Afro-American

African American is a term that began to be used in the United States in the 1980s, by the same population with African ancestry derived from slavery with or without miscegenation, to vindicate the pride of their African roots.

The term was expanded and began to be used for the same purpose, to refer to people born in the American continent in general, who have sub-Saharan African ancestors derived from slavery with or without miscegenation; African Americans are therefore a group of African descent. Most are descendants of people captured, enslaved and transferred from sub-Saharan Africa (the vast majority from the Gulf of Guinea) to America to work mainly in mines and plantations as slaves, between the 16th and 19th centuries (see Atlantic slave trade). It can be confused with Afro-American, which is the literal translation of the English term African American (African American). In English it has the synonym of Black American (black American).

Today, they make up around 30% of the continent's population, with the highest to lowest percentages in Haiti (95%), Saint Kitts and Nevis (92.5%), Barbados (92.4%)), Jamaica (92.1%), Bahamas (90.6%), Dominican Republic (90.2%, including mulattoes), Grenada (89.4%), Antigua and Barbuda (87.3%), Dominica (86.6%), Saint Lucia (85.3%), Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (66%), Cuba (62%, including mulattoes), Trinidad and Tobago (57.2%, including mestizos), Venezuela (55.1%, including mulattoes), Bermuda (53.8%), Panama (50%, including mulattoes and zambos), Brazil (45.3%, including mulattoes and pardos), Puerto Rico (41% including mulattoes), Colombia (40%, including mulattoes), United States (13.6%, including mulattoes), Peru (9.7%, including mulattoes and zambos), Nicaragua (9%), Uruguay (8.1%), Costa Rica (7.8%, including mulattoes, Ecuador (7.2%), Honduras (5%), Canada (3.2%), Argentina (4.5%), Mexico (2.5%, including Zambo), Bolivia (1%), and Guatemala (0.5%, including Garifuna).

On the other hand, in the countries of Chile, Paraguay, and El Salvador, the Afro-descendant or Afro-Mestizo populations are extremely scarce and it is estimated that they represent less than 0.2% of the total of their respective populations.

Use of the term

Map of African Population in America in 1901

The term Afro-American is mainly used to refer to dark-skinned people with African roots, born on the American continent. The term originated from Afro-descendants themselves in the United States and gradually spread to other territories throughout the American continent. Spanish-speakers in the United States and other English-speaking countries apply the term Afro-descendant exclusively to US citizens of African ancestry.^{[citation required]}

History of African Americans

Millions of Africans were enslaved and taken to work in the mines and plantations of the American continent between the 16th and 19th centuries. The reason they were African was that, apart from the fact that it is a relatively close continent (compared to Asia, for example), in Africa there was already a slave trade developed by the Arabs. Obviously, it was easier to buy slaves in an existing market than to create a new one.

Another important motivation was the adaptation of the black man to the tropical climate, and in particular to tropical diseases. Places like Virginia, Haiti or Brazil were plagued by malaria and yellow fever brought from tropical Africa. Generation after generation, Africans had developed some immunity, while European whites died in large numbers.

After the United States, Haiti, a country with an almost entirely Afro-descendant population, was the second American colony to achieve its independence. After the independence processes, many American countries have stimulated the immigration of Europeans, thus reducing the proportion of the black and mulatto population in the country as a whole: Brazil, the United States, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Venezuela, etc.

Even long after slavery was abolished, prejudice against blacks not only continued, but racial discrimination was reinforced. Religious (such as that blacks descended from Ham, son of Noah, cursed with slavery) and biological (that blacks were less intelligent and morally less developed) arguments became popular. These and other racist myths aggravated black stigma: that they were more violent, lazy, dirty, spreading disease, etc. It became, despite the end of slavery, a vicious circle that resulted in apartheid in all aspects of life.

In the Anglo-Saxon colonies, these terms do not exist, giving by definition the exclusive term of black or Afro-descendant, to all those people with African roots regardless of their miscegenation or the color of their skin.

African American Population Today

Distribution of African Americans in the United States in 2010

From November 21 to 25, 1995, the Continental Congress of the Black Peoples of the Americas was held.

African Americans are still discriminated against in most of the continent. According to David de Ferranti, World Bank Vice President for the Latin American and Caribbean region, African Americans have lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality, higher frequency of and more generalized diseases, higher illiteracy rates, and lower incomes than their fellow citizens.. Thus, in the United States, they constitute more than 40% of the prisoners on death row. Women, who are also subject to gender discrimination, suffer worse living conditions.

With regard to diseases, African-Americans suffer pathologies typical of the Western world such as ischemic heart disease or cancer, especially prostate cancer, more frequently than the population residing in Africa and even white Americans.

Even in countries like Brazil, with 6.9% of the population phenotypically "black" and 23.8% of those who are phenotypically "mulatto" tend to be poor. However, it is important to note that in Brazil the category "pardo" is used for a person "multiracial" or "mestizo", and includes all mulattoes, zambos and the result of their miscegenation with other groups (who do not appear sub-Saharan or black enough and do not have enough appearance of white), but is independent of ancestry African, as some white Brazilians have at least one recent African and/or Native American ancestry, and among the "pardos" Caboclos (descendants of whites and Amerindians or mestizos) are also included.

According to various studies, the main genetic contribution of Brazilians is European (always above 45%, and for other Americans it reaches 57%) and the "pardos" have an intermediate degree of African ancestry compared to the average for white Brazilians and Afro-Brazilians (the former mostly with several detectable features of color due to their ancestors and the latter with highly mixed features) and have a greater Amerindian contribution in areas such as the Amazon basin and a greater African contribution in areas of historical slavery, such as southeastern Brazil and northeastern coastal cities, although both are present in all regions, and that physical traits in many cases do not correlate with detectable ancestry.

On November 4, 2008, the first black American president, Barack Obama, won the presidential election with 52% of the vote. Obama meets the definition of "derived from slavery" exposed above not by her black African father whose ancestors were never slaves outside of Africa, but by her white American mother, whose ancestor in 1647 was sentenced to life slavery.

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