African diaspora

The African diaspora is the diaspora created by the movements and culture of Africans and their descendants throughout the world, to places such as the Americas, (including the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, Central America, and South America) Europe and Asia. Much of the African diaspora is descended from people sold into slavery during the transatlantic slave trade, with the largest population living in Brazil (see Afro-Brazilian).

More broadly, the African diaspora comprises the indigenous peoples of Africa and their descendants, wherever they are in the world. Pan-Africanists often also consider other Africoid peoples as diasporic African peoples. These groups include, among others, the Malay Peninsula (Orang Asli),[1], New Guinea,[2] certain peoples of the Indian subcontinent,[3],[4] and the aboriginal peoples of Melanesia and Micronesia.[5]

The African Union has defined the African diaspora as "[consisting] of people of African origin living outside the continent, irrespective of their citizenship and nationality and who are willing to contribute to the development of the continent and the building of the African Union." Its constitutive act declares that it shall "invite and encourage the full participation of the African Diaspora as an important part of our Continent, in the building of the African Union."

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.^[1] 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.

Dr. Ben Carson, world renowned neurosurgeon of the U.S.

Nobel literature laureate Wole Soyinka of Nigeria

British North America imported only about 500,000 Africans out of the 11 million shipped across the Atlantic.^[2] Nevertheless, the United States has been astonishingly successful at preserving two distinct genetic populations: one of mostly African ancestry, the other overwhelmingly European.^[3] All other New World states (except Canada) 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 (other than the ancient African ancestry shared by all members of our species, of course). Only one-third of white Americans have detectable African DNA (averaging 2.3 percent) from ancestors who passed through the endogamous color line from black to white.^[4] 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 (like the Mascarene Islands or Argentina), few if any are considered Black today.^[5] In places that imported many slaves (like Arabia or Puerto Rico), the number is larger, but all are still of mixed ancestry.^[6]

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 (in southern Portugal) to nil (in Scandinavia). 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 — (see description above) or visit African American.

Capoeiristas demonstrating the strong African influence in Brazilian culture and ethnicity.

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 (1500-1850) established communities in Yemen, Pakistan, and India. Many share the similar name "Saeed" (Sheedis, Shudra, and Siddi), which is also the name of the Southern Egyptians (Saeedi), who exhibit strong African and Equatorial origins and a distinct culture from the northern Egyptians of the Delta.

References

1. ^ Pier M. Larson, Reconsidering Trauma, Identity, and the African Diaspora: Enslavement and Historical Memory in Nineteenth-Century Highland Madagascar, William and Mary Quarterly 56, no. 2 (1999): 335-62.
2. ^ Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440-1870 (New York, 1997), 793, 804-5.
3. ^ Heather E. Collins-Schramm, et al., "Markers that Discriminate Between European and African Ancestry Show Limited Variation Within Africa," Human Genetics, 111 (September 2002), 566-99.
4. ^ Mark D. Shriver and others, "Skin Pigmentation, Biogeographical Ancestry, and Admixture Mapping," Human Genetics, 112 (2003), 387-99.
5. ^ Harry Hoetink, Caribbean Race Relations: A Study of Two Variants (Lon-don, 1971), xii.
6. ^ Clara E. Rodriguez, "Challenging Racial Hegemony: Puerto Ricans in the United States," in Race, ed. Steven Gregory and Roger Sanjek (New Brunswick NJ, 1994), 131-45, 137. See also Frederick P. Bowser, "Colonial Spanish America," in Neither Slave Nor Free: The Freedmen of African Descent in the Slave Societies of the New World, ed. David W. Cohen and Jack P. Greene (Baltimore, 1972), 19-58, 38.

See also

• African American
• African-Canadian
• African Caribbean
• Afro-Cuban
• Afro-Brazilian
• Afro-European
• Afro-Latin American
• Afro-Mexican
• Australoid
• Black people
• Black people in Ireland
• British African-Caribbean community
• Capoid
• French Afro-Caribbean community
• History of Africa
• Negroid
• Siddi (African community in South Asia)
• United States Afro-Caribbean community
• Veddoid

External links

• "African Diaspora", a resource list, Columbia Universities, African Studies
• "The Blacks of East Bengal: A Native's Perspective," by Horen Tudu
• "Negrito and Negrillo", by M. Stewart
• African Diaspora business.
• "Pan-Africanism in South Asia," by Horen Tudu
• Report of the Meeting of Experts from Member States on the Definition of the African Diaspora, African Union, April 2005
• "West Papua New Guinea: Interview with Foreign Minister Ben Tanggahma"
• "Museum of the African Diaspora," Online exhibits and other resources from the San Francisco-based museum.

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