African American

African American, Engl. African American, is a term for citizens of the United States, or whose ancestors came from the sub-Saharan part of Africa.

The demarcation of Americans of European or Latino of any race ( whites and Latinos ) is often difficult, as have arisen in the course of the centuries strong ethnic mixing. A generally accepted definition, from as many people as ancestors " European" / "white", "colored" or " Afro- American" / are "black" viewed, is not given. Often, African Americans relate with this designation critically on the history of the enslavement of Africans and thus limits of ethnicising and often criticized as racist names such as " Black ", " Negro " or " Colored " or the pejorative " nigger " from. Approximately 500,000 were enslaved ancestors from Africa 1619-1808 and brought mainly in the Caribbean and North America. Another self-designation is Black, which is often very important for political reasons.

In the African American in the tradition of Melville J. Herskovits, the term generally refers to African American communities in the Americas that have African ancestors. The question of who is African American, is provided by the immigration of people from the Caribbean and Africa to the U.S. and by the increase in the number of people who view themselves as multiracial, more recently often different. The election of Barack Obama as U.S. president has contributed to this discussion. So Americans of Haitian descent usually see as part of the Haitian Diaspora and American with roots in the Dominican Republic - regardless of the tone of their skin color - as Latinos, but not as African-Americans. Since the eighties, there is also a strong immigration of Africans (especially from Nigeria, Ghana and Ethiopia) in the United States. The children of these immigrants grow up as an American, but her family biographies are not influenced by the historical experiences of African Americans. There are findings that support programs in favor of African Americans disproportionately benefit children of African immigrants.

History of African Americans

In the later territory of the United States of African slaves were held since the early colonial period. Slaves who were taken directly from Africa, arrived at this point usually not on the North American mainland, but were sold to the sugar plantations of the Caribbean. The earliest black slaves on the American mainland were Atlantic creoles. Bulk importing enslaved people who were directly imported from Africa, began in the British colonies with the rise of the plantation economy in the American South in the 18th century.

The Declaration of Independence of the United States in 1776 led in spite of their much-publicized preamble, to all people the unalienable right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness was granted, not directly to the abolition of slavery. Even the Northern States whose economy only to a small extent based on the labor of enslaved people, adopted only gradually laws to a gradual emancipation of the slaves. In the Southern states, slavery remained unresolved. Since these states after the election of Abraham Lincoln, who was a prominent representative of abolitionism, 1861 leaked from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America, led to a secession in the Civil War.

After the victory of the Union and the dissolution of the Confederation of 1865, Congress passed the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery throughout the territory of the United States permanently. In the southern states immediately arose on the Ku Klux Klan, who tried to systematically intimidate with terror, violence and lynching African Americans and members of various religious minorities and suppress. The Ku Klux Klan was and is the most prominent exponent of a White Supremacy ideology, which is widely used in the U.S. today.

The ongoing confrontation with poverty and racial discrimination led in the early 20th century to a large and long-lasting migration movement, the Great Migration, during which millions of African Americans left the South and from the Midwest, the Mid-Atlantic States and southern New England, but also California went. In response to the very hesitantly taking place legal equality and segregation, but equal legal consisted separate under the motto since 1896, in the mid- 1950s formed the African American civil rights movement, the so dissimilar personalities such as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and later Stokely Carmichael of the Black Panther Party brought forth a range of political fighting methods - tried and could therefore enforce desegregation and today almost complete formal equality of African Americans - as the boycott, civil disobedience and non-violent resistance. Problems that deal with American society to the present day, however, is the persistence of the economic and educational disadvantage of the African American population whose per capita income is still 62% of the median income of non-Hispanic whites, whose children often far above average grow up in incomplete families and their men also widely disproportionately fall into custody: about 8 percent of African-American U.S. citizens are permanently imprisoned.

Current situation in the United States

Usage

In the American socio-political debate African-American is now the most common expression used to describe the membership of an African Diaspora. It is used in a similar context as Black, Negro, the term no longer used as a racist write about it.

Names, "different" categorize people because of physical and cultural characteristics as or "foreign" are criticized as rassifizierende terms. From the experience that racist thinking and racist acts still socially exclude people, is in a bid to determine how one calls oneself, trying to explain racist speech and ways to break them. Thus, African- American and African-American and Black or Black refers to the experience of oppression and deliberately not on the ethnification by the description of external features.

One drop Rule

At the time of slavery and segregation were all people with " one drop of black blood" as black, ie regardless of the appearance of those people were considered to be black, where an African (black ) ancestor could be detected. At that time, these were referred to as Negro or Colored. Due to the success of the anti-discrimination and civil rights movement was racist attribution of the so-called "one -drop rule" but increasingly questioned since the late 1960s and lost its importance.

Statistics

Distribution of the African American population after the United States Census Bureau in the United States ( 2000 census )

Development of the African American population in the U.S.

Cities with a predominantly African American population include Detroit ( 82.7 %), Atlanta ( 54.0 %), Memphis ( 63.3 %), Baltimore ( 63.7 %), Newark ( 52.4 %) or Washington DC ( 50.7 %).

African Americans in South and Central America

In a broader sense, the term " African American " all populations of African descent in North, Central and South America, such as the African Canadian, Afro-Brazilians, Afro-Colombians, Afro Cuban or Haitian. The Spanish and Portuguese- speaking population groups are distinguished as African- Latin Americans from the mostly English-or French -speaking African Americans of North America.