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:For general discussion of dark-skinned people, see Black people.

An African American (also Afro-American, Black American, or simply black) is a member of an ethnic group in the United States whose ancestors, usually in predominant part, were indigenous to Africa. Many African Americans have a degree of European, Native American, Asian and/or Latin American ancestry as well. The term refers specifically to black African ancestry; not, for example, to white or Arab African ancestry, such as Moroccan or white South African ancestry. Definitively, African American means an American of black African descent. The majority of African Americans are the descendants of enslaved Africans transported from West and Central Africa to North America from 1609 through 1807 during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Others have arrived through more recent immigration from the Caribbean, South America and Africa. Blacks from African and non-African countries are oftentimes referred to by their nations of origin; however in general, the cultural assumption is that if a person is black, native English-speaking and living in the United States, he or she is African American.

Nomenclature

The term "African American" has been in common use in the United States since the late 1980s, when greater numbers of African Americans began to adopt the term self-referentially. Malcolm X favored the descriptive term "African American" over "Negro" and "black" and used the term at an OAAU (Organization of Afro American Unity) meeting in the early 1960s, saying, "Twenty-two million African Americans - that's what we are - Africans who are in America." Former NBA player/coach Lenny Wilkens is another who used the term as a teenager in the 1950's when filling out a job application.

Many African Americans began to abandon the term "Afro-American", which had become popular in the 1960s and '70s, for "African American," out of desire for an unabbreviated expression of their African heritage that could not be mistaken or derided as an allusion to the afro hairstyle. The term became increasingly popular, and by the 1980s, Jesse Jackson and others pressed for its adoption and acceptance. Users of the term argued that "African American" was more in keeping with the United States immigrant tradition of "hyphenated Americans," which link people with their, or their ancestors', geographic points of origin.

Terms used at various points in American history include Negroes, colored, blacks and Afro-Americans. Negro and colored were common until the late 1960s, but are now less commonly used and widely considered derogatory. African American, black and, to a lesser extent, Afro-American are used interchangeably today, but their precise meanings and connotations are in dispute.

The term African American is sometimes problematic because of its imprecise cultural and geographic meaning. The term as originally applied refers to only those descended from a small number of colonial indentured servants and the estimated 500,000 Africans taken to British North America or the U.S. as slaves (of approximately 11 million Africans taken to the western hemisphere in general).

In slightly broader usage, the term can include West Indian and Afro-Latino immigrants whose African ancestors also survived the Middle Passage or recent African immigrants/children of immigrants with American citizenship, but these groups tend to use the ethnic terms Latino or Hispanic, or identify themselves by their countries of origin (i.e., as Nigerian, Dominican or Jamaican instead of African American).

The term does not include white, Indian or Arab immigrants from the African continent, and they are not generally considered Africans on the continent by the indigenous black African majority.

Current demographics

According to 2005 U.S. Census figures, some 39.9 million African Americans live in the United States, comprising 13.8 percent of the total population. At the time of the 2000 Census, 54.8 percent of African Americans lived in the South. In that year, 17.6 percent of African Americans lived in the Northeast and 18.7 percent in the Midwest, while only 8.9 percent lived in the western states. Almost 88 percent of African Americans lived in metropolitan areas in 2000. With over 2 million black residents, New York City had the largest black urban population in the United States in 2000. Among cities of 100,000 or more, Gary, Indiana, had the highest percentage of black residents of any U.S. city in 2000, with 85 percent, followed closely by Detroit, Michigan, with 83 percent. Atlanta, Georgia, has a substantial African American population of about 65 percent. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with 43 percent, and Washington, D.C., with 60 percent, are also large African American population centers.

History

Blacks in America are historically composed of many diverse ethnic groups. Over 40 identifiable ethnic groups from at least 25 different kingdoms were sold to British North America (later becoming the United States) during the Atlantic slave trade. These ethnic groups were usually sold to European traders by powerful coastal or interior states in exchange for European goods such as textiles and firearms. Africans were very rarely kidnapped by Europeans because they could not penetrate the interior. The danger of fatal disease was ever-present and the coastal areas were dominated by powerful warrior kingdoms.

Africans sold and traded into bondage and shipped to the United States came from eight distinct slave-trading regions in Africa, including Senegambia (Present day Senegal, Gambia, Guinea and Guinea Bissau), Sierra Leone (also includes the area of present day Liberia), Windward Coast (present day Ivory Coast), Gold Coast (present day Ghana and surrounding areas), Bight of Benin (Present day Togo, Benin and western Nigeria), Bight of Biafra (Nigeria south of the Benue River, Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea), Central Africa (Gabon, Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Southeast Africa (Mozambique and Madagascar).

Enslaved Africans brought their own religious beliefs, languages, and cultural practices with them when they were forced on ships from Africa to the New World, however, slave traders and owners mounted a systematic and brutal campaign to de-Africanize them, eventually nearly completely stripping them of their original names, languages and religious beliefs. As an additional means of subjugation, it became illegal for slaves to be taught to read or write. Over time, Africans in America formed a new and common identity focused on their mutual condition in America as opposed to cultural and historic ties to Africa.

Booker T. Washington, political leader, educator, author, and one of the dominant figures in African American culture and politics in the early 20th century

By 1860, there were 3.5 million enslaved Africans in the Southern United States, and another 500,000 Africans lived free across the country. Slavery was a controversial issue in American society and politics. The growth of abolitionism, which opposed the institution of slavery, culminated in the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, and was one reason for the secession of the Confederate States of America, which lead to the American Civil War (1861 - 1865).

The Emancipation Proclamation of 1862 declared all slaves in the Confederacy free under U.S. law. It included exceptions for those held in all territories that had not seceded, however, and thus did not immediately free a single slave, since U.S. law held no sway over the Confederacy at the time. The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1865, freed all slaves, including those in states that had not seceded. During Reconstruction, African Americans in the South obtained the right to vote and to hold public office, as well as a number of other civil rights they previously had been denied. However, when Reconstruction ended in 1877, southern, white landowners reinstituted a regime of disenfranchisement and racial segregation, and with it a wave of terrorism and repression, including lynchings and other vigilante violence.

During the Progressive Era, black members of the middle-class attempted improving the conditions of their ethnicity. This movement was strongest in the Southern United States and it often revolved around black southern universities such as Tuskegee University or Atlanta Univerisity, academic jounals, and the Episcopal Church. Like white progressives, black Progressives helped the working class through charitable means while supporting political changes that increased the role of the state in creating socieoeconomic equity, as opposed to equality. Many black progressives were elitist and often condescending towards those they were intent on helping, akin to white progressives' attitudes and actions towards European Immigrants. Black progressives were successful in their charitable efforts, but often were not concerned with issues like segregation. Instead, they supported a social darwinist mentality with the hope that blacks through hardwork and education could accelerate their social evolution. The plight of most black people did not improve during this time due to racist policies supported by whites and white vigilante action.

The desperate conditions of African Americans in the South that sparked the Great Migration of the early 20th century, combined with a growing African American intellectual and cultural elite in the Northern United States, led to a movement to fight violence and discrimination against African Americans that, like abolitionism before it, crossed racial lines. One of the most prominent of these groups, the NAACP, galvanized by outspoken journalist and activist Ida B. Wells Barnett, led an anti-lynching crusade. In the 1950s, the organization mounted a series of calculated legal challenges to overturn Jim Crow segregation, culminating in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas decision.

The Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board was one of defining moments of the modern-day American Civil Rights Movement. It was part of a long-term strategy to strike down Jim Crow segregation in public education, the hospitality industry, public transportation, employment and housing, granting equal access to African Americans and ensuring their right to vote.

The Civil Rights era, one of the most renowned periods in United States history, aimed at abolishing public and private acts of racial discrimination against African Americans between 1954 to 1968, particularly in the southern United States. By 1966, the emergence of the Black Power Movement, which lasted from 1966 to 1975, expanded upon the aims of the Civil Rights Movement to include racial dignity, economic and political self-sufficiency, and freedom from white authority. Several scholars have begun to refer to the Civil Rights Movement as the Second Reconstruction.

The Civil Rights Movement and subsequent Black Power Movement was the culmination of generations of oppression and contained several key events in American history, including the murder of Emmett Till, Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott, the desegregation of Little Rock, Arkansas, multiple sit-ins and freedom rides, the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and many other notable events.

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the conditions which brought it into being are credited with putting pressure on President John F. Kennedy and then Lyndon B. Johnson that culminated in the passage the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that banned discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and labor unions.

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Malcolm X holding an M1 Carbine and pulling back the curtains to peer out of a window. This photograph is a popular image on T-shirts and often appears with the slogan "By Any Means Necessary."

The "Mississippi Freedom Summer" of 1964 brought thousands of idealistic youth, black and white, to the state to run "freedom schools," to teach basic literacy, history and civics. Other volunteers were involved in voter registration drives. The season was marked by harassment, intimidation and violence directed at Civil Rights workers and their host families. The disappearance of three youths, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner in Philadelphia, Mississippi, captured the attention of the nation. Six weeks later, searchers found the savagely beaten body of Chaney, a black man, in a muddy dam alongside the remains of his two white companions, who had been shot to death. Outrage at the escalating injustices of the "Mississippi Blood Summer," as it by then had come to be known, and at the brutality of the murders brought about the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Act struck down barriers to black enfranchisement and was the capstone to more than a decade of major civil rights legislation.

By this time, African Americans who questioned the effectiveness of nonviolent protest had gained a greater voice. More militant black leaders, such as Malcolm X of the Nation of Islam and Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panther Party, called for blacks to defend themselves, using violence, if necessary. From the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, the Black Power movement urged African Americans to look to Africa for inspiration and emphasized black solidarity, rather than integration.

The movements reached its peak in the 1960s under leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Whitney Young, and Roy Wilkins, Sr. At the same time, Nation of Islam spokesman Malcolm X and, later, Stokely Carmichael, the Black Panther Party, and the Republic of New Africa called for African Americans to embrace black nationalism and black self-empowerment, propounding ideas of African (black) unity, solidarity and pan-Africanism. Politically and economically, African Americans have made substantial strides in the post-civil rights era.

Contemporary issues

Many African Americans have significantly improved their social economic standing since the Civil Rights Movement and recent decades have witnessed the expansion of a robust, African American middle class across the United States. African Americans have also obtained unprecedented access to higher education and employment in the post civil rights era, however, due in part to the legacy of slavery, racism and discrimination, African Americans as a group remain at a pronounced economic, educational and social disadvantage in many areas relative to whites.

Persistent social, economic and political issues for many African Americans include inadequate health care access and delivery; institutional racism and discrimination in housing, education, policing, criminal justice and employment; crime, poverty and substance abuse. One of the most serious and long standing issues within African American communities is poverty. Poverty itself is a hardship as it is related to marital stress and dissolution, health problems, low educational attainment, deficits in psychological functioning, and crime. [1]In 2004, 24.7% of African American families lived below the poverty level [2].

The effects of criminal activity, such as murder, drug dealing, and robbery in predominately impoverished African American neighborhoods, is a serious and ongoing issue. In 1995, one-third of African American men between the ages of 20 and 29 were under some form of criminal justice control (in prison, on parole or probation) [3]. Some statistics report that African Americans are at least seven times more likely to murder, be murdered and/or incarcerated than white Americans. [4]

Studies suggest, however, that the association of racial or ethnic identity with crime rates is a false and possibly racist paradigm, with education and socioeconomic status being more accurate correlates to criminal behavior. Rates of homicide and other violence among African Americans are no greater than those of similarly situated (i.e., economically disadvantaged) whites or any other ethnic group in the United States.[5]

African Americans are frequently the targets of racial profiling [6] and negative societal stereotyping. Historians agree that black stereotypes and coping strategies are rooted in America's history of slavery and segregation. Studies have also shown how the stress of coping for black men can damage the circulatory system and lead to chronic poor health. Black men are 20 percent more likely to die of heart disease than whites, and African American men have the highest rates of hypertension in the world, according to the National Medical Association.[[7]]

African Americans have a higher prevalence of some chronic health conditions[8], and a higher rate of out-of-wedlock births relative to the general population. 56% of African American children are born into families where the mother is not married to the biological father. In 1998, single women headed 54% of African American households [9].

Another issue has been the tensions that exists in some communities between black immigrants from the Caribbean, South America and parts of Africa and African Americans whose families have resided in the U.S. for generations. These tensions have brought about contemporary issues of assimilation, post-diasporic identification, and cultural identity in several native and immigrant black communities.

All of these problems and potential remedies have been the subject of intense public policy debate in the United States in general, and within the African American community in particular.

Economics

The collective economic status of African Americans is a matter of intense debate, with statistics simultaneously suggesting the effects of both historical marginalization and progress for sections of the population in the United States, and the collective affluence of the group when compared to populations outside of the United States.

The median income of African Americans as a group is roughly 65 percent [10] of that of "white" people, that is, "people having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa" [11] according to census. Racial economic disparities are greatest of all at the highest levels of income. According to Forbes Magazine's wealthiest American lists, a 2000 net-worth of $800 million dollars made Oprah Winfrey the richest African American of the 20th century, in sharp contrast to the 20th century's richest White American Bill Gates whose net-worth briefly hit $100 billion in 1999.

However, in Forbes' list of 2004, Gates' net worth decreased to 46.6 billion USD while Winfrey's net worth increased to 1.4 billion USD, cementing her status as the wealthiest African American of the 20th century, the world's only black billionaire[12], the 235th richest American in 2005[13], the 562nd richest person in the world and one of the most affluent and influential people in the United States.

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Philanthropist, talk show host, book critic, actress and magazine publisher Oprah Winfrey, the richest African American of the 20th Century, the world's only black billionaire and one of the most influential people in the United States.

Despite the poverty levels of many African American communities, current information points to a continuation of a long-term trend toward parity with national levels and absolutely higher levels of affluence than those experienced by most populations outside the United States. Since the mid to late 1990's, African American incomes have risen at a remarkable pace and the progress shows up at every income level - from the still-large but shrinking underclass, to the fast-developing black middle class, to the growing ranks of wealthy African Americans.

Over 1.7 million African Americans have gone off the poverty rolls; earnings by African American women have moved to within a few percentage points of white women's; and unemployment among blacks in recent years has dropped below the 10 percent mark. The poverty rate among African Americans has dropped from 26.5% in 1998 to 24.7% in 2004. [[14]] The growth in African American incomes is translating into big gains in buying power and opportunities for black businesses.

By 2003, sex had replaced race as the primary factor in life expectancy in the United States, with African American females expected to live longer than white males born in that year. [15].

In the same year, the gap in life expectancy between American whites (78.0) and blacks (72.8) had decreased to 5.2 years, reflecting a long term trend of this phenomenon [16]. The current life expectancy of African Americans as a group is comparable to those of other groups who live in developed nations. In 2004, African American workers had the second-highest median earnings of American minority groups after Asian Americans, and African Americans had the highest level of male-female income parity of all ethnic groups in the United States [17].

Also, among American minority groups, only Asian Americans were more likely to hold white collar occupations (management, professional, and related fields) [18], and African Americans were no more or less likely than whites to work in the service industry [19]. In 2001, over half of African American households of married couples earned $50,000 or more [20]. Although in the same year African Americans were over-represented among the nation's poor, this was directly related to the disproportionate percentage of African American families headed by single women; such families are collectively poorer, regardless of ethnicity [21].

Collectively, African Americans are more involved in the American political process than other minority groups in the US, indicated by the highest level of voter registration and participation in elections among these groups in 2004 [22]. African Americans collectively attain higher levels of education than immigrants to the United States[23] (despite the common perception that groups "fresh off the boat" arrive with higher value placed on education than African Americans).

Although the unemployment rate among African Americans (in 2002, approximately 11% [24] has typically been twice the rate among European Americans (app. 5% in the same year, [25]), it is still at or below rates found in France and Spain [26], [27], and is slightly higher than the overall rate of the European Union [28].

Culture

Main article: African American culture

African American culture is both part of, and distinct from, American culture.

While African American families share many features with other U.S. families, the African American family has some distinctive features relating to the timing and approaches of marriage and family formation, gender roles, parenting styles, and strategies for coping with adversity.]].[29]

Within African American families, the formation of a household often begins not with marriage, but with the birth of a child. The importance of extended family and kin in maintaining family cohesion is often overshadowed by negative portrayals of African American family life, however, studies have found that African American families display about 70 various structural formations, versus about 40 among white families. This comparison points to the variability of the African American family structure and to the flexibility of family roles.]].[30]

A depiction of the African-American family

African American families tend to be more hierarchical and are more likely to be strict, to hold demanding behavioral standards and to use physical discipline.[31]Grandparents, especially African American grandmothers, often play a crucial role role in the maintenance of the family. When mothers cannot fulfill their roles, grandmothers often step in to parent children. In 1998, 1.4 million African American children (12%) lived in their grandparents' home (either with or without their parents). Grandparents care is often reciprocated in old age - African American families are much more likely to care for aging or dying family members.]][32]

The cultural resources for African American families consists of spirituality, mutual support, ethnic identity, adaptive extended family structures, and church as offering both ideological and instrumental support.[33]

African American foods reflect creative responses to racial and economic oppression. Under slavery, African Americans were not allowed to eat better cuts of meat, and after Emancipation many often were too poor to afford them. Soul food, a hearty cuisine commonly associated with African Americans in the South (but also common among blacks nationwide), makes creative use of inexpensive products procured through farming and subsistence hunting and fishing.

Pig intestines are boiled and sometimes battered and fried to make “chitterlings,” or "chitlins." Hamhocks and neck bones provide seasoning to soups; beans and boiled greens (turnip greens, collard greens, and mustard greens).

Other common foods, such as fried chicken and fish, cornbread and “hoppin’ John” (black-eyed peas and rice), are prepared simply. When the African-American population was considerably more rural than it generally is today, rabbit, possum, and squirrel, as well as waterfowl, were important additions to the diet. Many of these food traditions are especially predominant in many parts of the rural South. In culturally diverse urban areas, however, urban African Americans, like other ethnic groups, may eat and cook differently from their rural counterparts. Many African Americans also begun to incorporate Caribbean and African cuisine into their diets.

African American music (also called black music, formerly known as race music) is a strong presence in African American culture. The ancestors of African Americans were originally brought to North America to work as slaves in cotton plantations, bringing with them typically polyphonic songs from hundreds of ethnic groups across West and Sub-Saharan Africa. In the United States, multiple cultural traditions merged with influences from polka, waltzes and other European music, creating unique forms of music in African American communities. Later periods saw considerable innovation and change, and in the 21st century, African American genres have become some of the most dominant in mainstream popular music throughout the world. In African American communities across the United States, it's music reflects multiple and diverse aspects of African American historic and contemporary life and culture.

Impact on America and the world

From their earliest presence in North America, Africans and African Americans have contributed literature, art, agricultural skills, foods, clothing styles, music, language, social and technological innovation to American culture.

The cultivation and use of many agricultural products in the U.S., such as yams, peanuts, rice, okra, sorghum, grits, watermelon, indigo dyes, and cotton, can be traced to African and African American influences. A couple of notable examples include George Washington Carver, who created 300 products from peanuts, 118 products from sweet potatoes, and 75 from pecans and George Crum, who invented the potato chip in 1853.[[34]]

African American music is one of the most pervasive African American cultural influences in the United States today and is among the most dominant in mainstream popular music. Hip hop, rock, R&B, funk, soul, techno and other contemporary American musical forms originated in black communities and evolved from blues, jazz, and gospel music. African American derived musical forms have also influenced and been incorporated into virtually every other popular musical genre in the world.

Many African American authors have written stories, poems, and essays influenced by their experiences as African Americans, and African American literature is a major genre in American literature. Famous examples include Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, and Maya Angelou.

African American inventors have created many widely used devices in the world and have contributed to international innovation. A few notable examples include the first successful open heart surgery, performed by Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, the conceptualization and establishment of blood banks around the world by Dr. Charles Drew, the air conditioner, patented by Frederick M. Jones, the creation of the gas mask and automatic traffic signal by Garrett Morgan, and the cellular phone, created by Henry Sampson.

The gains made by African Americans in the civil rights and Black Power movements not only obtained certain rights for African Americans, but changed American society in far-reaching and fundamentally important ways. Prior to the 1950s, Americans were still living in the shadow of slavery and Jim Crow, when, in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., African Americans and their supporters challenged the nation to "rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed that all men are created equal…."[35]

The Civil Rights Movement marked a sea of change in American social, political, economic and civic life. It brought with it boycotts, sit-ins, demonstrations, court battles, bombings and other violence; prompted worldwide media coverage and intense public debate; forged enduring civic, economic and religious alliances; disrupted and realigned the nation's two major political parties; and over time has changed in fundamental ways the manner in which blacks and whites interact with and relate to one another.

Ultimately, the movement resulted in the removal of codified, de jure racial segregation and discrimination from American life and law and heavily influenced the civil and social liberties that many Americans of varied cultural backgrounds expect for themselves. The precedents set by the Civil Rights Movement in terms of strategies and tactics, as well as goals achieved, influenced the Free Speech Movement, the struggles of farm workers and migrant laborers in the United Farm Workers union, the American Indian Movement, the effort to secure equal rights for women, the physically handicapped, the hearing impaired, and other ethnic minorities. Further, the struggle of African Americans for constitutional and human rights endures as a model for disenfranchised and oppressed groups worldwide in their struggles for civil and human rights and self-determination.

The term African American

Political overtones

The term African American carries important political overtones. Previous terms used to identify Americans of African ancestry were conferred upon the group by whites and were included in the wording of various laws and legal decisions which became tools of white supremacy and oppression. There developed among blacks in America a growing desire for a term of their own choosing.

With the political consciousness that emerged from the political and social ferment of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Negro fell into disfavor among many African Americans. It had taken on a moderate, accommodationist, even Uncle Tomish, connotation. In this period, a growing number of blacks in the U.S., particularly African American youth, celebrated their blackness and their historical and cultural ties with the African continent. The Black Power movement defiantly embraced black as a group identifier—a term they themselves had repudiated only two decades earlier—a term often associated in English with things negative and undesirable, proclaiming, "Black is beautiful."

In this same period, others favored the term Afro-American; this particular term never gained much traction, but by the 1990s, the term African American had emerged as the leading choice of self-referential term. Just as other ethnic groups in American society historically had adopted names descriptive of their families' geographical points of origin (such as Italian-American, Irish-American, Polish-American), many blacks in America expressed a preference for a similar term. Because of the historical circumstances surrounding the capture, enslavement and systematic attempts to de-Africanize blacks in the U.S. under chattel slavery, most African Americans are unable to trace their ancestry to a specific African nation; hence, the entire continent serves as a geographic marker.

For many, African American is more than a name expressive of cultural and historical roots. The term expresses African pride and a sense of kinship and solidarity with others of the African diaspora—an embracing of the notion of pan-Africanism earlier enunciated by prominent African thinkers such as Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. Dubois and, later, George Padmore.

A discussion of the term African American and related terms can be found in the journal article "The Politicization of Changing Terms of Self Reference Among American Slave Descendants" in American Speech v 66 is 2 Summer 1991 p. 133-46.

Who is African American?

To be considered African American in the United States of America, not even half of one's ancestry need be black African. The nation's answer to the question "Who is black?" long has been that a "black" is any person with any known African ancestry. This definition reflects the long experience with racism, white supremacy, slavery, and, later, with Jim Crow laws.

In the Southern United States, it became known as the one-drop rule, meaning that a single drop of "black blood" makes a person "black". Some courts have called it the traceable amount rule, and anthropologists call it the hypodescent rule, meaning that racially mixed persons are assigned the status of the subordinate group.

This definition emerged from the American South to become America's national definition, generally accepted by whites and blacks -- but for different reasons.

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Singer/songwriter, actress, record producer and fashion designer Beyoncé Knowles is a native-born African American with Louisiana Creole and Native American ancestral descent.

White supremacists, whose motivation was racist, considered anyone with African ancestry tainted, inherently inferior morally and intellectually and, thus, subordinate. During slavery, there was also a strong economic incentive to maximize the number of slaves. The designation of anyone possessing any trace of African ancestry as "black", and, therefore, of subordinate status to whites, guaranteed a source of free or cheap labor during slavery and for decades afterward.

For African Americans, the one-drop system of pigmentocracy was a significant factor in ethnic solidarity. African Americans generally shared a common lot in society and, therefore, common cause -- regardless of their multiracial admixture or social and economic stratification.

White Americans, Indians, other Asians and Arabs are traditionally not considered African American in the United States, though they or their ancestors may have emigrated from the African continent after generations of residence. In relatively rare cases when South African whites, Caucasoid North Africans or Asian immigrants from Africa living in America have self-identified as African American in an attempt to benefit from Affirmative Action or other entitlement programs, their claims generally have not been upheld.

In the 1980s, parents of mixed-race children began to organize and lobby for the addition of a more inclusive term of racial designation that would reflect the heritage of their children. As a result, the term biracial has become more widely used and accepted to classify people of mixed race. There are also those in the U.S. who identify demographically as black/African American while also acknowledging their "mixed" heritage socially.

Due in part to a centuries-old history within the United States, historical experiences during and after slavery, and migrations throughout North America, most African Americans, historically and/or contemporarily, possess varying degrees of admixture with European and Native American ancestry. In recent decades, as the multicultural climate of the United States has continued to expand, significant Asian and Latin American admixture can also be found throughout various African American populations (especially those in large, ethnically diverse states such as New York and California), though to a much lesser degree and extent historically than European and Native American ancestry.

Although the terms mixed, biracial or multiracial are increasingly used, it remains common for those who possess any visible traits of black heritage to identify solely within black/African American ethnic groups.

Terms no longer in common use

The term Negro, which was widely used until the 1960s, has become increasingly considered passé and inappropriate or derogatory. It is still fairly commonly used by older individuals and in the Deep South. Once widely considered acceptable, Negro fell into disfavor for reasons already herein stated. The self-referential term of preference for Negro became black.

Negroid/black was a term used by European anthropologists first in the 18th century to describe indigenous Africans and their descendants throughout the African diaspora. As with most descriptors of race based on inconsistent, unscientific phenotypical standards, the term is controversial and imprecise. Because of its similarity to Negro, growing numbers of blacks have substituted the term Africoid which, unlike Negroid, encompasses the phenotypes of all indigenous African peoples.

Other largely defunct, seldom used terms to refer to African Americans are mulatto and colored. Even so, the use of the word "colored" can still be found today in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP. The American use of the term mulatto originally was used to mean the offspring of a "pure African black" and a "pure European white".

The Latin root of the word is mulo, as in "mule", implying incorrectly that, like mules, which are horse-donkey hybrids, mulattoes are sterile crosses of two different species. For example, in the early 20th century, African American leaders such as Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass, who had slaves as mothers and white fathers, were referred to as mulattoes. Whilst not as common as "mixed", "biracial," or even "multiracial," mulatto is still sometimes used to refer to people of mixed parentage and, despite its origin, is not considered inherently derogatory.

The term quadroon referred to a person of one-fourth African descent, for example, someone born to a Caucasian father and a mulatto mother. Someone of one-eighth African descent technically was an octoroon, although the term often was used to refer to any white person with even a hint of black ancestry.

Mulatto and terms with the -roon suffix persisted in a social context for a number of decades, but by the mid twentieth century, they no longer were in common use. With the end of slavery, there was no longer a strong commercial incentive to classify blacks by their African-European ancestral admixture. The occasional use of these terms, however, does still persist in electronic media, literature and in some social settings.

Criticisms of the term

There is some minor criticism of the term African American. To be African American, some argue that an individual would have to be born in Africa, then immigrate to the U.S., and then obtain citizenship. By this definition, an overwhelming majority of black Americans would not be African American, but of African American descent. The term can also be misinterpreted to include non-black immigrants from Africa to the United States, such as white South Africans or Arab Africans, though these groups generally do not refer to themselves as African American.

The term African American has also been misused by some in lieu of black, regardless of an individual's nationality, ethnicity or geography. For example, during the 2005 civil unrest in France, CNN anchorwoman Carol Lin referred[36] to the rioters as "African Americans." While the majority of rioters were of North African background, none were known to be U.S. citizens.

Defenders of the term argue that the term was never meant to encompass all Africans, or even all black people, but only those individuals formerly referred to as American Negroes, primarily people whose ancestors survived the Middle Passage and slavery. Further, in the U.S., which is often described as a "nation of immigrants," hyphenated American terms are used to describe one's national origin.

By virtue of this, any person born in Africa would take on the name of their country, for example, individuals from Nigeria would be called Nigerian-American, as it describes their national origin, as opposed to African American. The term African American is preferred by many because although the historical national origin of the majority of black Americans is not traceable, the continent of Africa provides a geographic point of origin and a descriptive term of themselves.

African American population

The following gives the African American population in the U.S. over time, based on U.S. Census figures. (Numbers from years 1920 to 2000 are based on U.S. Census figures as given by the Time Almanac of 2005, p 377)

Year	Number	Percentage of total population
1790	757,208	19.3% (highest historic percentage)
1800	1,002,037	18.9%
1810	1,377,808	19.0%
1820	1,771,656	18.4%
1830	2,328,642	18.1%
1840	2,873,648	16.8%
1850	3,638,808	15.7%
1860	4,441,830	14.1%
1870	4,880,009	12.7%
1880	6,580,793	13.1%
1890	7,488,788	11.9%
1900	8,833,994	11.6%
1910	9,827,763	10.7%
1920	10.5 million	9.9%
1930	11.9 million	9.7% (lowest historic percentage)
1940	12.9 million	9.8%
1950	15.0 million	10.0%
1960	18.9 million	10.5%
1970	22.6 million	11.1%
1980	26.5 million	11.7%
1990	30.0 million	12.1%
2000	36.6 million	12.3%

note: The CIA World Factbook gives the current 2005 figure as 13.5% [37]

References

Brandon S. Centerwall, "Race, Socioeconomic Status and Domestic Homicide, Atlanta, 1971-72," 74 AM. J. PUB. HLTH. 813, 815 (1984)
Darnell F. Hawkins, "Inequality, Culture, and Interpersonal Violence," 12 HEALTH AFFAIRS 80 (1993)
Jerome A. Neapolitan, "Cross-National Variation in Homicide; Is Race A Factor?" 36 CRIMINOLOGY 139 (1998)

External links

Definition of African American from MedicineNet
Article detailing the problems of defining African American
Black men quietly combating stereotypes
"Of Arms & the Law: Don Kates on Afro-American Homicide Rates"
Scientific American Magazine (June 2006) Trace Elements Reconnecting African-Americans to an ancestral past.

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@@ Line 319: / Line 319: @@
 *[http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060701/ap_on_re_us/men_surviving_blackness;_ylt=Alcq.8hmAJgwAP7AIqazPTYXIr0F;_ylu=X3oDMTA4dW1uZXIwBHNlYwMyNzQ3 Black men quietly combating stereotypes]
 *[http://armsandthelaw.com/archives/2006/04/don_kates_on_af.php "Of Arms & the Law: Don Kates on Afro-American Homicide Rates"]
+*[http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa004&articleID=000C97BA-94E0-146C-944583414B7FFE9F Scientific American Magazine (June 2006) Trace Elements] Reconnecting African-Americans to an ancestral past.
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