Schwarze

A Kenyan man

Black people or blacks is a political, racial, ethnic, social or cultural classification. No humans are literally black in the colour sense of the word.

There is no universally agreed-upon criteria for who is considered black, and the definition has varied in different time periods and locations. Some assert that only people of recent African descent are black, while others argue that black may refer to all individuals with dark skin, regardless of ethnic origin. Among those who adhere to the first assertion, some argue that only people of sub-Saharan ethnic origin are black, while others argue that ancient Egypt was a primarily black civilization. A debate within all of these debates concerns how much black ancestry makes one black, with some maintaining that any known black ancestry is enough, others requiring a preponderance of black ancestry, and still others excluding those with any known mixed blood from the black category. The ethnic/racial classification black received something similar to its current meaning during The Enlightenment, when anthropologists of that era defined five human races: Yellows (East Asians), Reds (Native Americans), Whites (Europeans), Browns (Australoids, Southeast Asians), and Blacks (Africans).

Historical context

Science attempts to define race

Vorlage:Further Many argue that racism did not always exist, and that its origins can be traced to the Age of Enlightenment which gave rise to biological classifications and the theory of evolution. At the end of the 17th century a French doctor named Francois Bernier divided up humanity based on facial appearance and body type. He proposed four categories: Europeans, Far Easterners, Lapps, and blacks who he described as having wooly hair, thick lips, and very white teeth.

The first major scientific model was created in 18th century when Carolus Linnaeus recognized four main races: "Europeanus", the white race; "Asiatic", the yellow race; "Americanus", the red race; and "Africanus", the black race. According to Linnaeus, the black male could be defined by his skin tone, face structure, and curly hair. Linnaeus believed blacks were cunning, passive, inattentive, and ruled by impulse. To Linnaeus, black females were shameless, because "they lactate profusely". Linnaeus' protege, anthropology founder Johann Blumenbach completed his mentor's color coded race model by adding the brown race, "Malay" for Polynesisians and Melanesians of Pacific Islands, and for aborigines of Australia. Gradually the yellow race and red race got lumped together, and the brown race ignored because of its' small population, yielding the three main races of anthropology: negroid, caucasoid, and mongoloid (commonly described as Black, White, and (East) Asian)

Some anthropologists later added the brown race back in as an Australoid category (which includes aboriginal peoples of Australia along with various peoples of southeast and south Asia, especially Melanesia and the Malay Archipelago), and viewed it as separate from Negroids (often lumping Australoids in with Caucasoids). Carleton Coon abandoned the very idea of a negroid race and instead regarded it as two races (capoids and congoids) creating a five race model. By the 1970s, due to the Black Power and Civil Rights movement redefining black as a symbol of pride and resistance from oppression, the term black replaced Negro in the United States

The role of the Bible

Vorlage:Further 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 human kind into three major races: Negroid, Caucasoid, and Mongoloid (now also commonly called black, white, and Asian), 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 Caanan, one of Ham's sons. This is not a racial but geographic referent. The Caanites, 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."

On the other hand, 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.

Sociopolitical definitions

Social identification

According to Frank W. Sweet, the most controversial answer to the question "who is black?" is "whoever looks black." He writes that although most who use the label rationalize it in terms of physical appearance, there is little objective consistency in this regard, and that different cultures can assign the same individual to opposite "races": 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.

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."

In Sub-Saharan Africa, terms specifically describing black people are not as commonly used as in the western world. According to Sri Lankan activist Nirmala Rajasingam "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".

According to psychologist Arthur Jensen, "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"

One drop rule

According to the Untied States' one drop rule, a black is any person with any known African ancestry.

Not only does the one-drop rule not apply outside of America, but it often applies in reverse. Just as anyone with any physically recognizable sub-Saharan ancestry can claim to be Black in America, anyone with any recognizable Caucasian ancestry is considered White in Latin America. Even individual 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 Caucasian trait 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 America, "if you are not quite white, then you are black." But 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."

Legal definitions

U.S.

Mostafa Hefny is white under US law, due to his national heritage

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 provide written entries such as African American, Afro American, Kenyan, Nigerian, or Haitian. The Census Bureau however notes that these classifications are socio-political constructs and should not be interpreted as being scientific or anthropological in nature. Self-identifying as black is not enough to be considered Black under U.S. law. Egyptian immigrant Mostafa Hefny describes himself as dark skinned with kinky hair, but nonetheless is legally White, not Black. 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.

South Africa

This extended coloured family has too much non-black blood to legally qualify as Black under South African appartheid laws

Perhaps no country in the world did more to formalize black identity under the law than South Africa during appartheid. The population was classified into four groups: Black, White, Asian (mostly Indian), and "Coloured". (These terms are capitalised to denote their legal definitions in South African law). The Coloured group included people of mixed Bantu, Khoisan, and European descent (with some Malay ancestry, especially in the Western Cape). The Apartheid bureaucracy devised complex (and often arbitrary) criteria at the time that the Population Registration Act was implemented to determine who was Coloured. Minor officials would administer tests to determine if someone should be categorised either Coloured or Black, or if another person should be categorised either Coloured or White. When it was unclear from a person's physical appearance whether someone had enough black blood 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 . . . all those material benefits . . . But there are also real differences in culture between the two groups”

Alternatives to social constructionism

Some argue that the Sahara desert divided the world into blacks and non-blacks

Not everyone agrees that being black is simply a social identity that varies from culture to culture. The following individuals believe that blacks are an objectively definable racial category with a precise definition. In some cases, propopents of this view have been accused of scientific racism.

According to philosophy professor Michael Levin,

Ordinary speakers acquainted with the out-of-Africa scenario are most charitably construed as intending 'Negroid' to denote individuals whose ancestors 15 to 5000 generations ago (with Harris & Hey, 1999, counting a generation as 20 years) were sub-Saharan African...Hybrid populations with multiple lines of descent are to be characterized in just those terms: as of multiple descent. Thus, American Negroids are individuals most of whose ancestors from 15 to 5000 generations ago were sub- Saharan African. Specifying 'most' more precisely in a way that captures ordinary usage may not be possible. '> 50%' seems too low a threshold; my sense is that ordinary attributions of race begin to stabilize at 75%.

Levin has spoken at events for the white separatist American Renaissance magazine. He is a grantee of the controversial Pioneer Fund, and according to The Nation, Levin sympathized with advocates of racial segregation in subway cars for black men.

Psychiatrist Sally Satel has stated that “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)." Satel has written for the politically conservative Policy Review, and is a fellow of the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

University of Western Ontario psychology professor J. Phillipe Rushton states "a Negroid is someone whose ancestors, between 4,000 and (to accommodate recent migrations) 20 generations ago, were born in sub-Saharan Africa." Rushton's controversial book "Race, Evolution and Behavior" states: "In both everyday life and evolutionary biology, a 'Black' is anyone most of whose ancestors were born in sub-Saharan Africa" Rushton is head of the Pioneer Fund, which has been accused of misusing social science to fuel the politics of oppression, and funding specialized research that seeks to prove the inferiority of blacks while denying any political agenda. Critics accuse Rushton of advocating a new eugenics movement.Vorlage:Fact He is openly praised by proponents of eugenics. He has written articles for VDARE, a website that advocates reduced immigration into the United States.

Biological definitions

In biology the term race is synonymous with the term subspecies, although in biomedical research the term race is often used to define social groups as opposed to biological groups. All modern humans form a single subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens. Some biomedical researchers claim that social races are biologically quantifiable, while others argue that race is biologically meaningless. Although modern DNA studies are interpeted by some as having cast doubt on old biological racial categories and classifications of peoples as black or otherwise. 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. 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.

Criticism of definitions

There are objections to the standard definitions of black people, as well as criticism of the term itself.

Cultural writer and filmmaker Owen 'Alik Shahadah says "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." 'Alik Shahadah also objects that "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."

Owen 'Alik Shahadah states "the notion of some invisible border, which divides the North of African 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 argues 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.'

Activist Nirmala 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) says "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 says "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".

Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop also feels that the standard conceptions of black people fall short, stating: "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."

Capitalization

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.

Estimated population

There is no standard definition of who is black, the table however attempts to give a the population distribution of people who may be called "black".

Black population distribution

Region	Population	Percentage
Africa	760,000,000	82%
Latin America	100,000,000	11%
North America	40,000,000	4%
Caribbean	15,000,000	1.6%
Europe	3,500,000	0.3%
Melanesia	6,000,000	0.5%
Australia	500,000	0.05%
Total	923,000,000

Gallery

These are photographs of individuals who have been labelled as black by a significant number of people. In some cases the label is highly controversial. For example a recent scientific poll found that although Barack Obama self-identifies as black, most Americans regard him as multiracial. In addition, Cathy Freeman would be classified as a Pacific Islander according to the U.S. census. Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia, would also be regarded as multiracial by some sources.

• US Senator Barack Obama.
  US Senator Barack Obama.
• 
  Wangari Muta Maathai is a Kenyan environmental and political activist.
• 
  Former South African presidentNelson Mandela.
• Cathy Freeman an Indigenous Australian after winning the Gold medal at the Sydney Olympics.
  Cathy Freeman an Indigenous Australian after winning the Gold medal at the Sydney Olympics.
• 
  Brazilian profesional football player Pele.
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  Dutchman Frank Rijkaard, coach of FC Barcelona.
• Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia, former Emperor of Ethiopia.
  Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia, former Emperor of Ethiopia.
• 
  Television mogul Oprah Winfrey.

See also

• African American
• Brown people
• Human genetic variation

References and notes

de:Schwarzafrikaner