Sambo originally Zambo is a derogatory label for a person of African descent in the Spanish language. Historically, it is a name in American English derived from a Spanish term for a person of African and Native American ancestry. After the Civil War, during and after the Jim Crow era the term was used in conversation, print advertising and household items as a pejorative descriptor for black people. The term is now considered offensive in American [1] and British English. [2]
Sambo came into the English language from zambo , the Spanish word in Latin America for a person of South American negro, mixed European, and native descent. [3] This in turn may have come from one of three African language sources. Webster's Third International Dictionary holds that it may have come from the Kongo word nzambu ('monkey'). The Royal Spanish Academy gives the origin from a Latin word, possibly the adjective valgus [4] or another modern Spanish term (patizambo), both of which translate to 'bow-legged'. [5] [6]
The equivalent term in Brazil is cafuzo . However, in Portugal and Portuguese-speaking Africa, cafuzo is used to refer to someone born of an African person and a person of mixed African and European ancestry. [7]
Another possibility is that Sambo may be a corruption of the name Samba (meaning "second son" in the language of the Fulbe, an ethnicity spread throughout the West African). Michael A. Gomez has argued that Sambo is actually a Muslim name and that men named Sambo in the South were likely to have been slaves who practiced Islam. [8]
Examples of Sambo as a common name can be found as far back as the 19th century. In Vanity Fair (serialised from 1847) by William M. Thackeray, the black-skinned Indian servant of the Sedley family from Chapter One is called Sambo. Similarly, in Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe, one of Simon Legree's overseers is named Sambo. Instances of it being used as a stereotypical name for African Americans can be found as early as the Civil War.
The name Sambo became especially associated with the children's book The Story of Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman, published in 1899. It was the story of a southern Indian boy named "Sambo" who outwitted a group of hungry tigers. Bannerman also wrote Little Black Mingo, Little Black Quasha, and Little Black Quibba. [9] [10]
Sambo's Grave is the 1736 burial site of a young Indian cabin boy or slave, on unconsecrated ground in a field near the small village of Sunderland Point, near Heysham and Overton, Lancashire, England. Sunderland Point used to be a port, serving cotton, sugar and slave ships from the West Indies and North America.
The once-popular Sambo's restaurant chain used the Helen Bannerman images to promote and decorate their restaurants, although the restaurants were originally claimed to have been named after the chain's co-owners, Samuel Battistone and Newell Bohnett. The name choice was a contributing factor in the chain's demise in the early 1980s. [11]
Black is a racialized classification of people, usually a political and skin color-based category for specific populations with a mid- to dark brown complexion. Not all people considered "black" have dark skin; in certain countries, often in socially based systems of racial classification in the Western world, the term "black" is used to describe persons who are perceived as dark-skinned compared to other populations. It is most commonly used for people of sub-Saharan African ancestry, Indigenous Australians and Melanesians, though it has been applied in many contexts to other groups, and is no indicator of any close ancestral relationship whatsoever. Indigenous African societies do not use the term black as a racial identity outside of influences brought by Western cultures.
Sambo may refer to:
Mulatto is a racial classification to refer to people of mixed African and European ancestry. Its use is considered outdated and offensive in several languages, including English and Dutch, whereas in languages such as Italian, Spanish and Portuguese it is not, and can even be a source of pride. A mulatta is a female mulatto.
The terms multiracial people or mixed-race people are used to refer to people who are of more than one race and the terms multi-ethnic people or ethnically-mixed people are used to refer to people who are of more than one ethnicity. A variety of terms have been used both historically and presently for mixed race people in a variety of contexts, including multiethnic, polyethnic, occasionally bi-ethnic, Métis, Muwallad, Colored, Dougla, half-caste, ʻafakasi, mestizo, mutt, Melungeon, quadroon, octoroon, sambo/zambo, Eurasian, hapa, hāfu, Garifuna, pardo, and Gurans. A number of these terms are now considered offensive, in addition to those that were initially coined for pejorative use. "Melezi" are called the offspring of Muslim Romani men and woman of host populations.
In the colonial societies of the Americas and Australia, a quadroon or quarteron was a person with one quarter African/Aboriginal and three quarters European ancestry. Similar classifications were octoroon for one-eighth black and quintroon for one-sixteenth black.
The region known as Hispanic America and historically as Spanish America is all the Spanish-speaking countries of the Americas. In all of these countries, Spanish is the main language - sometimes sharing official status with one or more indigenous languages or English, and Roman Catholicism is the predominant religion.
Zambo or Sambu is a racial term historically used in the Spanish Empire to refer to people of mixed Amerindian and African ancestry. Occasionally in the 21st century, the term is used in the Americas to refer to persons who are of mixed African and Indigenous American ancestry.
Pickaninny is a pidgin word for a small child, possibly derived from the Portuguese pequenino. It has been used as a racial slur for African American children and a pejorative term for Aboriginal children of the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand. It can also refer to a derogatory caricature of a dark-skinned child of African descent.
Afro–Latin Americans or Black Latin Americans are Latin Americans of full or mainly sub-Saharan African ancestry.
The Story of Little Black Sambo is a children's book written and illustrated by Scottish author Helen Bannerman and published by Grant Richards in October 1899. As one in a series of small-format books called The Dumpy Books for Children, the story was popular for more than half a century.
Zumbi, also known as Zumbi dos Palmares, was a Brazilian quilombola leader and one of the pioneers of resistance to slavery of Africans by the Portuguese in colonial Brazil. He was also the last of the kings of the Quilombo dos Palmares, a settlement of Afro-Brazilian people who liberated themselves from enslavement in the present-day state of Alagoas, Brazil. He is revered in Afro-Brazilian culture as a symbol of African freedom.
Helen Brodie Cowan Bannerman was a Scottish children's writer. She is best known for her first book, Little Black Sambo (1899).
Mumbo jumbo, or mumbo-jumbo, is confusing or meaningless language. The phrase is often used to express humorous criticism of middle-management, and specialty jargon, such as legalese, that non-specialists have difficulty in understanding. For example, "I don't understand all that legal mumbo jumbo in the fine print."
Mestiço is a Portuguese term that referred to persons born from a couple in which one was an aboriginal person and the other a European.
In the English language, the word negro is a term historically used to denote persons considered to be of Black African heritage. The word negro means the color black in both Spanish and in Portuguese, where English took it from. The term can be construed as offensive, inoffensive, or completely neutral, largely depending on the region or country where it is used, as well as the context in which it is applied. It has various equivalents in other languages of Europe.
Charlotte Barrows Chorpenning was an American children's playwright. When she was 60 years old, after her husband died, she began writing plays for children. She was also the artistic director of the children's theatre at the Goodman Theater in Chicago, and remains the most produced playwright in Goodman history. She adapted many famous fairy and folktales. She believed that children would come to see plays about characters they knew already. She also strongly believed that plays should not talk down to children, and that children should be able to identify with the lead. Chorpenning described her writing and directing process in her book, Twenty-One Years With Children's Theatre, published in 1954.
Afro-Nicaraguans are Nicaraguans of Sub-Saharan African descent. Five main distinct ethnic groups exist: The Creoles who descend from Anglo-Caribbean countries and many of whom still speak Nicaragua English Creole, the Miskito Sambus descendants of Spanish slaves and indigenous Central Americans who still speak Miskito and/or Miskito Coast Creole, the Garifunas descendants of Zambos expelled from St. Vincent who speak Garifuna, the Rama Cay zambos a subset of the Miskito who speak Rama Cay Creole, and the descendants of those enslaved by the Spanish.
In the former Portuguese and Spanish colonies in the Americas, pardos are triracial descendants of Southern Europeans, Indigenous Americans and West Africans.
The word Nagos refers to all Brazilian Yoruba people, their African descendants, Yoruba myth, ritual, and cosmological patterns. Nagos derives from the word anago, a term Fon-speaking people used to describe Yoruba-speaking people from the kingdom of Ketu, Toward the end of the slave trade in the 1880s, the Nagos stood out as the African group most often shipped to Brazil. The Nagos were important to the history of the slave trade at that time in the 19th century, as Brazil requested more enslaved persons as demand for products from this region grew and harsh conditions on plantations entailed a high turnover.