African diaspora in the Americas

The African diaspora in the Americas refers to the people born in the Americas with partial, predominantly, or completely African ancestry. Many are descendants of persons enslaved in Africa and transferred to the Americas by Europeans, then forced to work mostly in European-owned mines and plantations, between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.

History

After the United States achieved independence, next came the independence of Haiti, a country populated almost entirely by people of African descent and the second American colony to win its independence from European colonial powers. After the process of independence, many countries have encouraged European immigration to America, thus reducing the proportion of black and mulatto population throughout the country: Brazil, the United States, and the Dominican Republic. Miscegenation and more flexible concepts of race have also reduced the overall population identifying as black in Latin America, whereas the one-drop rule in the United States has had the opposite effect.

From 21 to 25 November 1995, the Continental Congress of Black Peoples of the Americas was held. Black people still face discrimination in most parts of the continent. According to David D.E. Ferrari, vice president of the World Bank for the Region of Latin America and the Caribbean, black people have lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality, more frequent and more widespread diseases, higher rates of illiteracy and lower income than Americans of different ethnic origin. Women, also the subjects of gender discrimination, suffer worse living conditions.

Today

In Brazil, with 6.9% of phenotypically Black population and 43.8% of ''pardo'' (mestizo), poverty is common. It is nevertheless important to note that the´Pardo category includes all mulattoes, zambos and the result of their intermixing with other groups, but ''it is majority of European descent'', with most White Brazilians having at least one recent African and/or Native American ancestor and Pardos also being caboclos, descendants of Whites and Amerindians, or mestizos. There are more definitions of the differences and social disparity between blacks and "non-white or pardo" than whites in Brazil in the Black people article section.

According to various studies, the main genetic contribution to Brazilians is European (always above 65%, and an American study found it as high as 77%), and Pardos possess a higher degree of African descent when compared to the general White Brazilian and African-Brazilian populations (the previous mostly with some detectable non-white ancestor and the latter highly miscegenated) and exhibit a greater Amerindian contribution in areas such as the Amazon Basin and a stronger African contribution in the areas of historical slavery such as Southeastern Brazil and coastal Northeastern cities, nevertheless both are present in all regions, and that physical features did much correlate with detectable ancestry in many instances.

On 4 November 2008, the first mulatto U.S. president, Barack Obama, won 52% of the vote. His father was an African man from Kenya and his mother a white woman from Kansas.

Table

Notable people of African descent in the Americas

* Charlie Davies, American football player
* Hayden Knight, American football player
*Kareem Abdul-Jabbar – American basketball player
*Archie Alleyne