Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Black = anyone with a drop of African blood in their body ........... Blacks sums up the people who are descendents of all groups created by the Diaspora.
The "one-drop-rule" is an American myth that is going out of fashion precisely for that very same reason, its a lie that many Americans pretend is true.
I will leave you with three quotes:
“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
-Fyodor Dotoyevsky
“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”
-Virginia Woolf
"I never lie because I don't fear anyone. You only lie when you're afraid."
-John Gotti
Officially there are a little over 13 million afro-brazillians in brazil (6.9%) compared to the 42 million african-americans in the US (13.6%).
Now i was under the impression brazil was the country in the americas with the most people of african decent? and it would make sense since brazil actually received the largest import of african slaves almost ten times the number of slaves from africa than the us did.
Can someone clear up this confusion for me?
You're forgetting more than 35 percent of the population that falls under the "pardo" (mixed-race) category, most of whom are black/white mixes.
The American one drop rule is the law of the land in the U.S so America technically, isn't really in denial about anything that's just the law and most U.S citizens abide by it without a second thought. the number of "biracial" blacks citizens begging to be recognized as mixed or mulatto, for the most part is a non issue because the vast majority of them identify with African American culture and heritage from day one, I don't have any concrete statistics on that but it's clearly evident, so the 13% population is about right or slightly under represented. Also the vast majority of the African American population is mixed, there are not any pure sub Saharan's in this country except for the African families that migrate here due to certain socioecnomic or political reasons. Almost all African Americans have Native Americans,Germans,Irish somewhere in their family tree, me myself I have German and Blackfoot Indian so I guess I'm mixed and not African American and I've been in denial for 40 years, It's such a joke "Black"' so we need to quit with the percentages the adding the subtracting, half this, pure that, 1/4 this, it's really nonsense because at the at the end of the day everyone walking this earth has DNA which originates in, you guessed it. . . . . . . . Africa, good ol' Sub Saharan DNA, but to answer the question yes of course there are more Black people here in the U.S., primarily because no matter who we choose to procreate with, 9 times out of 10 we will recreate offspring bearing our genotypical and phenotypical resemblance, Puerto Ricans,Dominicans,Panamanians,Cubans etc etc.
"Black" is defined differently in each country. As someone else noted, there are people in the States who are considered black who would not be in Brazil. I'm one of those people. If one uses the American standard then Brazil trumps the U.S. by far. Even if one uses the more restrictive Brazilian standard there would still be more blacks there than here.
Plus, historically speaking, the majority of slaves coming out of Sub-Saharan Africa ended up in South America. Only a very small percentage ended up in the U.S.
A small percentage of black slaves came to America? Really?
Say "NO" to drugs!
In the US, the Black population did not mix with Whites as often as Brazilians. There was some intermixing going on between Master and slave, but very little mix marriages and cohabitation. There was some creolization going on in some US states such as in Louisiana, whose descendants develop a culture and identity separate from the Black majority. However, the Dred Scott case killed any hope of a mixed or mulatto society. This is when the one-drop rule began to apply and be put into practice. Therefore, groups such as Creoles of Color and Black Indians as well as West Indians and Black Africans were all classified as black despite having a separate identity and origin. The only exception to the rule today is if you are Black Hispanic. On the census they are still classified as Black, but for what ever reason, they are placed in the Hispanic category and not Black/African American. Nowadays mix people aren't even forced to identify as Black on the census, but are forced to do so by society.
Brazil on the other hand was racially mixed from the beginning. Majority of Portuguese settlers Portugal's many colonies were men. Therefore, they the only women who were available to them were the natives. That's why there's also such a large Mestizo (White and Native American) population in Brazil. However, since so many slaves from Africa entered Brazil the predominantly White male population was becoming outnumber. Thus, miscegenation increased tenfold between Black women and White Males. As a result, it created a fairly large mulatto class that also served as the buffer between the wealthy White elite and the Black slaves. In Brazil today, although the Blacks there look no different from African Americans, many of them don't identity as Black. Therefore, the only people to identify with their Blackness are either afrocentric or features are mostly African.
If it's true that the majority blacks in brazil don't identify with their African ancestry then America has the largest African population outside of Africa. PERIOD.
The majority of ethic Black-Americans do not have German antecedents in their family tree. The Germans really started coming over to the United states around 1847 and they distinguished themselves from the Anglo-Saxon population in the U.S. by not keeping slaves. It would not surprise me if a German-American did have a black slave or own a slave plantation but that would be a statistical outlier and a rare exception.
The early German-Americans were also largely socialists and abolitionists. I'm sure they were racist too as most the abolitionist were.
I would suspect few Black-American family trees have Irish people in them. The Irish were extremely poor and essentially wage slaves in the U.S.
The surnames of most Black-Americans (how many have German surnames?) is probably an indicator of the white ethnic groups that are more likely to be found in their family tree going back over a century ago. A number of those surnames--like mine--are Scots-Irish or Welsh. I can see how one (in the United States) can misconstrue some of those surnames for Irish.
The Scots-Irish arrived in the United States before the Irish and they were essentially Scottish and not Irish. They tended to be educated and middle-class and they despised the poor and uneducated Irish that arrived in the United States after or during its Great Famine.
I think the some things should be kept in mind on this topic of blackness or mixed-raceness. In the U.S. "black" and "white" connote behaviors, beliefs, and presumed non-somatic heritable traits. This is a lot less the case in Brazil--although, due to a long history of racism* and a racial caste system I'll hazard a guess the white elites of Brazil tend to presume their are behavioral and intelligence factors that go along with race.
So, basically what I'm saying is that Brazilians don't identify with their African ancestry in the sense Americans understand that concept. For example, I'm racially biracial but ethnically Black-American. If I were born in Russia and raised there the American way of thinking says, "For him to acknowledge he has African ancestry he must identify as black and publicly express pride in his race."
But for the Brazilian way of thinking they are Brazilians first and foremost and black, white, or brown these are physical descriptions of themselves. Wearing a dashiki does not make them more African in their minds. The Brazilians have traditionally idolized European culture and people anyways. It's a legacy of their racial caste system (which existed were ever race based slavery existed).
The genetic thing is a bit more complicated. I'm not a geneticist and I've never taken a specific course on genetics. What little education I have on genetics leads me to believe there is no such things as "African genes" or "European genes" or "Jewish genes." Actually, I believe geneticists themselves acknowledge this. But scientist try to speak in laymen terms to the lay public about genetics as it relates to race and family trees, so, they speak of "African genes" and "You have 20% European genes."
Africa is genetically diverse anyways. I believe the most genetically diverse continent on earth if I remember correctly. What scientist mean, I believe, when they say, "You have 20% European genes," is that such and such genetic markers are more typically found in X population in Y region of Europe.
So what do genes mean? This is a good question. I'm not sure I have a good answer given my level of education thus far. But I don't think they means as much as we ascribe to them often. Like a red flower sexually reproducing with a white flower my own phenotype seems to be incomplete dominance. Unless geneticists have another term for it as it applies to human beings racially. So, I'm not sure what to infer from my own genetically expressed incomplete dominance, other than its simply incomplete dominance. My youngest brother has "kinky" hair and so that genetic trait more typically found in Africa is dominant genetic trait of his. My point being if one has recessive genes what or how much does that say about who they are?
I have concluded so far that it doesn't say much at all about who they are.
*Racism is defined as the belief in the superiority of one race over another. So, racism does not have to be rooted in hatred or expressed in hatred, and it can manifest itself in a person being sentimentally tied to their servant or slave.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
