Canada "Black Canadians" is a designation used for people of black African ancestry who are citizens or permanent residents of
Canada. The majority of black Canadians are of
Caribbean origin, though the population also consists of
African American immigrants and their descendants (including
black Nova Scotians), as well as many
African immigrants. Black Canadians often draw a distinction between those of
Afro-Caribbean ancestry and those of other African roots. The term
African Canadian is occasionally used by some black Canadians who trace their heritage to the first slaves brought by British and French colonists to the North American mainland. and instead identify as
Caribbean Canadian.
United States There were eight principal areas used by Europeans to buy and ship slaves to the
Western Hemisphere. The number of enslaved people sold to the New World varied throughout the slave trade. As for the distribution of slaves from regions of activity, certain areas produced far more enslaved people than others. Between 1650 and 1900, 10.24 million
enslaved West Africans arrived in the Americas from the following regions in the following proportions: •
Senegambia (Senegal and
The Gambia): 4.8% •
Upper Guinea (
Guinea-Bissau,
Guinea and
Sierra Leone): 4.1% •
Windward Coast (
Liberia and
Ivory Coast): 1.8% •
Gold Coast (
Ghana and east of
Ivory Coast): 10.4% •
Bight of Benin (
Togo,
Benin and
Nigeria west of the Niger Delta): 20.2% •
Bight of Biafra (
Nigeria east of the
Niger Delta,
Cameroon,
Equatorial Guinea and
Gabon): 14.6% • West Central Africa (
Republic of the Congo,
Democratic Republic of the Congo and
Angola): 39.4% • Southeastern Africa (
Mozambique and
Madagascar): 4.7% By the early 1900s,
nigger had become a pejorative word in the United States. In its stead, the term
colored became the mainstream alternative to
negro and its derived terms. After the
American Civil Rights Movement, the terms
colored and
negro gave way to "black".
Negro had superseded
colored as the most polite word for
African Americans at a time when
black was considered more offensive. This term was accepted as normal, including by people classified as Negroes, until the later
Civil Rights movement in the late 1960s. One well-known example is the use by Dr. Rev.
Martin Luther King Jr. of "Negro" in his famous speech of 1963,
I Have a Dream. During the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, some African-American leaders in the United States, notably
Malcolm X, objected to the word
Negro because they associated it with the long history of slavery, segregation, and discrimination that treated African Americans as second-class citizens, or worse. Malcolm X preferred
Black to
Negro, but later gradually abandoned that as well for
Afro-American after leaving the
Nation of Islam. Since the late 1960s, various other terms for African Americans have been more widespread in popular usage. Aside from
black American, these include
Afro-American (in use from the late 1960s to 1990) and
African American (used in the United States to refer to Black Americans, people often referred to in the past as
American Negroes). In the first 200 years that black people were in the
United States, they primarily identified themselves by their specific
ethnic group (closely allied to language) and not by skin color. Individuals identified themselves, for example, as
Ashanti,
Igbo,
Bakongo, or
Wolof. However, when the first captives were brought to
the Americas, they were often combined with other groups from West Africa, and individual ethnic affiliations were not generally acknowledged by English colonists. In areas of the Upper South, different ethnic groups were brought together. This is significant as the captives came from a vast geographic region: the West African coastline stretching from
Senegal to
Angola and in some cases from the south-east coast such as
Mozambique. A new
African-American identity and culture was born that incorporated elements of the various ethnic groups and of European cultural heritage, resulting in fusions such as the
Black church and
African-American English. This new identity was based on provenance and slave status rather than membership in any one ethnic group. By contrast, slave records from Louisiana show that the French and Spanish colonists recorded more complete identities of the West Africans, including ethnicities and given tribal names. The U.S. racial or ethnic classification "black" refers to people with all possible kinds of skin pigmentation, from the darkest through to the very lightest skin colors, including
albinos, if they are believed by others to have African ancestry (in any discernible percentage). There are also certain cultural traits associated with being "
African American", a term used effectively as a synonym for "black person" within the United States. In March 1807,
Great Britain, which largely controlled the Atlantic, declared
the transatlantic slave trade illegal, as did the United States. (The latter prohibition took effect 1 January 1808, the earliest date on which
Congress had the power to do so after protecting the slave trade under
Article I, Section 9 of the
United States Constitution.) By that time, the majority of black people in the United States were native-born, so the use of the term "African" became problematic. Though initially a source of pride, many blacks feared that the use of African as an identity would be a hindrance to their fight for full citizenship in the United States. 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 chose to keep their historic names, such as the
African Methodist Episcopal Church. African Americans popularly used the terms "Negro" or "colored" for themselves until the late 1960s. The term
black was used throughout but not frequently since it carried a certain stigma. In his 1963 "
I Have a Dream" speech,
Martin Luther King Jr. uses the terms
negro fifteen times and
black four times. Each time that he uses
black, it is in parallel construction with
white; for example, "black men and white men". With the successes of the
American 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, activists promoted the use of
black as standing for racial pride, militancy, and power. Some of the turning points included the use of the term "
Black Power" by Kwame Ture (
Stokely Carmichael) and the popular singer
James Brown's song "
Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud". In 1988, the civil rights leader
Jesse Jackson urged Americans to use instead the term "African American" because it had a historical cultural base and was a construction similar to terms used by European descendants, such as German American, Italian American, etc. Since then, African American and black have often had parallel status. However, controversy continues over which, if any, of the two terms is more appropriate.
Maulana Karenga argues that the term African-American is more appropriate because it accurately articulates their geographical and historical origin. Others have argued that "black" is a better term because "African" suggests foreignness, although black Americans helped found the United States. Still others believe that the term "black" is inaccurate because African Americans have a variety of skin tones. Some surveys suggest that the majority of Black Americans have no preference for "African American" or "black", although they have a slight preference for "black" in personal settings and "African American" in more formal settings. In the
U.S. census race definitions, black and African Americans are citizens and residents of the United States with origins in the black racial groups of Africa. According to the
Office of Management and Budget, the grouping includes individuals who self-identify as African American, as well as persons who emigrated from nations in the Caribbean and Africa. The grouping is thus based on geography, and may contradict or misrepresent an individual's self-identification, since not all immigrants from Africa are "black". According to U.S. Census Bureau data,
African immigrants generally do not self-identify as African American. The overwhelming majority of African immigrants identify instead with their own respective ethnicities (~95%). Immigrants from some
Caribbean,
Central American and
South American nations and their descendants may or may not also self-identify with the term. Recent surveys of African Americans using a
genetic testing service have found varied ancestries that show different tendencies by region and sex of ancestors. These studies found that on average, African Americans have 73.2–80.9%
West African, 18–24% European, and 0.8–0.9%
Native American genetic heritage, with large variation between individuals. According to studies in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, U.S. residents consistently overestimate the size, physical strength, and formidability of young black men.
New Great Migration The New Great Migration is not evenly distributed throughout the South. As with the earlier Great Migration, the New Great Migration is primarily directed toward cities and large urban areas, such as
Atlanta,
Charlotte,
Houston,
Dallas,
Raleigh,
Washington, D.C.,
Tampa,
Virginia Beach,
San Antonio,
Memphis,
Orlando,
Nashville,
Jacksonville, and so forth. North Carolina's
Charlotte metro area in particular, is a hot spot for African American migrants in the US. Between 1975 and 1980,
Charlotte saw a net gain of 2,725 African Americans in the area. This number continued to rise as between 1985 and 1990 as the area had a net gain of 7,497 African Americans, and from 1995 to 2000 the net gain was 23,313 African Americans. This rise in net gain points to Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, and Houston being a growing hot spots for the migrants of The New Great Migration. The percentage of Black Americans who live in the South has been increasing since 1990, and the biggest gains have been in the region's large urban areas, according to census data. The Black population of metro Atlanta more than doubled between 1990 and 2020, surpassing 2 million in the most recent census. The Black population also more than doubled in metro Charlotte while Greater Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth both saw their Black populations surpass 1 million for the first time. Several smaller metro areas also saw sizable gains, including San Antonio; Raleigh and Greensboro, N.C.; and Orlando. Primary destinations are states that have the most job opportunities, especially
Georgia,
North Carolina,
Maryland,
Virginia,
Tennessee,
Florida and
Texas. Other southern states, including
Mississippi,
Louisiana,
South Carolina,
Alabama and
Arkansas, have seen little net growth in the African American population from return migration.
One-drop rule From the late 19th century, the South used a
colloquial term, the
one-drop rule, to classify as black a person of any known African ancestry. This practice of
hypodescent was not put into law until the early 20th century. Legally, the definition varied from state to state. Racial definition was more flexible in the 18th and 19th centuries before the
American Civil War. For instance, President
Thomas Jefferson held in slavery persons who were legally white (less than 25% black) according to Virginia law at the time, but, because they were born to slave mothers, they were born into slavery, according to the principle of
partus sequitur ventrem, which Virginia adopted into law in 1662. Outside of the United States, some other countries have adopted the one-drop rule, but the definition of who is black and the extent to which the one-drop "rule" applies varies greatly from country to country. The one-drop rule may have originated as a means of increasing the number of black slaves and was maintained as an attempt to keep the white race "pure". One of the results of the one-drop rule was the uniting of the African-American community.—was throughout
his campaign criticized as being either "too black" or "not black enough". The concept of blackness in the United States has been described as the degree to which one associates themselves with mainstream
African-American culture, politics, and values. To a certain extent, this concept is not so much about race but more about political orientation, and possibly, from the perspective of a significant number of black youth, academic achievement. Due to the often political because, as she put it, he displayed "almost every trope of blackness". Clinton welcomed the label. The question of blackness also arose in
Barack Obama's
2008 presidential campaign. Commentators questioned whether Obama, who was elected the first president with black ancestry, was "black enough", contending that his background is not typical because his mother was a
white American and his father was a black student visitor from Kenya.
Mexico The 2015 preliminary survey to the 2020 census allowed Afro-Mexicans to self-identify for the first time in Mexico and recorded a total of 1.4 million (1.2% of the total Mexican population). The majority of Afro-Mexicans live in the
Costa Chica of Guerrero region. == Caribbean ==