Black people
Black people is a term used in certain countries, often in socially based systems of racial classification or of ethnicity, to describe persons who are perceived to be dark-skinned compared to other given populations. As such, the meaning of the expression varies widely both between and within societies, and depends significantly on context. For many other individuals, communities and countries, "black" is also perceived as a derogatory, outdated, reductive or otherwise unrepresentative label, and as a result is neither used nor defined.

Different societies apply differing criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and these social constructs have also changed over time. In a number of countries, societal variables affect classification as much as skin color, and the social criteria for "blackness" vary. For example, in North America the term black people is not necessarily an indicator of skin color or ethnic origin, but is instead a socially based racial classification related to being African American, with a family history typically associated with institutionalized slavery. In the United Kingdom, "black" was historically equivalent with "person of color", a general term for non-European peoples. In South Africa and Latin America, mixed-race people are generally not classified as "black". In other regions such as Australasia, settlers applied the term "black" or it was used by local populations with different histories and ancestral backgrounds.

 Africa 

 Northern Africa 
thumb|upright|Soldiers of the Free Arabian Legion in Greece, September 1943
The Romans interacted with and later conquered parts of Mauretania, an early state that covered modern Morocco, western Algeria, and the Spanish cities Ceuta and Melilla during the classical period. The people of the region were noted in Classical literature as Mauri, which was subsequently rendered as Moors in English.

Numerous communities of dark-skinned peoples are present in North Africa, some dating from prehistoric communities. Others are descendants of the historical Trans-Saharan trade in peoples and/or, and after the Arab invasions of North Africa in the 7th century, descendants of slaves from the Arab Slave Trade in North Africa.Frigi et al. 2010, Ancient Local Evolution of African mtDNA Haplogroups in Tunisian Berber Populations, Human Biology, Volume 82, Number 4, August 2010.Harich et .al 2010, The trans-Saharan slave trade – clues from interpolation analyses and high-resolution characterization of mitochondrial DNA lineages.

In the 18th century, the Moroccan Sultan Moulay Ismail "the Bloodthirsty" (1672–1727) raised a corps of 150,000 black slaves, called his Black Guard, who coerced the country into submission.Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East, Oxford University Press, 1994."Abīd al-Bukhārī (Moroccan military organization)". Encyclopædia Britannica.

According to Dr. Carlos Moore, resident scholar at Brazil's University of the State of Bahia, in the 21st century Afro-multiracials in the Arab world, including Arabs in North Africa, self-identify in ways that resemble multi-racials in Latin America. He claims that black-looking Arabs, much like black-looking Latin Americans, consider themselves white because they have some distant white ancestry.

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat had a mother who was a dark-skinned Nubian Sudanese woman and a father who was a lighter-skinned Egyptian. In response to an advertisement for an acting position, as a young man he said, "I am not white but I am not exactly black either. My blackness is tending to reddish".Joseph Finklestone, Anwar Sadat: Visionary Who Dared, pp. 5–7, 31. .
thumb|left|upright|Algerian footballer Yacine Brahimi

Due to the patriarchal nature of Arab society, Arab men, including during the slave trade in North Africa, enslaved more black women than men. They used more black female slaves in domestic service and agriculture than males. The men interpreted the Qur'an to permit sexual relations between a male master and his female slave outside of marriage (see Ma malakat aymanukum and sex),See Tahfeem ul Qur'an by Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, Vol. 2, pp. 112–113, footnote 44. See also commentary on verses : Vol. 3, notes 7–1, p. 241; 2000, Islamic Publications.Tafsir ibn Kathir 4:24. leading to many mixed-race children. When an enslaved woman became pregnant with her Arab master's child, she was considered as umm walad or "mother of a child", a status that granted her privileged rights. The child was given rights of inheritance to the father's property, so mixed-race children could share in any wealth of the father. Because the society was patrilineal, the children took their fathers' social status at birth and were born free.

Some succeeded their fathers as rulers, such as Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur, who ruled Morocco from 1578 to 1608. He was not technically considered as a mixed-race child of a slave; his mother was Fulani and a concubine of his father. Such tolerance for black persons, even when technically "free", was not so common in Morocco. The long association of sub-Saharan peoples as slaves is shown in the term abd (,) (meaning "slave"); it is still frequently used in the Arabic-speaking world as a term for black people.
thumb|upright|Moroccan Gnawa musician Hassan Hakmoun
In early 1991, non-Arabs of the Zaghawa tribe of Sudan attested that they were victims of an intensifying Arab apartheid campaign, segregating Arabs and non-Arabs (specifically, people of Nilotic descent). Sudanese Arabs, who controlled the government, were widely referred to as practicing apartheid against Sudan's non-Arab citizens. The government was accused of "deftly manipulat(ing) Arab solidarity" to carry out policies of apartheid and ethnic cleansing.Vukoni Lupa Lasaga, "The slow, violent death of apartheid in Sudan," 19 September 2006, Norwegian Council for Africa.

American University economist George Ayittey accused the Arab government of Sudan of practicing acts of racism against black citizens.George Ayittey, "Africa and China," The Economist, 19 February 2010. According to Ayittey, "In Sudan... the Arabs monopolized power and excluded blacks – Arab apartheid."George B.N. Ayittey; "How the Multilateral Institutions Compounded Africa's Economic Crisis", Law and Policy in International Business, Vol. 30, 1999. Many African commentators joined Ayittey in accusing Sudan of practising Arab apartheid.

Alan Dershowitz described Sudan as an example of a government that "actually deserve(s)" the appellation "apartheid." Former Canadian Minister of Justice Irwin Cotler echoed the accusation.

 Sahara 
thumb|upright|An Ibenheren (Bella) woman
In the Sahara, the native Tuareg Berber populations kept "Negro" slaves. Most of these captives were of Nilotic extraction, and were either purchased by the Tuareg nobles from slave markets in the Western Sudan or taken during raids. Their origin is denoted via the Ahaggar Berber word Ibenheren (sing. Ébenher), which alludes to slaves that only speak a Nilo-Saharan language. These slaves were also sometimes known by the borrowed Songhay term Bella.

Similarly, the Sahrawi autochthones of the Western Sahara observed a class system consisting of high castes and low castes. Outside of these traditional tribal boundaries were "Negro" slaves, who were drawn from the surrounding areas.

 Horn of Africa 
In parts of the Horn of Africa, the local Afroasiatic (Hamitic-Semitic) speaking populations have long adhered to a construct similar to that of the Sahara, Nile and Maghreb. In Ethiopia and Somalia, the slave classes mainly consisted of individuals of Nilotic and Bantu origin who were collectively known as Shanqella and Adone (both denoting "Negro"). These captives and others of analogous morphology were distinguished as tsalim barya in contrast with the Afroasiatic-speaking nobles or saba qayh ("red men"). The earliest representation of this tradition dates from a seventh or eighth century BC inscription belonging to the Kingdom of Damat.

 Southern Africa 
thumb|upright|Nelson Mandela led the ANC in the battle against South African Apartheid.
In South Africa, the period of colonization resulted in many unions and marriages between European men and Bantu and Khoisan women from various tribes, resulting in mixed-race children. As the European settlers acquired control of territory, they generally pushed the mixed-race and Bantu and Khoisan populations into second-class status. During the first half of the 20th century, the Afrikaaner-dominated government classified the population according to four main racial groups: Black, White, Asian (mostly Indian), and Coloured. The Coloured group included people of mixed Bantu, Khoisan, and European descent (with some Malay ancestry, especially in the Western Cape). The Coloured definition occupied an intermediary political position between the Black and White definitions in South Africa. It imposed a system of legal racial segregation, a complex of laws known as apartheid.

The apartheid bureaucracy devised complex (and often arbitrary) criteria in the Population Registration Act of 1945 to determine who belonged in which group. Minor officials administered tests to enforce the classifications. When it was unclear from a person's physical appearance whether the individual should be considered Coloured or Black, the "pencil test" was used. A pencil was inserted into a person's hair to determine if the hair was kinky enough to hold the pencil, rather than having it pass through, as it would with smoother hair. If so, the person was classified as Black. Such classifications sometimes divided families.

Sandra Laing is a South African woman who was classified as Coloured by authorities during the apartheid era, due to her skin colour and hair texture, although her parents could prove at least three generations of European ancestors. At age 10, she was expelled from her all-white school. The officials' decisions based on her anomalous appearance disrupted her family and adult life. She was the subject of the 2008 biographical dramatic film Skin, which won numerous awards.

During the apartheid era, those classed as "Coloured" were oppressed and discriminated against. But, they had limited rights and overall had slightly better socioeconomic conditions than those classed as "Black". The government required that Blacks and Coloureds live in areas separate from Whites, creating large townships located away from the cities as areas for Blacks.

In the post-apartheid era, the Constitution of South Africa has declared the country to be a "Non-racial democracy". In an effort to redress past injustices, the ANC government has introduced laws in support of  affirmative action policies for Blacks; under these they define "Black" people to include "Africans", "Coloureds" and "Asians". Some affirmative action policies favor "Africans" over "Coloureds" in terms of qualifying for certain benefits. Some South Africans categorized as "African Black" say that "Coloureds" did not suffer as much as they did during apartheid. "Coloured" South Africans are known to discuss their dilemma by saying, "we were not white enough under apartheid, and we are not black enough under the ANC (African National Congress)".

In 2008, the High Court in South Africa ruled that Chinese South Africans who were residents during the apartheid era (and their descendants) are to be reclassified as "Black people," solely for the purposes of accessing affirmative action benefits, because they were also "disadvantaged" by racial discrimination. Chinese people who arrived in the country after the end of apartheid do not qualify for such benefits."We agree that you are black, South African court tells Chinese", The Times.

Other than by appearance, "Coloureds" can usually be distinguished from "Blacks" by language. Most speak Afrikaans or English as a first language, as opposed to Bantu languages such as Zulu or Xhosa. They also tend to have more European-sounding names than Bantu names.

 Asia 

 Western Asia 

 Arabian Peninsula 
thumb|upright|Saudi Arabian footballer Majed Abdullah, nicknamed the "Saudi Arabian Pelé"
Historians estimate that between the advent of Islam in 650CE and the abolition of slavery in the Arabian Peninsula in the mid-20th century,A. Klein (2002), Historical Dictionary of Slavery and Abolition, Page xxii,  Saudi Arabia and Yemen abolished slavery in 1962, Oman in 1970. 10 to 18 million Black Africans (known as the Zanj) were enslaved by Arab slave traders and transported to the Arabian Peninsula and neighboring countries. This number far exceeded the number of slaves who were taken to the Americas."Focus on the slave trade", BBC. Several factors affected the visibility of descendants of this diaspora in 21st-century Arab societies: The traders shipped more female slaves than males, as there was a demand for them to serve as concubines in harems in the Arabian Peninsula and neighboring countries. Male slaves were castrated in order to serve as harem guards. The death toll of Black African slaves from forced labor was high. The mixed-race children of female slaves and Arab owners were assimilated into the Arab owners' families under the patrilineal kinship system. As a result, few distinctive Afro-Arab communities have survived in the Arabian Peninsula and neighboring countries.

Genetic studies have found significant African female-mediated gene flow in Arab communities in the Arabian Peninsula and neighboring countries, with an average of 38% of maternal lineages in Yemen are of direct African descent,:"Substantial proportions of the Yemeni mtDNA gene pool can be assigned to sub-Saharan haplogroups (L-type) on one hand, and West Eurasian haplogroups (derivatives of M and N) on the other hand (Kivisild et al., 2004; Černý et al., 2008). The overall composite nature of Yemeni gene pool also supports its probable role as a recipient of gene flows from different parts of Africa and Eurasia. However, the major haplogroups exhibit different distributions among regional samples (Fig. 2) with lineages specific to sub-Saharan Africa being significantly more frequent in Hadramawt (60.0%) than in the western Yemeni populations, where the frequency gradually decreases from Hajja in the north (34.3%) through Tihama (28.4%) to Ta’izz in the south (16.3%); the opposite is true for West Eurasian lineages (Černý et al., 2008)." 16% in Oman-Qatar,:"Sub-Saharan Africa L lineages in Saudi Arabia account for 10% of the total. χ2 analyses showed that there is not significant regional differentiation in this Country. However, there is significant heterogeneity (p < 0.001) when all the Arabian Peninsula countries are compared. This is mainly due to the comparatively high frequency of sub-Saharan lineages in Yemen (38%) compared to Oman-Qatar (16%) and to Saudi Arabia-UAE (10%)." and 10% in Saudi Arabia-United Arab Emirates.

Distinctive and self-identified black communities have been reported in countries such as Iraq, with a reported 1.2 million black people, and they attest to a history of discrimination. These descendants of the Zanj have sought minority status from the government, which would reserve some seats in Parliament for representatives of their population.Timothy Williams, "In Iraq's African Enclave, Color is Plainly Seen", The New York Times, 2 December 2009: "But on the packed dirt streets of Zubayr, Iraq’s scaled-down version of Harlem, African-Iraqis talk of discrimination so steeped in Iraqi culture that they are commonly referred to as "abd" — slave in Arabic — prohibited from interracial marriage and denied even menial jobs...Historians say that most African-Iraqis arrived as slaves from East Africa as part of the Arab slave trade starting about 1,400 years ago. They worked in southern Iraq’s salt marshes and sugarcane fields. Though slavery — which in Iraq included Arabs as well as Africans — was banned in the 1920s, it continued until the 1950s, African-Iraqis say. Recently, they have begun to campaign for recognition as a minority population, which would grant them the same benefits as Christians, including reserved seats in Parliament..."Black people here are living in fear," said Jalal Dhiyab Thijeel, an advocate for the country’s estimated 1.2 million African-Iraqis. "We want to end that."" According to Alamin M. Mazrui et al., generally in the Arabian Peninsula and neighboring countries, most of those of visible African descent are still classified and identify as Arab, not black.Alamin M. Mazrui et al., Debating the African Condition (2004), , p. 324: "But many Arabs were themselves Black. To the present day there are Arab princes in Saudi Arabia who, in the Western world, would be regarded as 'Black'. One of the main reasons why the African Diaspora in the Arab world is so small is that people with African blood are much more readily accepted as Arabs than they would be accepted as 'Whites' in the Americas."

 Israel 

thumb|upright|An African Hebrew Israelite of Jerusalem child in Dimona
About 150,000 East African and black people live in Israel, amounting to just over 2% of the nation's population. The vast majority of these, some 120,000, are Beta Israel,"The Ethiopian Population In Israel", Reuters. 16 July 2009. most of whom are recent immigrants who came during the 1980s and 1990s from Ethiopia."Why Jews see racism in Israel", Christian Science Monitor, 1 September 2009. In addition, Israel is home to over 5,000 members of the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem movement that are descendants of African Americans who emigrated to Israel in the 20th century, and who reside mainly in a distinct neighborhood in the Negev town of Dimona. Unknown numbers of black converts to Judaism reside in Israel, most of them converts from the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States.

Additionally, there are around 60,000 non-Jewish African immigrants in Israel, some of whom have sought asylum. Most of the migrants are from communities in Sudan and Eritrea, particularly the Niger-Congo-speaking Nuba groups of the southern Nuba Mountains; some are illegal immigrants.Harriet Sherwood, "Israel PM: Illegal African immigrants threaten identity of Jewish state", The Guardian. 20 May 2012.

 Turkey 

thumb|upright|A Bashi-bazouk of the Ottoman Empire, painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1869
Beginning several centuries ago, during the period of the Ottoman Empire, tens of thousands of Zanj captives were brought by slave traders to plantations and agricultural areas situated between Antalya and Istanbul in present-day Turkey. Some of their descendants remained in situ, and many migrated to larger cities and towns. Other black slaves were transported to Crete, from where they or their descendants later reached the İzmir area through the population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923, or indirectly from Ayvalık in pursuit of work."Turks with African ancestors want their existence to be felt", Today's Zaman, 11 May 2008. Retrieved 28 August 2008.

 Southern Asia 

The Siddi are an ethnic group inhabiting India and Pakistan whose members are descended from Bantu peoples from Southeast Africa that were brought to the Indian subcontinent as slaves by Arab and Portuguese merchants. Although it is commonly believed locally that "Siddi" derives from a word meaning "black", the term is actually derived from "Sayyid", the title borne by the captains of the Arab vessels that first brought Siddi settlers to the area. In the Makran strip of the Sindh and Balochistan provinces in southwestern Pakistan, these Bantu descendants are known as the Makrani.John B. Edlefsen, Khalida Shah, Mohsin Farooq, "Makranis, the Negroes of West Pakistan", Phylon (1960–), Vol. 21, No. 2 (2nd Qtr 1960), pp. 124–130. Published by: Clark Atlanta University. There was a brief "Black Power" movement in Sindh in the 1960s and many Siddi are proud of and celebrate their African ancestry.

 Southeastern Asia 
thumb|upright|Ati woman, Philippinesthe Negritos are an indigenous people of Southeast Asia.
The Negritos are believed to be the first inhabitants of Southeast Asia. Once inhabiting Taiwan, Vietnam,Vietnam. Bộ ngoại giao 1969, p. 28. and various other parts of Asia, they are now confined primarily to Thailand, the Malay Archipelago, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Negrito means "little black people" in Spanish (negrito is the Spanish diminutive of negro, i.e., "little black person"); it is what the Spaniards called the short-statured, hunter-gatherer autochthones that they encountered in the Philippines. Despite this, Negritos are never referred to as black today, and doing so would cause offense. The term Negrito itself has come under criticism in countries like Malaysia, where it is now interchangeable with the more acceptable Semang, although this term actually refers to a specific group. The common Thai word for Negritos literally means "frizzy hair".

 Europe 

 Western Europe 

 Spain 

thumb|upright|Spanish singer Concha Buika.
The term "Moors" has been used in Europe in a broader, somewhat derogatory sense to refer to Muslims,Menocal, María Rosa (2002). Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain, Little, Brown, & Co., p. 241. . especially those of Arab or Berber descent, whether living in North Africa or Iberia. Moors were not a distinct or self-defined people.Ross Brann, "The Moors?", Andalusia, New York University. Quote: "Andalusi Arabic sources, as opposed to later Mudéjar and Morisco sources in Aljamiado and medieval Spanish texts, neither refer to individuals as Moors nor recognize any such group, community or culture." Medieval and early modern Europeans applied the name to Muslim Arabs, Berbers, Black Africans and Europeans alike.

Isidore of Seville, writing in the 7th century, claimed that the Latin word Maurus was derived from the Greek mauron, μαύρον, which is the Greek word for black. Indeed, by the time Isidore of Seville came to write his Etymologies, the word Maurus or "Moor" had become an adjective in Latin, "for the Greeks call black, mauron". "In Isidore’s day, Moors were black by definition…"Jonathan Conant, Staying Roman: Conquest and Identity in Africa and the Mediterranean, Cambridge University Press, 2012, pp. 439–700.

Afro-Spaniards are Spanish nationals of West/Central African descent. They today mainly come from Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Gambia, Mali, Nigeria and Senegal. Additionally, many Afro-Spaniards born in Spain are from the former Spanish colony Equatorial Guinea. Today, there are an estimated 683,000 Afro-Spaniards in Spain.

 United Kingdom 

thumb|upright|A painting of Mary Seacole.
According to the Office for National Statistics, at the 2001 census there were over a million black people in the United Kingdom; 1% of the total population described themselves as "Black Caribbean", 0.8% as "Black African", and 0.2% as "Black other". Britain encouraged the immigration of workers from the Caribbean after World War II; the first symbolic movement was those who came on the ship the Empire Windrush. The preferred official umbrella term is "black and minority ethnic" (BME), but sometimes the term "black" is used on its own, to express unified opposition to racism, as in the Southall Black Sisters, which started with a mainly British Asian constituency, and the National Black Police Association, which has a membership of "African, African-Caribbean and Asian origin".NBPA Website The emphasis is on the common experience and determination of the people of African, African-Caribbean and Asian origin.

 France 

thumb|upright|Young Negro with a Bow by Hyacinthe Rigaud, ca. 1697.
While census collection of ethnic background is illegal in France, it is estimated that there are about 2.5 – 5 million black people residing there.Europe's Minority Politicians in Short Supply. The Washington Post. 24 April 2005."In officially colorblind France, blacks have a dream – and now a lobby", Csmonitor.com. 12 January 2007.

 Netherlands 

Afro-Dutch are residents of the Netherlands who are of Black African or Afro-Caribbean ancestry. They tend to be from the former and present Dutch overseas territories of Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Sint Maarten and Suriname. The Netherlands also has sizable Cape Verdean and other African communities.

 Portugal 

 Eastern Europe 

thumb|upright|A "Negro" mountaineer in Abkhazia, 1870.
As African states became independent in the 1960s, the Soviet Union offered many of their citizens the chance to study in Russia. Over a period of 40 years, about 400,000 African students from various countries moved to Russia to pursue higher studies, including many Black Africans. This extended beyond the Soviet Union to many countries of the Eastern bloc.

 Balkans 
Due to the slave trade in the Ottoman Empire that had flourished in the Balkans, the coastal town of Ulcinj in Montenegro had its own black community. As a consequence of the slave trade and privateer activity, it is told how until 1878 in Ulcinj 100 black people lived. The Ottoman Army also deployed an estimated 30,000 Black African troops and cavalrymen to its expedition in Hungary during the Austro-Turkish War of 1716–18.Dieudonne Gnammankou, "African Slave Trade in Russia", in La Channe et le lien, Doudou Diene, (id.) Paris, Editions UNESCO, 1988.

 Australia 

 Indigenous Australians 
thumb|right|134px|Unknown Aboriginal woman in 1911
Indigenous Australians have been referred to as "black people" in Australia since the early days of European settlement."A Proclamation", The Hobart Town Courier, 8 November 1828. While originally related to skin colour, the term is used to today to indicate Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander ancestry in general and can refer to people of any skin pigmentation.

Being identified as either "black" or "white" in Australia during the 19th and early 20th centuries was critical in one's employment and social prospects. Various state-based Aboriginal Protection Boards were established which had virtually complete control over the lives of Indigenous Australians – where they lived, their employment, marriage, education and included the power to separate children from their parents.Aboriginal Protection Board at the State Records Office of Western Australia, accessed 20 December 2012 Aborigines were not allowed to vote and were often confined to reserves and forced into low paid or effectively slave labour. The social position of mixed-race or "half-caste" individuals varied over time. A 1913 report by Sir Baldwin Spencer states that:

After the First World War, however, it became apparent that the number of mixed-race people was growing at a faster rate than the white population, and by 1930 fear of the "half-caste menace" undermining the White Australia ideal from within was being taken as a serious concern. Dr. Cecil Cook, the Northern Territory Protector of Natives, noted that:

The official policy became one of biological and cultural assimilation: "Eliminate the full-blood and permit the white admixture to half-castes and eventually the race will become white". This led to different treatment for "black" and "half-caste" individuals, with lighter-skinned individuals targeted for removal from their families to be raised as "white" people, restricted from speaking their native language and practising traditional customs, a process now known as the Stolen Generation.

thumb|left|150px|Aboriginal activist Sam Watson addressing Invasion Day Rally 2007 in a "White Australia has a Black History" T-shirt
The second half of the 20th century to the present has seen a gradual shift towards improved human rights for Aboriginal people. In a 1967 referendum over 90% of the Australian population voted to end constitutional discrimination and to include Aborigines in the national census. During this period many Aboriginal activists began to embrace the term "black" and use their ancestry as a source of pride. Activist Bob Maza said:

In 1978 Aboriginal writer Kevin Gilbert received the National Book Council award for his book Living Black: Blacks Talk to Kevin Gilbert, a collection of Aboriginal people's stories, and in 1998 was awarded (but refused to accept) the Human Rights Award for Literature for Inside Black Australia, a poetry anthology and exhibition of Aboriginal photography. In contrast to previous definitions based solely on the degree of Aboriginal ancestry, in 1990 the Government changed the legal definition of Aboriginal to include any:

thumb|right|upright|Nigerian attendants at the 2012 National Multicultural Festival in Canberra

This nationwide acceptance and recognition of Aboriginal people led to a significant increase in the number of people self-identifying as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. The reappropriation of the term "black" with a positive and more inclusive meaning has resulted in its widespread use in mainstream Australian culture, including public media outlets, government agencies, and private companies. In 2012, a number of high-profile cases highlighted the legal and community attitude that identifying as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander is not dependent on skin colour, with a well-known boxer Anthony Mundine being widely criticised for questioning the "blackness" of another boxer and journalist Andrew Bolt being successfully sued for publishing discriminatory comments about Aboriginals with light skin.

 Other 
John Caesar, nicknamed "Black Caesar", a convict and bushranger with parents born in an unknown area in Africa, was one of the first people of recent Black African ancestry to arrive in Australia.

At the 2006 Census, 248,605 residents declared that they were born in Africa. This figure pertains to all immigrants to Australia who were born in nations in Africa regardless of race, and includes White Africans.

 North America 

 United States 

thumb|upright=1.8|The main slave routes in the Atlantic Slave Trade.
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:Lovejoy, Paul E. Transformations in Slavery. Cambridge University Press, 2000.
 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 Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola): 39.4%
 Southeastern Africa (Mozambique and Madagascar): 4.7%
thumb|left|upright|Major slave trading regions of Africa, 15th–19th centuries
The variants neger and negar, derive from the Spanish and Portuguese word  (black), and from the now-pejorative French nègre (negro). Etymologically, negro, noir, nègre, and nigger ultimately derive from nigrum, the stem of the Latin  (black) (pronounced  which, in every other grammatical case, grammatical gender, and grammatical number besides nominative masculine singular, is nigr-, the r is trilled).
thumb|upright|African American justice activist Sojourner Truth
In the Colonial America of 1619, John Rolfe used negars in describing the slaves who were captured from West Africa and then shipped to the Virginia colony. (Book review) Later American English spellings, neger and neggar, prevailed in a northern colony, New York under the Dutch, and in metropolitan Philadelphia's Moravian and Pennsylvania Dutch communities; the African Burial Ground in New York City originally was known by the Dutch name "Begraafplaats van de Neger" (Cemetery of the Negro); an early US occurrence of neger in Rhode Island, dates from 1625. Thomas Jefferson also used the term "black" in his Notes on the State of Virginia in allusion to the slave populations.
thumb|upright|Harriet Tubman, an African-American fugitive slave, abolitionist, and conductor of the Underground Railroad
By the 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 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.Nguyen, Elizabeth, "Origins of Black History Month", Spartan Daily, Campus News. San Jose State University, 24 February 2004. Accessed 12 April 2008.   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 identification by Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. of his own race as "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.Liz Mazucci, "Going Back to Our Own: Interpreting Malcolm X’s Transition From 'Black Asiatic' to 'Afro-American'", Souls 7(1), 2005, pp. 66–83.

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).Christopher H. Foreman, The African-American predicament, Brookings Institution Press, 1999, p.99.
thumb|left|upright|Civil rights activist Martin Luther King.
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 Black 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.Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century, Louisiana State University Press, 1992/1995.

The US 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 West African ancestry (in any discernible percentage), or to exhibit cultural traits associated with being "African American". As a result, in the United States the term "black people" is not an indicator of skin color or ethnic origin but is instead a socially based racial classification related to being African American, with a family history associated with institutionalized slavery. Relatively dark-skinned people can be classified as white if they fulfill other social criteria of "whiteness", and relatively light-skinned people can be classified as black if they fulfill the social criteria for "blackness" in a particular setting.

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.)
thumb|upright|Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Clarence Thomas
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 US. 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.African American Journeys to Africa, pp. 63–64.

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 he uses black it is in parallel construction with white; for example, "black men and white men".

With the successes of the 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 Toure (Stokely Carmichael) and the popular singer James Brown's song "Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud".
thumb|left|upright|Michael Jordan, an African American basketball player.
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 Sub-Saharan 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 Sub-Saharan Africa. The grouping is thus based on geography, and may contradict or misrepresent an individual's self-identification since not all immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa are "Black". The Census Bureau also notes that these classifications are socio-political constructs and should not be interpreted as scientific or anthropological.2000 US Census basics

According to US 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 which 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.

 One-drop rule 
thumb|upright|Multiracial social reformer Frederick Douglass.
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 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 US, 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 slavesClarence Page, A Credit to His Races, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, 1 May 1997. 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. Some of the most prominent abolitionists and civil-rights activists of the 19th century were multiracial, such as Frederick Douglass, Robert Purvis and James Mercer Langston. They advocated equality for all.

 Blackness 
thumb|upright|Barack Obama, the first biracial President of the United States, was throughout his campaign criticized as being either "too black" or "not black enough". See also: video

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,Chielozona Eze, Postcolonial Imaginations and Moral Representations (2011), p. 25:"For Du Bois, blackness is political, it is existential, but above all, it is moral, for in it values abound; these values spring from the fact of being an oppressed."Barbara Olson, The Final Days (2003), p. 58:"In fact, Bill Clinton had promoted an even worse variation, that authentic blackness is political..." and values. To a certain extent, this concept is not so much about race but more about political orientation, culture and behavior. Blackness can be contrasted with "acting white", where black Americans are said to behave with assumed characteristics of stereotypical white Americans with regard to fashion, dialect, taste in music, and possibly, from the perspective of a significant number of black youth, academic achievement.Ogbu, J. "Black American students in an affluent suburb: a study of academic disengagement". Erlbaum Associates Press. Mahwah, NJ. 2003.

Due to the often political and cultural contours of blackness in the United States, the notion of blackness can also be extended to non-black people. Toni Morrison once described Bill Clinton as the first black President of the United States, because, as she put it, he displayed "almost every trope of blackness". Christopher Hitchens was offended by the notion of Clinton as the first black president, noting, "Mr Clinton, according to Toni Morrison, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist, is our first black President, the first to come from the broken home, the alcoholic mother, the under-the-bridge shadows of our ranking systems. Thus, we may have lost the mystical power to divine diabolism, but we can still divine blackness by the following symptoms: broken homes, alcoholic mothers, under-the-bridge habits and (presumable from the rest of [Arthur] Miller's senescent musings) the tendency to sexual predation and to shameless perjury about same." Some black activists were also offended, claiming that Clinton used his knowledge of black culture to exploit black people for political gain as no other president had before, while not serving black interests.  They cite the lack of action during the Rwandan Genocide and his welfare reform, which Larry Roberts said had led to the worst child poverty since the 1960s. Others cited that the number of black people in jail increased during his administration.

The question of blackness also arose in the Democrat Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. Commentators have questioned whether Obama, who was elected the first President with black ancestry, is "black enough", contending that his background is not typical because his mother was white American, and his father was a black Kenyan immigrant. Obama chose to identify as black and African-American.

In July 2012, Ancestry.com reported on historic and DNA research by its staff that discovered that Obama is likely a descendant through his mother of John Punch, considered by some historians to be the first African slave in the Virginia colony. An indentured servant, he was "bound for life" in 1640 after trying to escape. The story of him and his descendants is that of multi-racial America since it appeared he and his sons married or had unions with white women, likely indentured servants and working-class like them. Their multi-racial children were free because they were born to free English women. Over time, Obama's line of the Bunch family (as they became known) were property owners and continued to "marry white"; they became part of white society, likely by the early to mid-18th century.Anastasia Harman, Natalie D. Cottrill, Paul C. Reed, and Joseph Shumway, "Documenting President Barack Obama’s Maternal African-American Ancestry: Tracing His Mother’s Bunch Ancestry to the First Slave in America", Ancestry.com, 16 July 2012, p. 19.

 South America 
thumb|Jongo, a Brazilian dance of West African origin (c. 1822)
Approximately 12 million Africans were shipped to the Americas during the Atlantic slave trade from 1492 to 1888, with 11.5 million of those shipped to South America and the Caribbean.United Nations Slavery Memorial: "Accurate figures are still not available but at a conservative estimate, using the figures that have been generated by the latest Slave Trade Database, of the estimated millions transported, Portugal dominated the trade with 5.8 million or 46%, while Great Britain transported 3.25 million or 26%, France accounted for 1.38 million or 11%, and Spain 1.06 million or 8%. So it is unmistakable, that the 4 leading colonial powers accounted for a combined total of 11.5 million Africans or 92% of the overall trade. The remainder was transported by the US 305,326, the Netherlands 554,336, and Denmark/Baltic 111,041. There were several stages to the trade. During the first phase between 1501 and 1600, an estimated 277,509 Africans or just 2% of the overall trade, were sent to the Americas and Europe. During the 17th century, some 15% or 1,875,631 Africans embarked for the Americas. The period from 1701 to the passage of the British Abolition Act in 1807 was the peak of the trade. Here an estimated 7,163,241 or 57% of the trafficking in Africans transpired, with the remaining 26% or 3,204,935 occurring between 1808 and 1866." Brazil was the largest importer in the Americas, with 5.5 million African slaves imported, followed by the British Caribbean with 2.76 million, the Spanish Caribbean and Spanish Mainland with 1.59 million Africans, and the French Caribbean with 1.32 million.United Nations Slavery Memorial:"In the Americas, Brazil was the largest importer of Africans, accounting for 5.5 million or 44%, the British Caribbean with 2.76 million or 22%, the French Caribbean 1.32 million, and the Spanish Caribbean and Spanish Mainland accounting for 1.59 million. The relatively high numbers for Brazil and the British Caribbean is largely a reflection of the dominance and continued expansion of the plantation system in those regions. Even more so, the inability of the enslaved population in these regions to reproduce meant that the replacement demand for laborers was significantly high. In other words, Africans were imported to make up the demographic deficit on the plantations." Today their descendants number approximately 150 million in South America and the Caribbean."Community Outreach" Seminar on Planning Process for SANTIAGO +5, Global Afro-Latino and Caribbean Initiative, 4 February 2006. In addition to skin color, other physical characteristics such as facial features and hair texture are often variously used in classifying peoples as black in South America and the Caribbean. In South America and the Caribbean, classification as black is also closely tied to social status and socioeconomic variables, especially in light of social conceptions of "blanqueamiento" (racial whitening) and related concepts.

 Brazil 

thumb|upright|Joaquim Barbosa, a preto former Justice of the Supreme Federal Court in Brazil
The concept of race in Brazil is complex. A Brazilian child was never automatically identified with the racial type of one or both of his or her parents, nor were there only two categories to choose from. Between an individual of unmixed West African descent and a very light mulatto individual, more than a dozen racial categories were acknowledged, based on various combinations of hair color, hair texture, eye color, and skin color. These types grade into each other like the colors of the spectrum, and no one category stands significantly isolated from the rest. In Brazil, people are classified by appearance, not heredity.

Scholars disagree over the effects of social status on racial classifications in Brazil. It is generally believed that achieving upward mobility and education results in individuals being classified as a category of lighter skin. The popular claim is that in Brazil, poor whites are considered black and wealthy blacks are considered white. Some scholars disagree, arguing that "whitening" of one's social status may be open to people of mixed race, a large part of the population known as pardo, but a person perceived as preto (black) will continue to be classified as black regardless of wealth or social status.

 Statistics 

Brazilian Population, by Race, from 1872 to 1991 (Census Data)Ethnic group  White  Black  Brown  Yellow (Asian)  Undeclared  Total  1872  3,787,289  1,954,452  4,188,737  –  – 9,930,478 1940  26,171,778  6,035,869  8,744,365  242,320 41,98341,236,315 1991  75,704,927  7,335,136  62,316,064  630,656  534,878  146,521,661 
+Demographics of Brazil Year White  Pardo Black 1835 24.4%  18.2%51.4% 2000 53.7% 38.5%6.2% 2010 48.4% 42.4%6.7%

From the years 1500 to 1850, an estimated 3.5 million captives were forcibly shipped from West/Central Africa to Brazil; the territory received the highest number of slaves of any country in the Americas. Scholars estimate that more than half of the Brazilian population is at least in part descended from these individuals. Brazil has the largest population of Afro-descendants outside of Africa. In contrast to the US, during the slavery period and after, the Portuguese colonial government and later Brazilian government did not pass formal anti-miscegenation or segregation laws. As in other Latin American countries, intermarriage was prevalent during the colonial period and continued afterward. In addition, people of mixed race (pardo) often tended to marry white spouses, and their descendants became accepted as white. As a result, some of the European descended population also has West African or Amerindian blood. According to the last census of the 20th century, in which Brazilians could choose from five color/ethnic categories with which they identified, 54% of individuals identified as white, 6.2% identified as black, and 39.5% identified as pardo (brown) — a broad multi-racial category, including tri-racial persons.

In the 19th century, a philosophy of racial whitening emerged in Brazil, related to the assimilation of mixed-race people into the white population through intermarriage. Until recently the government did not keep data on race. However, statisticians estimate that in 1835, roughly 50% of the population was preto (black; most were enslaved), a further 20% was pardo (brown), and 25% white, with the remainder Amerindian. Some classified as pardo were tri-racial.

By the 2000 census, demographic changes including the end to slavery, immigration from Europe and Asia, assimilation of multiracial persons, and other factors resulted in a population in which 6.2% of the population identified as black, 40% as pardo, and 55% as white. Essentially most of the black population was absorbed into the multi-racial category by intermixing. A 2007 genetic study found that at least 29% of the middle-class, white Brazilian population had some recent (since 1822 and the end of the colonial period) African ancestry.V.F. Gonçalves, F. Prosdocimi, L. S. Santos, J. M. Ortega and S. D. J. Pena, "Sex-biased gene flow in African Americans but not in American Caucasians", GMR, 2007, Vol. 12, No. 6.

 Race relations in Brazil 
thumb|right|Brazilian Candomblé ceremony
Because of the acceptance of miscegenation, Brazil has avoided the binary polarization of society into black and white. In addition, it abolished slavery without a civil war. The bitter and sometimes violent racial tensions that have divided the US are notably absent in Brazil. According to the 2010 census, 6.7% of Brazilians said they were black, compared with 6.2% in 2000, and 43.1% said they were racially mixed, up from 38.5%. In 2010, Elio Ferreira de Araujo, Brazil's minister for racial equality, attributed the increases to growing pride among his country's black and indigenous communities.Tom Phillips, "Brazil's census offers recognition at last to descendants of runaway slaves", The Guardian, 25 August 2010.

The philosophy of the racial democracy in Brazil has drawn some criticism, based on economic issues. Brazil has one of the largest gaps in income distribution in the world. The richest 10% of the population earn 28 times the average income of the bottom 40%. The richest 10 percent is almost exclusively white or predominantly European in ancestry. One-third of the population lives under the poverty line, with blacks and other people of color accounting for 70 percent of the poor.
thumb|left|Fruit sellers in Rio de Janeiro c. 1820
In 2015 United States, African Americans, including multiracial people, earned 76.8% as much as white people. By contrast, black and mixed race Brazilians earned on average 58% as much as whites in 2014. Some have posited that the facts of lower socioeconomic status for people of color suggest that Brazil practices a kind of one-drop rule, or discrimination against people who are not visibly European in ancestry. The gap in income between blacks and other non-whites is relatively small compared to the large gap between whites and all people of color. Other social factors, such as illiteracy and education levels, show the same patterns of disadvantage for people of color.

Some commentators observe that the United States practice of segregation and white supremacy in the South, and discrimination in many areas outside that region, forced many African Americans to unite in the civil rights struggle, whereas the fluid nature of race in Brazil has divided individuals of African descent between those with more or less ancestry and helped sustain an image of the country as an example of post-colonial harmony. This has hindered the development of a common identity among black Brazilians.

Though Brazilians of at least partial African heritage make up a large percentageTom Phillips, "Brazil census shows African-Brazilians in the majority for the first time", The Guardian, 17 November 2011. of the population, few blacks have been elected as politicians. The city of Salvador, Bahia, for instance, is 80% people of color, but voters have not elected a mayor of color. Journalists like to say that US cities with black majorities, such as Detroit and New Orleans, have not elected white mayors since after the civil rights movement, when the Voting Rights Act of 1965 protected the franchise for minorities, and blacks in the South regained the power to vote for the first time since the turn of the 20th century. New Orleans elected its first black mayor in the 1970s.Charles Whitaker, "Blacks in Brazil: The Myth and the Reality", Ebony, February 1991. New Orleans elected a white mayor after the widescale disruption and damage of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
thumb|Black people in Brazil c. 1821
Critics note that people of color have limited media visibility. The Brazilian media has been accused of hiding or overlooking the nation's Black, Indigenous, Multiracial and East Asian populations. For example, the telenovelas or soaps are criticized for featuring actors who resemble northern Europeans rather than actors of the more prevalent Southern European features) and light-skinned mulatto and mestizo appearance. (Pardos may achieve "white" status if they have attained the middle-class or higher social status).

These patterns of discrimination against non-whites have led some academic and other activists to advocate for use of the Portuguese term negro to encompass all African-descended people, in order to stimulate a "black" consciousness and identity."Brazil Separates Into a World of Black and White", Los Angeles Times, 3 September 2006. This proposal has been criticized since the term pardo is considered to include a wide range of multiracial people, such as caboclos (mestizos), assimilated Amerindians and tri-racials, not only people of partial African and European descent. Trying to identify this entire group as "black" would be a false imposition of a different identity from outside the culture and deny people their other, equally valid, ancestries and cultures. It seems a one-drop rule in reverse.

Notable people

 See also 

 African diaspora
 Afrophobia
 Black British
 Black Canadians
 Black Hispanic and Latino Americans
 Black Indians in the United States
 Capoid
 Curse of Ham
 Female slavery in the United States
 Mulatto
 Negrito
 Negroid
 Racism
 Scientific racism
 Sub-Saharan Africa
 Zambo

 Notes 

Category:African-American history
Category:People of African descent
Category:Latin American caste system
Category:Race (human categorization)