Black is a racial classification of people, a 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 among 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 Some perceive the term 'black' as a derogatory, outdated, reductive or otherwise unrepresentative label, and as a result neither use nor define it, especially in African countries with little to no history of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. However, the ASA Style Guide says that the 'b' should not be capitalized due to the fact that racial descriptors are treated as adjectives rather than proper nouns.
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.Frigi et al. 2010, Ancient Local Evolution of African mtDNA Haplogroups in Tunisian Berber Populations , Human Biology, Volume 82, Number 4, August 2010. In the 18th century, the Moroccan Sultan Moulay Ismail "the Warrior King" (1672–1727) raised a corps of 150,000 black soldiers, called his Black Guard.Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East , Oxford University Press, 1994."Abīd al-Bukhārī (Moroccan military organization)" . Encyclopædia Britannica.
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 (Sudanese Arab) 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".Joseph Finklestone, Anwar Sadat: Visionary Who Dared, pp. 5–7, 31. .
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 (see Ma malakat aymanukum and sex),See Tahfeem ul Qur'an by Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, Vol. 2, pp. 112–113, footnote 44. See also commentary on verses : Vol. 3, notes 7–1, p. 241; 2000, Islamic Publications.Tafsir ibn Kathir 4:24. 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 (specifically, people of Nilotic ancestry). 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.Vukoni Lupa Lasaga, "The slow, violent death of apartheid in Sudan," 19 September 2006, Norwegian Council for Africa.
Sudanese Arabs are also black people in that they are culturally and linguistically Arabized indigenous peoples of Sudan of mostly Nilo-Saharan, Nubian,Richard A. Lobban Jr. (2004): "Historical Dictionary of Ancient and Medieval Nubia". The Scarecrow Press, p. 37. and CushiticJakobsson, Mattias; Hassan, Hisham Y.; Babiker, Hiba; Günther, Torsten; Schlebusch, Carina M.; Hollfelder, Nina (24 August 2017). "Northeast African genomic variation shaped by the continuity of indigenous groups and Eurasian migrations". PLOS Genetics. 13(8): e1006976. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1006976. ISSN 1553-7404. PMC 5587336. PMID 28837655. 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.George Ayittey, "Africa and China," The Economist, 19 February 2010. 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 (warriors, religious leaders) or professions (blacksmiths, farmers, merchants) 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.Samuel Decalo. Historical Dictionary of Niger. Scarecrow Press, London and New Jersey (1979). Jolijn Geels. Niger. Bradt London and Globe Pequot New York (2006).
Horn of 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 (both analogues to "negro" in an English-speaking context). 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 (dark-skinned slave) in contrast with the Afroasiatic-speaking nobles or saba qayh ("red men") or light-skinned slave; while on the other hand, western racial category standards do not differentiate between saba qayh ("red men"—light-skinned) or saba tiqur ("black men"—dark-skinned) Horn Africans (of either Afroasiatic-speaking, Nilotic-speaking or Bantu origin) thus considering all of them as "black people" (and in some case "negro") 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 (Bantu peoples of South Africa and Khoisans) 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 (mostly Indian), and Coloured. The Coloured group included people of mixed Bantu, Khoisan, and European ancestry (with some Malay ancestry, especially in the Western Cape). 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 (and often arbitrary) 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.