and middle classes) and African, Amerindian and multiracial descendants (found more among the lower classes), what is called Brazilian apartheid.
In Britain, many multi-racial people have Caribbean, African or Asian heritage. For example supermodel Naomi Campbell, who has African, Jamaican, and Asian roots. Some, like Formula One driver, Lewis Hamilton, are referred to or describe themselves as 'mixed'.
The 2001 UK Census included a section entitled 'Mixed' to which 1.4% (1.6% by 2005 estimates) of people responded, which was split further into White and Black Caribbean, White and Asian, White and Black African and Other Mixed. Despite this, 2005 birth records for the country state at least 3.5% of new born babies as mixed race.
Cities/ Regions with notable Multiracial/ Mixed Race populations (England and Wales)
The Burghers are a Eurasian ethnic group, consisting for the most part of male-line descendants of European colonists from the 16th to 20th centuries (mostly Portuguese, Dutch, German and British) and local women, with some minorities of Swedish, Norwegian, French and Irish.
The Kaffirs are an ethnic group who are partially descended from 16th century Portuguese traders and the African slaves who were brought by them.The Kaffirs spoke a distinctive creole based on Portuguese, the Sri Lanka Kaffir language, now extinct. Their cultural heritage includes the dance styles Kaffringna and Manja, as well as the Portugese Sinhalese, Creole, Afro-Sinhalese varieties.
In Singapore and Malaysia, the majority of inter-ethnic marriages are between Chinese and Indians. The offspring of such marriages are informally known as "Chindian", though the Malaysian government only classifies them by their father's ethnicity. As the majority of these intermarriages usually involve an Indian groom and Chinese bride, the majority of Chindians in Malaysia are usually classified as "Indian" by the Malaysian government. As for the Malays, who are predominantly Muslim, legal restrictions in Malaysia make it uncommon for them to intermarry with either the Indians, who are predominantly Hindu, or the Chinese, who are predominantly Buddhist and Taoist. It is, however, common for Muslims and Arabs in Singapore and Malaysia to take local Malay wives, due to a common Islamic faith.
The Chitty people, in Singapore and the Malacca state of Malaysia, are a Tamil people with considerable Malay descent. This was due to the first Tamil settlers taking local wives, since they did not bring along any of their own women with them.
Philippines was a Spanish colony for about 300 years, and then by the Americans when the Spanish was defeated. This is the cause of many mixed race filipinos of filipino-Spanish and filipino-American descent.
After the defeat of Spain during the Spanish-American War in 1898, the Philippines and other remaining Spanish colonies were ceded to the United States in the Treaty of Paris. The Philippines was under U.S. sovereignty until 1946, though occupied by Japan during World War II. In 1946, in the Treaty of Manila, the U.S. Recognized the Republic of the Philippines as an independent nation. Even after 1946, the U.S. maintained a heavy military presence in the Philippines, with as many as 21 U.S. military bases and 100,000 U.S. military personnel stationed there. The bases closed in 1992, leaving behind thousands of Amerasian children. Pearl S. Buck International foundation estimates there are 52,000 Amerasians scattered throughout the Philippines with 5,000 in the Clark area of Angeles.
A genetic study by Stanford University indicates that at least 3.6% of the population are European or of part European descent from both Spanish and American colonization.
In the United States, intermarriage among Filipinos with other races is common. They have the largest number of interracial marriages among Asian immigrant groups, as documented in California. It is also noted that 21.8% of Filipino Americans are of mixed lineage, second among Asian Americans after the Japanese, and is the fastest growing.
Asian-origin
European-origin
Native American-origin
Semitic-Origin
Tri-Racial-Origin *individual members of these groups may instead be biracial
Other types
Within Native American Tribal Nations
Many Native American tribes have significant minority populations, or in some cases even majority populations, of people with multi-racial origin. However many of these individuals will identify simply as tribal members of that Nation. Official standards for what degree of blood heritage constitutes a tribal member varies dramatically between different Indian Nations. Some Tribal Nations have strict blood standards and some use standards of cultural identification with a less strict blood standard.
There are also numerous other more recent Afro-European DNA connections in some parts of Europe, especially between North Africa and Southern Europe, although not exclusively so. For example the DNA of Berber peoples (a North African ethnic group) has been found in small but consistent amounts (about 5% on average) in many parts of Ireland, and also Eastern Scandinavia, as well as parts of Spain. Rather than relating to single migrations, these admixtures could possibly be reflective of numerous population influxes, and out-fluxes over long periods of time. Similar, and very complex patterns of interrelationship can be found between some African, Asian, and the Pacific Islander populations as well. If one looks even further back it is well-established that all current modern human populations have recent paleoanthropological origins in Africa, meaning that all races of currently living people have common origins. This widely held theory is called the "Recent African origin of modern humans", which holds to the recent single origin of modern humans in East Africa, and has become the near-consensus view within the scientific community.
Category:Multiracial affairs Category:Race
ca:Multiracial ko:혼혈 la:Polyphyleticus ja:混血 pt:Multirracial sv:Chino zh:混血兒This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
name | Kip Fulbeck |
---|---|
birth name | Lawrence Keith Fulbeck |
birth date | April 30, 1965 |
birth place | Fontana, CA |
nationality | American |
field | Identity Politics, Spoken Word, Video, Slam Poetry, Performance, and Ethnic Studies |
training | University of California, San Diego |
awards | }} |
His mixed race ethnic background is Cantonese, English, Irish, and Welsh. He is best known for his work addressing Hapa and multiracial identity, and as the creator of The Hapa Project.
Fulbeck attended UCLA, Dartmouth College, and the University of California, San Diego, where he was a four-year NCAA All-American Swimmer and 1988 Athlete of the Year. He earned his MFA from UCSD in 1992.
Much of Fulbeck's work is autobiographical, combining personal stories with political activism, pop culture and stand-up comedy.
Permanence: Tattoo Portraits (also by Chronicle Books) was published in 2008, and features photographic portraits and handwritten personal statements by tattooed individuals from all walks of life including celebrities Margaret Cho, Kat Von D, Slash, Scott Ian, Joan Jett, Tera Patrick, Scott Weiland, Paul Stanley and Jeffrey Sebelia.
Fulbeck's fourth book entitled Mixed: Portraits of Multiracial Kids, was published by Chronicle Books in March 2010, and features a foreword by Dr. Maya Soetoro-Ng and an afterword by Cher. An accompanying solo exhibition exhibited at the Japanese American National Museum.
Fulbeck is represented by the Faye Bender Literary Agency.
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
Some definitions of the term include only people of relatively recent Sub Saharan African descent (see African diaspora). Among the members of this group, dark skin is most often accompanied by the expression of natural afro-hair texture (recent scientific study notes that human skin color diversity is highest in sub-Saharan African populations). Other definitions of the term "black people" extend to other populations characterized by dark skin, including some indigenous to Oceania and Southeast Asia.
Skin cancer as a result of ultraviolet light radiation causing mutations in the skin is less common among people with dark skin than it is among those with light skin. Furthermore, dark skin prevents an essential B vitamin, folate, from being destroyed. Therefore, in the absence of modern medicine and diet, a person with dark skin in the tropics would live longer, be healthier and more likely to reproduce than a person with light skin. White Australians have some of the highest rates of skin cancer as evidence of this expectation. Conversely, 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. White 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 which gives the characteristic pale pink color of white people. The loss of melanin in white people is now thought to have been caused by a mutation in just one letter out of 3.1 billion letters of DNA.
Such "afro-hair" texture is denser than its straight counterparts. Due to this, it is often referred to as 'thick', 'bushy', or 'woolly'. For several reasons, possibly including its relatively flat cross section (among other factors), this hair type conveys a dry or matte appearance. It is also very coarse, and its unique shape renders it very prone to breakage when combed or brushed.
The specific characteristics of the natural afro-hair form are unique among all mammals. The texture likely predates the evolution of dark skin. It evolved when, as pre-human Australopithecines lost most of their fur to enable perspiration, the need to protect the newly exposed pale skin underneath this body hair was crucial (see in light of Rogers and others., 2004 and Harding and others., 2000). The trait ceased to be essential to survival at the equator upon the evolution of hairless dark skin. Yet it has continued to be expressed vestigially among most Melanesians, Andaman Islanders, and sub-Saharan Africans.
Owen 'Alik Shahadah argues that the term sub-Saharan Africa has racist overtones:
However, some Black Africans prefer to be culturally distinguished from those who live in the north of the continent.
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 Colored 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.
During the apartheid era, those classed as 'Coloured' were oppressed and discriminated against. However, they did have limited rights and overall had slightly better socioeconomic conditions than those classed as 'Black'.
In the post-apartheid era, the ANC government's laws in support of their affirmative action policies define 'Black' people to include "Africans", "Coloureds" and "Asians". Their affirmative action policies have also favored 'Africans' over 'Coloureds'. Some South Africans categorized as 'African Black' openly state that 'Coloureds' did not suffer as much as they did during apartheid. The popular saying by 'Coloured' South Africans to illustrate their dilemma is:
In 2008, the High Court in South Africa ruled that Chinese South Africans who were residents during the apartheid era (and their descendents) are to be reclassified as "Black people" solely for the purposes of accessing affirmative action benefits, because they were also "disadvantaged" by racial discrimination. Chinese people who arrived in the country after the end of apartheid do not qualify.
Other than by appearance, 'Coloureds' can usually be distinguished from 'Blacks' by language. Most speak Afrikaans or English as a first language, as opposed to Bantu languages such as Zulu or Xhosa. They also tend to have more European-sounding names than Bantu names.
In more recent times, about 1000 CE, interactions between black people and Arabs resulted in the incorporation of extensive Arabic vocabulary into Swahili, which became a useful lingua franca for merchants. Some of this linguistic exchange occurred as part of the slave trade; the history of Islam and slavery shows that the major juristic schools traditionally accepted the institution of slavery. As a result, Arab influence spread along the east coast of Africa and to some extent into the interior (see Swahili people). Timbuktu was a trading outpost that linked West Africa with Berber, Arab, and Jewish traders throughout the Arab World. As a result of these interactions, some female-mediated gene flow into the Middle East from Sub-Saharan Africa can be observed in certain populations.
According to Dr. Carlos Moore, resident scholar at Brazil's University of the state of Bahia, Afro-multiracials in the Arab world self-identify in ways that resemble Latin America. He claims that black-looking Arabs, much like black-looking Latin Americans, consider themselves white because they have some distant white ancestry. Moore also claims that a film about Egyptian President Anwar Sadat had to be canceled when Sadat discovered that an African-American had been cast to play him. In fact, the 1983 television movie Sadat, starring Louis Gossett, Jr., was not canceled. The Egyptian government refused to let the drama air in Egypt, partially on the grounds of the casting of Gossett.
Sadat's mother was a dark-skinned Sudanese woman and his father was a lighter-skinned Egyptian. In response to an advertisement for an acting position he remarked, "I am not white but I am not exactly black either. My blackness is tending to reddish".
Fathia Nkrumah was another Egyptian with ties to Black Africa. She was the late wife of Ghanaian revolutionary Kwame Nkrumah, whose marriage was seen as helping plant the seeds of cooperation between Egypt and other African countries as they struggled for independence from European colonization, which in turn helped advance the formation of the African Union.
Because of the patriarchal nature of Arab society, Arab men had more use of black female slaves than black male slaves, more black women were enslaved than men, and, because the Qur'an was interpreted to permit sexual relations between a male master and his female slave outside of marriage, many mixed race children resulted. When an enslaved woman became pregnant with her Arab captor's child, she became “umm walad” or “mother of a child”, a status that granted her privileged rights. The child would have prospered from the wealth of the father and been given rights of inheritance. Because of patrilineality, the children were born free and sometimes even became successors to their ruling fathers, as was the case with Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur, (whose mother was a Fulani concubine), who ruled Morocco from 1578 to 1608. Such tolerance, however, was not extended to wholly black persons, even when technically "free," and the notion that to be black meant to be a slave became a common belief. The term "abd", (,) "slave," remains a common term for black people in the Middle East, often though not always derogatory.
In March 1807, Britain, which largely controlled the Atlantic, declared the trans-atlantic slave trade illegal, as did the United States. (The latter prohibition took effect January 1, 1808, the earliest date on which Congress had the power to do so under Article I, Section 9 of the United States Constitution.)
By that time, the majority of black people were U.S.-born, so use of the term "African" became problematic. Though initially a source of pride, many blacks feared its continued use would be a hindrance to their fight for full citizenship in the US. They also felt that it would give ammunition to those who were advocating repatriating black people back to Africa. In 1835 black leaders called upon black Americans to remove the title of "African" from their institutions and replace it with "Negro" or "Colored American". A few institutions however elected to keep their historical names such as African Methodist Episcopal Church. "Negro" and "colored" remained the popular terms until the late 1960s.
The term black was used throughout but not frequently as it carried a certain stigma. In his 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech, Martin Luther King, Jr. uses the terms Negro 15 times and black 4 times. Each time he uses black it is in parallel construction with white (for example,, black men and white men). With the successes of the civil rights movement a new term was needed to break from the past and help shed the reminders of legalized discrimination. In place of Negro, black was promoted as standing for racial pride, militancy and power. Some of the turning points included the use of the term "Black Power" by Kwame Toure (Stokely Carmichael) and the release of James Brown's song "Say It Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud". In 1988 Jesse Jackson urged Americans to use the term African American because the term has a historical cultural base. Since then African American and black have essentially a coequal status. There is still much controversy over which term is more appropriate. Some such as Maulana Karenga and Owen Alik Shahadah argue African-American is more appropriate because it accurately articulates geography and historical origin. Others have argued that "Black" is a better term because "African" suggests foreignness, despite the long presence of Black people in the US. Still others believe the term black is inaccurate because African Americans have a variety of skin tones. Surveys show that the majority of Black Americans have no preference for whether "African American" or "Black" is employed to describe them, although they also show that there is a slight preference for "Black" in personal settings and "African American" in more formal settings. The appropriateness of the term "African American" is further confused, however, by increases in the number of immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. The more recent African immigrants may sometimes view themselves, and be viewed, as culturally distinct from native descendants of African slaves.
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.
A considerable portion of the U.S. population identified as black actually have some Native American or White ancestry. For instance, genetic studies of African American people show an ancestry that is on average 17–18% European.
The one drop rule may have originated as a means of increasing the number of black slaves and been maintained as an attempt to keep the white race pure. One of the results of the one drop rule was uniting the African American community and preserving an African identity. Some of the most prominent civil rights activists were multiracial, and advocated equality for all.
The notion of blackness can also be extended to non-black people. Toni Morrison once described Bill Clinton as the first black president, because of his warm relations with African Americans, his poor upbringing and also because he is a jazz musician. Christopher Hitchens was offended by the notion of Clinton as the first black president noting "we can still define blackness by the following symptoms: alcoholic mothers, under-the-bridge habits...the tendency to sexual predation and shameless perjury about the same" Some black activists were also offended, claiming Clinton used his knowledge of black culture to exploit black people like no other president before for political gain, while not serving black interests. They note his lack of action during the Rwanda genocide and his welfare reform which some claim led to the worst child poverty since the 1960s along with the fact that the number of black people in jail increased during his administration.
The question of blackness also arose in Democrat Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. Commentators have questioned whether Obama, who was elected the first black President of the United States, is black enough, as his mother was white American, and his father was a black Kenyan immigrant. Obama refers to himself interchangeably as black and African American.
The topic of race in Brazil is a complex and diverse one. A Brazilian child was never automatically identified with the racial type of one or both parents, nor were there only two categories to choose from. Between a pure black and a very light mulatto over a dozen racial categories would be recognized in conformity with the combinations of hair color, hair texture, eye color, and skin color. These types grade into each other like the colors of the spectrum, and no one category stands significantly isolated from the rest. That is, race referred to appearance, not heredity.
There is some disagreement among scholars over the effects of social status on racial classifications in Brazil. It is generally believed that upward mobility and education results in reclassification of individuals into lighter skinned categories. The popular claim is that in Brazil poor whites are considered black and wealthy blacks are considered white. Some scholars disagree arguing that whitening of one's social status may be open to people of mixed race, but a typically black person will consistently be identified as black regardless of wealth or social status.
+Demographics of Brazil | |||
Year!! White !! Pardo!! Black | |||
1835 | 24.4% | 18.2% | 51.4% |
2000 | 53.7% | 38.5% |
A philosophy of whitening emerged in Brazil in the 19th century. Until recently the government did not keep data on race. However, statisticians estimate that in 1835 half the population was black, one fifth was Pardo (brown) and one fourth white. By 2000 the black population had fallen to only 6.2% and the Pardo had increased to 40% and white to 55%. Essentially most of the black population was absorbed into the multiracial category by intermarriage. A recent study found that at least 29% of the middle class white Brazilian population had some recent African ancestry.
However, the philosophy of the racial democracy in Brazil has drawn criticism from some quarters. Brazil has one of the largest gaps in income distribution in the world. The richest 10% of the population earn 28 times the average income of the bottom 40%. The richest 10 percent is almost exclusively white. One-third of the population lives under the poverty line, with blacks and other non-whites accounting for 70 percent of the poor.
In the US, black people earn 75% of what white people earn. In Brazil, non-whites earn less than 50% of what whites earn. Some have posited that Brazil does in fact practice the one drop rule when social economic factors are considered. This is because the gap in income between blacks and other non-whites is relatively small compared to the large gap between whites and non-whites. Other factors such as illiteracy and education level show the same patterns. Unlike in the US where African Americans were united in the civil rights struggle, in Brazil the philosophy of whitening has helped divide blacks from other non-whites and prevented a more active civil rights movement.
Though Afro-Brazilians make up half the population there are very few black politicians. The city of Salvador, Bahia for instance is 80% Afro-Brazilian but has never had a black mayor. Critics indicate that US cities that have a black majority, such as Detroit and New Orleans, have never had white mayors since first electing black mayors in the 1970s.
Non-white people also have limited media visibility. The Latin American media, in particular the Brazilian media, has been accused of hiding its black and indigenous population. For example the telenovelas or soaps are said to be a hotbed of white, largely blonde and blue/green-eyed actors who resemble Scandinavians or other northern Europeans more than they resemble the typical whites of Brazil, who are mostly of Southern European descent.
These patterns of discrimination against non-whites have led some to advocate for the use of the Portuguese term 'negro' to encompass non-whites so as to renew a black consciousness and identity, in effect an African descent rule.
In South India there are also several communities of Black African descent, such as the Sheedis/Siddis, specifically the Siddis of Karnataka, who descend from Zanj (Black African) slaves. In Pakistan, Zanj descendants are known as the Makrani.
Other black people of Southeast Asia, collectively known as Negritos, include the Aeta people of Luzon and the Ati of Panay in the Philippines.
There are several groups of dark-skinned people who live in various parts of Asia, Australia and Oceania who sometimes are referred to as black people. They include the Indigenous Australians, the Melanesians (now divided into Austronesian-speaking populations and Papuans, and including the great genetic diversity of New Guinea), the Semang people of the Malay peninsula, and indigenous first nation Fijians.
According to the Office for National Statistics, as of the 2001 census, there are over a million black people in the United Kingdom; 1% of the total population describe themselves as "Black Caribbean", 0.8% as "Black African", and 0.2% as "Black other". Britain encouraged the immigration of workers from the Caribbean after World War II; the first symbolic movement was those who came on the ship the Empire Windrush. The preferred official umbrella term is "black and minority ethnic" (BME), but sometimes the term "black" is used on its own, to express unified opposition to racism, as in the Southall Black Sisters, which started with a mainly British Asian constituency.
Keita and Boyce confront this issue in a 1996 article entitled, "The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient Egyptians". As anthropologists, they point out the danger in relying on ancient interpretation to reveal for us the biological make up of a population. In any case they contend, the relevant data indicates greater similarity between Egyptians and Ethiopians than the former group with the Ancient Greeks.
Ancient Egyptians are often portrayed in modern media as Caucasians. Afrocentrists, in particular, have been critical of this. According to Egyptologists, ancient Egypt was a multicultural society of Middle Eastern, Northeast African, and Saharan influences. Afrocentrists argue that anthropological and archaeological evidence shows that what they term an Africoid element was evident in ancient Egypt, which they argue was predominant in Abydos in the First dynasty of Egypt.
Category:Latin American caste system Category:Race
ca:Raça negra de:Schwarze et:Neegrid es:Negro (persona) eo:Nigrulo fr:Noir (humain) ko:흑인 la:Nigrita simple:Black people sv:Svart (hudfärg) uk:Негр ug:قارا تەنلىكلەر wuu:黑人 yi:שווארצע zh-yue:黑人 bat-smg:Negrā zh:黑人This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
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