Black people

A Kenyan man

This article is about the different definitions of the term "black people". For other terms related to black people, see Black people (terminology).

Black people or Blacks can be a political, racial, ethnic, societal or cultural classification. No people are really black in colour. A variety socio-political and biological factors are used to create categories called "black people".

There is no universally agreed-upon definition for who is "black". For example, some assert that only people of recent African descent are "black" while others argue that "black" may refer to individuals with dark skin colour regardless of ethnic origin.

Historical background

The label Black received something like its present meaning during The Enlightenment when anthropologists of that era defined five human races: Yellows (East Asians), Reds (Native Americans), Whites (Europeans), Browns (Australoids, Middle Easterners, Indians, Hispanics, Southeast Asians), and Blacks (Africans).

The role of the Bible in defining black people

Further information: [[:Hamitic myth]]

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 anti-black interpretations came from post-biblical writers of antiquity like Philo and Origen who equated blackness with darkness of the soul.

Age of Enlightenment: science attempts to define race

Further information: [[:Race (historical definitions)]]

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. Some anthropologists 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). By the 1970s the term black replaced Negro in the United States

Current definitions

Because of the ancient, international, and often controversial history of labeling some human beings by the color black, defining who is black is not as easy it seems. Here are some recent attempts:

Socio-political definitions

• In Sub-Saharan Africa, terms specifically describing black people are not as commonly used as in the western world.

• The U.S. census 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. See Race (United States Census), for further information.

• 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"

• 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 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.

• "In this country [the United States], if you are not quite white, then you are black," said Jose Neinstein, a native white Brazilian and executive director of the Brazilian-American Cultural Institute in Washington. But in Brazil, he added, "If you are not quite black, then you are white."

• According to America's one drop rule, a black is any person with any known African ancestry.

• 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."

Lexical definitions

• Oxford English Dictionary, defines black as: relating to a human group having dark-coloured skin, especially of African or Australian Aboriginal ancestry.

• Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines the term ‘black’ with regard to race as follows: "a person belonging to a dark-skinned race or one stemming in part from such a race; esp. Negro.

• YourDictionary.com defines "black" with regard to race as: "Of or belonging to a racial group having brown to black skin, especially one of African origin: the Black population of South Africa.

• Dictionary.com and thefreedictionary.com defines "Black person" as: "a person with dark skin who comes from Africa (or whose ancestors came from Africa) [syn: Black, Black person, blackamoor, Negro, Negroid]"

• Dictionary.com defines "Black" as: pertaining or belonging to any of the various populations characterized by dark skin pigmentation, specifically the dark-skinned peoples of Africa, Oceania, and Australia.

• The OED online defines "Black" as: Having an extremely dark skin; strictly applied to negroes and negritos, and other dark-skinned races; often, loosely, to non-European races, little darker than many Europeans. and figuratively (as opposed to literally) as: Of or pertaining to the negro race.

• Merriam-Webster online defines Black as a : having dark skin, hair, and eyes : SWARTHY <the black Irish> b (1) often capitalized : of or relating to any of various population groups having dark pigmentation of the skin <black Americans> (2) : of or relating to the African-American people or their culture <black literature> <a black college> <black pride> <black studies>.

Biological definitions

Further information: [[:genetic views on race]]

There is no universally accepted biological definition of race. Some biologists claim that race is a biologically quantifiable phenomenon, while others argue that race is biologically meaningless. Nevertheless attempts have been made to define black people genetically. Modern DNA studies have cast doubt on old biological racial categories and classifications of peoples as "black" or otherwise.

Other viewpoints

• Cultural writer and filmmaker Owen 'Alik Shahadah adds "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."

Criticism

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

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 (hence, "black people," "white people," etc.). Some scholars feel that such terms denote a special significance, especially the term "black," and thus elect to capitalize. (eg. footnote 9.) Undoubtedly there are strong arguments on each side of the issue.

See also

• African American
• Colored
• Negro
• Negroid
• Human genetic history
• Human genetic variation
• List of topics related to Black and African people