•
African Americans – There are an estimated 43 million people of black African descent in the United States. •
Afro-Latin Americans – An estimation from the Pew Research Center calculates about 100 million people of African Descent. It's important to note, however, that the racial classification criteria used in the US can differ markedly from the racial classification criteria used in other countries in the region and from how other populations perceive their own racial identification. There are also sizeable African-descended populations in
Cuba,
Haiti,
Colombia and
Dominican Republic, often with ancestry of other major ethnic groups. •
Afro-Caribbeans – The population in the
Caribbean is approximately 23 million. Significant numbers of African-descended people include
Haiti – 8 million,
Dominican Republic – 7.9 million, and
Jamaica – 2.7 million,
Caribbean The first Africans in the Americas arrived in the region during the initial period of
European colonization. In 1492,
Afro-Spanish sailor
Pedro Alonso Niño served as a
pilot on the
voyages of Christopher Columbus; though he returned to the Americas in 1499, Niño did not settle in the region. By the early 16th century, more Africans began to arrive in
Spanish colonies in the Americas, sometimes as
free people of color, but the majority were
enslaved. Demand of African labor increased as the
indigenous population of the Americas experienced a
massive population decline due to the introduction of Eurasian
infectious diseases (such as
smallpox) to which they had no
natural immunity. The
Spanish Crown granted
asientos (monopoly contracts) to merchants granting them the right to supply enslaved Africans in to Spanish colonies in the Americas, regulating the trade. As other European nations began establishing colonies in the Americas, these new colonies began importing enslaved Africans as well. During the 17th and 18th centuries, most European colonies in the Caribbean operated on
plantation economies fueled by slave labor, and the resulting importation of enslaved Africans meant that
Afro-Caribbeans soon far outnumbered their European enslavers in terms of population. Roughly eleven to twelve million enslaved Africans were transported to the Americas as part of the
transatlantic slave trade. Continuous waves of
slave rebellions, such as the
Baptist War led by
Samuel Sharpe in
British Jamaica, created the conditions for the incremental abolition of slavery in the region, with Great Britain abolishing it
in the 1830s. The Spanish colony of
Cuba was the last Caribbean island to emancipate its slaves. During the 20th century, Afro-Caribbean people began to assert their cultural, economic and political rights on the world stage. The Jamaican
Marcus Garvey formed the
UNIA movement in the United States, continuing with
Aimé Césaire's
négritude movement, which was intended to create a pan-African movement across national lines. From the 1960s, the
decolonization of the Americas led to various Caribbean countries gaining their independence from European colonial rule. They were pre-eminent in creating new cultural forms such as
calypso,
reggae music, and
Rastafari within the Caribbean. Beyond the region, a new Afro-Caribbean diaspora, including such figures as
Stokely Carmichael and
DJ Kool Herc in the United States, was influential in the creation of the
black power and
hip hop movements. Influential political theorists such as
Walter Rodney,
Frantz Fanon and
Stuart Hall contributed to anti-colonial theory and movements in Africa, as well as cultural developments in Europe.
North America United States Several migration waves to the Americas, as well as relocations within the Americas, have brought people of African descent to North America. According to the
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the first African populations came to North America in the 16th century via
Mexico and the
Caribbean to the Spanish colonies of
Florida,
Texas and other parts of the South. Out of the 12 million people from Africa who were shipped to the
Americas during the
transatlantic slave trade, 645,000 were shipped to the
British colonies on the North American mainland and the
United States. In the establishment of the African diaspora, the transatlantic slave trade is often considered the defining element, but people of African descent have engaged in eleven other migration movements involving North America since the 16th century, many being voluntary migrations, although undertaken in exploitative and hostile environments. Today 1.7 million people in the United States are descended from voluntary immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa, most of whom arrived in the late twentieth century. African immigrants represent 6 percent of all immigrants to the United States and almost 5 percent of the African-American community nationwide. About 57 percent immigrated between 1990 and 2000. Immigrants born in Africa constitute 1.6 percent of the black population. People of the African immigrant diaspora are the most educated population group in the United States—50 percent have bachelor's or advanced degrees, compared to 23 percent of native-born Americans. The largest African immigrant communities in the United States are in
New York, followed by
California,
Texas, and
Maryland. According to a study conducted in 2011, the African American DNA consists on average of 73.2% West African, 24% European and 0.8% Native American DNA. Recent African immigrants represent a minority of black people nationwide. The U.S. Bureau of the Census categorizes the population by race based on self-identification. The census surveys have no provision for a "multiracial" or "biracial" self-identity, but since 2000, respondents may check off more than one box and claim multiple ethnicity that way.
Canada Much of the earliest black presence in
Canada came from the newly independent
United States after the American Revolution. The British resettled African Americans (known as
Black Loyalists) primarily in
Nova Scotia. These were primarily former slaves who had escaped to British lines for promised freedom during the Revolution. Later during the antebellum years, other individual African Americans escaped to Canada, mostly to locations in
Southwestern Ontario, via the
Underground Railroad, a system supported by both blacks and whites to assist fugitive slaves. After achieving independence, northern states in the U.S. had begun to abolish slavery as early as 1793, but slavery was not abolished in the South until 1865, following the
American Civil War. Black immigration to Canada in the twentieth century consisted mostly of Caribbean descent. As a result of the prominence of Caribbean immigration, the term "African Canadian", while sometimes used to refer to the minority of Canadian blacks who have direct African or African-American heritage, is
not normally used to denote black Canadians. Blacks of Caribbean origin are usually denoted as "West Indian Canadian", "Caribbean Canadian" or more rarely "Afro-Caribbean Canadian", but there remains no widely used alternative to "Black Canadian" which is considered inclusive of the African, Afro-Caribbean, and African-American black communities in Canada.
Central America and South America includes many
Afro-Caribbeans,
mestizos,
Taíno-descended persons, and whites. celebrating at a ceremony held by the
Ministry of Culture. At an intermediate level, in
South America and in the former plantations in and around the Indian Ocean, descendants of enslaved people are a bit harder to define because many people are mixed in demographic proportion to the original slave population. In places that imported relatively few slaves (like
Chile), few if any are considered "black" today. In places that imported many enslaved people (like
Brazil or
Dominican Republic), the number is larger, though most identify themselves as being of mixed, rather than strictly African, ancestry. In places like Brazil and the Dominican Republic, blackness is performed in more taboo ways than it is in, say, the United States. The idea behind
Trey Ellis Cultural Mulatto comes into play as there are blurred lines between what is considered as black. In
Colombia, the African slaves were first brought to work in the gold mines of the Department of Antioquia. After this was no longer a profitable business, these slaves slowly moved to the Pacific coast, where they have remained unmixed with the white or Indian population until today. The whole Department of Chocó remains a black area. Mixture with white population happened mainly in the Caribbean coast, which is a
mestizo area until today. There was also a greater mixture in the south-western departments of Cauca and
Valle del Cauca. In these mestizo areas the African culture has had a great influence. In Central America, Afro-indigenous people, also known as Caribs or
Garifuna(Carib and African descent) migrated to Central America to save themselves from forced enslavement.These people trace their origin to the Saint Vincent island.The original exiled population of 3000 people has now grown into an estimated 60000 people.The community has retained its Afro indigenous culture.The community makes around 1 to 2% of the population in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Belize.Many also live in the United states. The people have retained their language, beliefs and the associated rituals. == Europe ==