Black people
Black is a racial classification of people, usually a political and skin color-based category for specific populations with a mid- to dark brown complexion. Often in countries with socially based systems of racial classification in the Western world, the term "black" is used to describe persons who are perceived as darker-skinned in contrast to other populations. It is most commonly used for people of African ancestry, Indigenous Australians, Melanesians, and Negritos, though it has been applied in many contexts to other groups, and is no indicator of any close ancestral relationship whatsoever. However, not all people considered "black" have dark skin and often additional phenotypical characteristics are relevant, such as certain facial and hair-texture features. Indigenous African societies do not use the term black as a racial identity outside of influences brought by Western cultures.
Contemporary anthropologists and other scientists, while recognizing the reality of biological variation between different human populations, regard the concept of a "Black race" as social construct. Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified "black", and these social constructs have changed over time. In a number of countries, societal variables affect classification as much as skin color, and the social criteria for "blackness" vary. Some perceive the term 'black' as a derogatory, outdated, reductive or otherwise unrepresentative label, and as a result neither use nor define it, especially in African countries with little to no history of colonial racial segregation.
In the anglosphere, the term can carry a variety of meanings depending on the country. While the term "person of color" is commonly used and accepted in the United States, the near-sounding term "colored person" is considered highly offensive, except in South Africa, where Coloureds are a specific multiracial group. In other regions such as Australia and Melanesia, settlers applied the adjective "black" to the indigenous population. It was universally regarded as highly offensive in Australia until the 1960s and 1970s. "Black" was generally not used as a noun, but rather as an adjective qualifying some other descriptor. As desegregation progressed after the 1967 referendum, some Indigenous Australians adopted the term, following the American fashion, but it remains problematic.
Several American style guides, including the AP Stylebook, changed their guides to capitalize the 'b' in 'black', following the 2020 murder of George Floyd, an African American. The ASA Style Guide says that the 'b' should not be capitalized.
File:DuBois King Mandela Maathai Parks Truth.jpg|thumb|Famous black people: Above: W. E. B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela. Below: Wangarĩ Maathai, Rosa Parks, and Sojourner Truth.
Africa
Northern Africa
Numerous communities of dark-skinned peoples are present in North Africa, some dating from prehistoric communities. Others descend from migrants via the historical trans-Saharan trade or, after the Arab invasions of North Africa in the 7th century, from slaves from the trans-Saharan slave trade in North Africa.File:COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Vrouwen van een Ahwash-dansgroep uit de Anti-Atlas tijdens het nationaal folklore festival te Marrakech TMnr 20017645.jpg|thumb|250px|Haratin women, a community of recent African origin residing in the MaghrebIn the 18th century, the Moroccan Sultan Moulay Ismail "the Warrior King" raised a corps of 150,000 black soldiers, called his Black Guard.
Notable Islamic caliphs with African ancestry include Abu al-Misk Kafur Al-Mustansir Billah, Yaqub al-Mansur, Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Othman, Sultan of the Marinid dynasty and Moulay Ismail Ibn Sharif.
According to 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 darker-toned Arabs, much like darker-toned 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".
Due to the patriarchal nature of Arab society, Arab men, including during the slave trade in North Africa, enslaved more African women than men. The female slaves were often put to work in domestic service and agriculture. The men interpreted the Quran to permit sexual relations between a male master and his enslaved females outside of marriage, 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 inherited their fathers' social status at birth and were born free.
Some mixed-race children succeeded their respective 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.
In early 1991, non-Arabs of the Zaghawa people of Sudan attested that they were victims of an intensifying Arab apartheid campaign, segregating Arabs and non-Arabs. 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 manipulating Arab solidarity" to carry out policies of apartheid and ethnic cleansing.
Sudanese Arabs are also black people in that they are culturally and linguistically Arabized indigenous peoples of Sudan of mostly Nilo-Saharan, Nubian, and Cushitic ancestry; their skin tone and appearance resembles that of other black people.
American University economist George Ayittey accused the Arab government of Sudan of practicing acts of racism against black citizens. According to Ayittey, "In Sudan... the Arabs monopolized power and excluded blacks – Arab apartheid." Many African commentators joined Ayittey in accusing Sudan of practicing Arab apartheid.
Sahara
The Tuareg people have in the past had a highly socially stratified society, with specific social roles or professions assigned to specific castes. The tiny aristocratic caste of warrior elite which once sat atop a pyramid of Tuareg society was decimated during the wars of the colonial period, and this, along with economic necessity, post-colonial border restrictions, and modern education, have broken down many traditional caste barriers.Tuareg higher caste traditions value a nomadic life, warfare, study, animal husbandry, and trade. Consequently, higher caste communities travel, at least seasonally, if able. Lower caste groups, not limited to the Ikelan, are more likely to live in settled communities, either in Sahara oasis towns or in villages scattered among other ethnic groups in the Sahel region to the south.
North-Eastern Africa
In Ethiopia and Somalia, the slave classes mainly consisted of captured peoples from the Sudanese-Ethiopian and Kenyan-Somali international borders or other surrounding areas of Nilotic and Bantu peoples who were collectively known as Shanqella and Adone. Some of these slaves were captured during territorial conflicts in the Horn of Africa and then sold off to slave merchants. The earliest representation of this tradition dates from a seventh or eighth century BC inscription belonging to the Kingdom of Damat.These captives and others of analogous morphology were distinguished as tsalim barya in contrast with the Afroasiatic-speaking nobles or saba qayh or light-skinned slave; while on the other hand, western racial category standards do not differentiate between saba qayh or saba tiqur Horn Africans thus considering all of them as "black people" according to Western society's notion of race.
Southern Africa
In South Africa, the period of colonisation resulted in many unions and marriages between European and Africans from various tribes, resulting in mixed-race children. As the European colonialists acquired control of territory, they generally pushed the mixed-race and African populations into second-class status. During the first half of the 20th century, the white-dominated government classified the population according to four main racial groups: Black, White, Asian, and Coloured. The Coloured group included people of mixed Bantu, Khoisan, and European ancestry. 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 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 ".
In 2008, the High Court in South Africa ruled that Chinese South Africans who were residents during the apartheid era 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.
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.