African Diaspora
Afro-American Culture
In the colonies the economic demand for slaves and the demographics of the slave population had an enormous effect on the developement of Afro-American culture. Never did their exist one Afro-American culture, for each area had a different social, economic, and political relience on slavery, which characterized a unique slave culture. For example, areas that depended on plantation farming such as the deep South and the Chesepeake had a huge number of slaves, while in comparison the North had relitively few slaves. As a result, the southern colonies more frequently imported new African slaves which constantly re-established African traditions. Each area in the colonies had the developement of a specific Afro-American culture.
Though Afro-American culture was specific to each area, there were several general cultural themes that ran throughout the Afro-American population in the colonies, one was religion. Christianinty is an execellent example of how Africans merged their own beliefs with the existing religion, and produced a theology of their own. Christianity spread rapidly throughout the slave communities during the Great Awakening, a surgence of evangelical Christianiy which swept the colonies. This movement illuminated the mystical and magical elements of Christianinty, a side which the Africans could understand and identify with. It is ironic, for white slaveholders originally used Christianinty as a tool to perpetuate obedience and docility in slaves; yet, Africans recognized the hypocrsy in the white's version of Christianity, realizing they were equal in God's eyes. Africans took the tool ment to manipulate them and used Christianinty to give them hope for the future and to strenghten their bonds between one another. While slaves were Christianized and assimilated to white culture they kept elements of their native culture alive.
African Americans blended old style with new when cooking, smithing, woodcarving, storytelling, and gospel singing traditions. Africans added their own spices and cooking style to some pre-existing European dishes. Slaveowners were also influenced by African cooking styles which is an example of the blending of the cultures. Many African traditions were kept alive by placing familiar, symbols (such as the snake) in smithed gates and window frames. The wood that the carver chose played an important role in native culture preservation. This meticulous tradition lead the way for woodcarvers to make canes, statues, and sculptures such as chains, to show the bondage they endured. The carvings were very detailed and had relevance to the family and friends of the woodcarver. Songs that began in the fields of the plantations to pass the work day evolved into a new type of music, gospel. Gospel music combined the themes of salvation and freedom of Christianity with a native style of singing and dancing. These examples show the integration of native culture with traditional european culture.
Language
In the past the Pigeon English spoken by Africans was seen as proof that Africans were not intelligent enough to learn the English language. Through recent studies, we have learned that in the English spoken by African Americans, ties to African Languages can be traced. The Creole languages like Gullah and Pigeon English, still spoken in parts of the U.S. today, reflect pieces of the African culture that survived slavery, not an inability to learn English.The English spoken by the slaves was greatly influenced by their native languages. Gullah was influenced by the languages of the Fante, Ga, Kikongo, Kimbundu, Mandinka, Twi, Ewe, Ibo and Yorba. As time went on, the Creole languages (influenced and) were also influenced by the languages of settlers, such as, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, as well as Native Americans such as theCreek, Cherokee and many others. By mixing parts of the languages spoken around them, African-Americans created a way to express themselves and communicate with others in the "New World."
For more specific regional information on the diaspora, refer to:
William D. Pierson. Black Yankees(Boston, 1988)Charles Joyner. Down by the Riverside(Chiacgo, 1984)
Ira Berlin, "Time, Space, and the Evolution of Afro-American Society on the British Mainland North America"American Historical Review 85, 1(1980)
Joseph E. Holloway, ed. Africanisms in American Culture(Indiana, 1990)
For further information on the diaspora in the Carribean, Brazil, and Latin America refer to:
Michael L. Conniff and Thomas J. Davis, Africans in the Americas(New York, 1994)For further information on religion refer to:
Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion(New York, 1978)For further information on cultural aspects refer to:
Black People and their Culture, Selected Writings from the African Diaspora,(Washington D.C., 1976)To learn more about the African Diaspora, here are some cool links:
The roots of Afro-American music can be explored in Native African Music.Look at Documents of the History of African Descents throughout the World or the Library of Congress
links to brush up on African history.
By _____________________________________
Below I've posted the first page of the website "The Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora"
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Sample Entries
Compensation Scheme
 History[edit]Dispersal through slavery
See also: Atlantic Slave Trade and Arab Slave Trade
Much of the African diaspora was dispersed throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas during the Atlantic and Arab Slave Trades. Beginning in the 9th century, Arabs took African slaves from the central and eastern portions of the continent (where they were known as the Zanj) and sold them into markets in the Middle East and eastern Asia. Beginning in the 15th century, Europeans captured or bought African slaves from West Africa and brought them to Europe and later to the Americas. Both the Arab and Atlantic slave trades ended in the 19th century.[3] The dispersal throughslave trading represents one of the largest forced migrations in human history. The economic effect on the African continent was devastating. Some communities created by descendants of African slaves in Europe and Asia have survived to the modern day, but in other cases, blacks intermarried with non-blacks and their descendants blended into the local population.
In the Americas, the confluence of multiple ethnic groups from around the world created multi-ethnic societies. In Central andSouth America, most people are descended from European, American Indian, and African ancestry. In Brazil, where in 1888 nearly half the population was descended from African slaves, the variation of physical characteristics extends across a broad range. In the United States, there was historically a greater colonial population in relation to African slaves, especially in the northern tier. Racist Jim Crow and anti-miscegenation laws after the Civil War, plus waves of vastly increased immigration from Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, maintained some distinction between racial groups. In the 20th century, to institutionalizeracial segregation, most southern states adopted the "one drop rule", which defined anyone with any discernible African ancestry as African.[4]
[edit]Dispersal through voluntary migration
From the very onset of Spanish activity in the Americas, black Africans were present both as voluntary expeditionaries and as involuntary laborers.[2][5] Juan Garrido was one such black conquistador. He crossed the Atlantic as a freedman in the 1510s and participated in the siege of Tenochtitlan.[6]
[edit]Definitions
The African Union 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."
Between 1500 and 1900, approximately four million enslaved Africans were transported to island plantations in the Indian Ocean, about eight million were shipped to Mediterranean-area countries, and about eleven million survived the Middle Passage to theNew World.[7] 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.
African diasporan populations outside of Sub-equatorial Africa include:
[edit]Estimated population and distribution
(*)Note that population statistics from different sources and countries use highly divergent methods of rating the "race", ethnicity, or national or genetic origin of individuals, from observing for color and racial characteristics, to asking the person to choose from a set of pre-defined choices, sometimes with an Other category, and sometimes with an open-ended option, and sometimes not, which different national populations tend to choose in divergent ways. Color and visual characteristics were considered an invalid way to determine the genetic "racial" branch in anthropology (the field of science that original conceived of "race", as a genetic branch of people who could have a relative success together compared with other branches, now considered invalid) as of 1910, thus not fully reflecting the percentage of the population who actually are of African heritage.
[edit]Largest 15 African diaspora populations
[edit]Autosomal genetic studies and the African contribution to Brazil
African ancestry has contributed to the formation of Brazil, along with European and Native American ancestries.
A 2011 autosomal DNA study, with nearly 1000 samples from all over the country ("whites", "pardos" and "blacks"), found out a major European contribution, followed by a high African contribution and an important Native American component.[36] "In all regions studied, the European ancestry was predominant, with proportions ranging from 60.6% in the Northeast to 77.7% in the South".[36] The 2011 autosomal study samples came from blood donors (the lowest classes constitute the great majority of blood donors in Brazil [37]), and also public health institutions personnel and health students. The study showed that Brazilians from different regions are more homogenous than previously thought by some based on the census alone. "Brazilian homogeneity is, therefore, a lot greater between Brazilian regions than within Brazilians region".[38]
According to an autosomal DNA study from 2010, "a new portrayal of each ethnicity contribution to the DNA of Brazilians, obtained with samples from the five regions of the country, has indicated that, on average, European ancestors are responsible for nearly 80% of the genetic heritage of the population. The variation between the regions is small, with the possible exception of the South, where the European contribution reaches nearly 90%. The results, published by the scientific magazine American Journal of Human Biology by a team of the Catholic University of Brasília, show that, in Brazil, physical indicators such as skin colour, colour of the eyes and colour of the hair have little to do with the genetic ancestry of each person, which has been shown in previous studies (regardless of census classification).[39] "Ancestry informative SNPs can be useful to estimate individual and population biogeographical ancestry. Brazilian population is characterized by a genetic background of three parental populations (European, African, and Brazilian Native Amerindians) with a wide degree and diverse patterns of admixture. In this work we analyzed the information content of 28 ancestry-informative SNPs into multiplexed panels using three parental population sources (African, Amerindian, and European) to infer the genetic admixture in an urban sample of the five Brazilian geopolitical regions. The SNPs assigned apart the parental populations from each other and thus can be applied for ancestry estimation in a three hybrid admixed population. Data was used to infer genetic ancestry in Brazilians with an admixture model. Pairwise estimates of F(st) among the five Brazilian geopolitical regions suggested little genetic differentiation only between the South and the remaining regions. Estimates of ancestry results are consistent with the heterogeneous genetic profile of Brazilian population, with a major contribution of European ancestry (0.771) followed by African (0.143) and Amerindian contributions (0.085). The described multiplexed SNP panels can be useful tool for bioanthropological studies but it can be mainly valuable to control for spurious results in genetic association studies in admixed populations".[40] It is important to note that "the samples came from free of charge paternity test takers, thus as the researchers made it explicit: "the paternity tests were free of charge, the population samples involved people of variable socioeconomic strata, although likely to be leaning slightly towards the "pardo" group".[41]
An autosomal DNA study from 2009 found a similar profile "all the Brazilian samples (regions) lie more closely to the European group than to the African populations or to the Mestizos from Mexico".[42]
According to another autosomal DNA study from 2008, by the University of Brasília (UnB), European ancestry dominates in the whole of Brazil (in all regions), accounting for 65,90% of heritage of the population, followed by the African contribution (24,80%) and the Native American (9,3%).[44]
[edit]The Americas
Main article: Afro-American peoples of the Americas
[edit]North America
Main article: African American
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.[47] Out of the 12 million people from Africa who were shipped to the Americas during the transatlantic slave trade,[48]645,000 were shipped to the British colonies on the North American mainland and the United States; another 1,840,000 arrived at other British colonies, chiefly the West Indies.[49] In 2000, African Americans comprised 12.1 percent of the total population in the United States, constituting the largest racial minority group. The African American population is concentrated in the southern states and urban areas.[50]
In the construction 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.[47]
In the 1860s, people from sub-Saharan Africa, mainly from West Africa and the Cape Verde Islands, started to arrive in a voluntary immigration wave to seek employment as whalers in Massachusetts. This migration continued until restrictive laws were enacted in 1921 that in effect closed the door on non-Europeans, but by that time, men of African ancestry were already a majority in New England’s whaling industry, with African Americans working as sailors, blacksmiths, shipbuilders, officers, and owners, eventually bringing their trade to California.[51]
1.7 million people in the United States are descended from voluntary immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa. 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.[52] 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.[53] The largest African immigrant communities in the United States are in New York, followed by California, Texas, and Maryland.[52] The states with the highest percentages of Africans in their total populations are Mississippi (36.3%), and Louisiana (32.5%). While not a state, the District of Columbia is 60.0% black. Refugees represent a minority.
U.S. Bureau of the Census categorizes the population by race based on self-identification.[54] 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.
[edit]Canada
Main article: Black Canadians
Much of the earliest black presence in Canada came from the United States; comprising African Americans who came asLoyalists, or escaped to locations in Nova Scotia and Southwestern Ontario via the Underground Railroad. Slavery had begun to be outlawed in British North America as early as 1793. Later black immigration to Canada came primarily from the Caribbean, in such numbers that fully 70 per cent of all blacks now in Canada are of Caribbean origin.
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.
[edit]Latin America
At an intermediate level, in Latin 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 Argentina or Chile), few if any are considered "black" today.[55] 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.[56]
In Peru, the African population was very mixed with the other white, Indian and mestizo population; so someone is identified asnegro if he or she has visible African features. Some mestizos and whites have a degree of African admixture.
In Colombia, the African slaves were first brought to work in the gold mines of the Department of Antioquia. After this was not a profitable business any more, these slaves slowly moved to the Pacific Ocean coast, where they have remained unmixed with the white or Indian population until today. That way, 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-westerd departments of Cauca and Valle del Cauca. In these mestizo areas the African culture has had a great influence, which you can easily see in the music and food mainly.
[edit]Europe
Main articles: Black people in Europe and Emigration from Africa
In Europe Union countries, Black African immigrants are neither specifically identified nor described in national statistics by the colour of their skin. At best, both first and subsequent generations are described in national statistics as "foreign born citizens". Of 42 countries surveyed by a European Commission against Racism and Intolerance study in 2007, it was found that 29 collected official statistics on country of birth, 37 on citizenship, 24 on religion, 26 on language, 6 on country of birth of parents, and 22 on nationality or ethnicity. The major result of this routine is that even though people of Black African descent may outnumber other ethnic minorities in some European countries, there is no statistical evidence to support the notion that they may qualify for special measures as minorities where they live.[57] It also means that EU countries do not differentiate their inhabitants by skin color.
[edit]United Kingdom
Main article: Black British
2 million (not including British Mixed) split evenly between Afro-Caribbeans and Africans.
[edit]France
See also: Black people in France
Estimates of 2 to 3 million of African descent, although 1/4 of the Afro-French or French African population live in overseas territories.[58]
[edit]Italy
See also: African immigrants to Italy
There are an estimated 1 million to 1.5 million immigrants from Africa in Italy, with only a minority of Sub-Saharan Africans. Most of the latter come from West African countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, and Ivory Coast.[59]
[edit]Netherlands
See also: Afro-Dutch
There are an estimated 500,000 black people in the Dutch Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles. They mainly live in the islands of Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao and Saint Martin, the latter of which is also partly French-controlled. Many Afro-Dutch people reside in the Netherlands.
[edit]Germany
See also: Afro-Germans
As of 2005, there were approx. 500,000 Afro-Germans (not including those of mixed ethnicity). This number is difficult to estimate because the German census does not use race as a category, following the massacres committed during World War II under the "German racial ideology."
[edit]Russia
Main article: Afro-Russians
The first blacks in Russia were the result of the slave trade of the Ottoman Empire[60] and their descendants still live on the coasts of the Black Sea. Czar Peter the Great was recommended by his friend Lefort to bring in Africans to Russia for hard labor.Alexander Pushkin's great grandfather was the African princeling Abram Petrovich Gannibal, who became Peter's protege, was educated as a military engineer in France, and eventually became general-en-chef, responsible for the building of sea forts andcanals in Russia.[61][62]
During the 1930s fifteen Black American families moved to the Soviet Union as agricultural experts.[63] As African states became independent in the 1960s, the Soviet Union offered them the chance to study in Russia; over 40 years, 400,000 African students came, and many settled there.[60][64]
Note that there are also non-African people within the former Soviet Union who are colloquially referred to as "the blacks" (chernye). Gypsies, Georgians, and Chechens fall into this category.[65]
[edit]Abkhazia
Main article: Afro-Abkhazians
Some blacks of unknown origin once inhabited the southern Abkhazian, today are assimilated to Abkhaz.
[edit]Turkey
Main article: Afro-Turks
Beginning several centuries ago, a number of sub-Saharan Africans, usually via Zanzibar and from places like Kenya, Sudan,Ghana, Nigeria were brought by Turkish slave traders during the Ottoman Empire to plantations around Dalaman, Menderes andGediz valleys, Manavgat, and Çukurova.
[edit]Indian and Pacific Oceans
There are a number of communities in South Asia that are descended from African slaves, traders or soldiers.[66] These communities are the Siddi, Sheedi, Makrani and Sri Lanka Kaffirs. In some cases, they became very prominent, such as Jamal-ud-Din Yaqut, Hoshu Sheedi or the Murud-Janjira fort. The Mauritian creole people are the descendents of African slaves similar to those in the Americas.
Some Pan-Africanists also consider other peoples as diasporic African peoples. These groups include, among others, Negritos, such as in the case of the peoples of the Malay Peninsula (Orang Asli);[67] New Guinea (Papuans);[68] Andamanese; certain peoples of the Indian subcontinent,[69][70] and the aboriginal peoples of Melanesia and Micronesia.[71][72] Most of these claims are rejected by mainstream ethnologists as pseudoscience and pseudoanthropology as part of ideologically motivated Afrocentristirredentism, touted primarily among some extremist elements in the United States who do not reflect on the mainstream African-American community.[73] Mainstream anthropologists determine that the Andamanese and others are part of a network of Proto-Australoid and Paleo Mediterranean ethnic groups present in South Asia that trace their genetic ancestry to a migratory sequence that culminated in the Australian aboriginals rather than from African peoples directly (though indirectly, they did originate from prehistoric groups out of Africa as did all human beings on this planet).[74][75][76][77]
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||
| ||
| ||
No comments:
Post a Comment