The term 'Black elite' refers to elites within black communities in Western countries, that are either political, economic, intellectual or cultural in nature. These are typically distinct from other national elites, such as the United Kingdom's aristocracy and the United States' upper class.
In the United Kingdom, the black community has largely consisted of immigrants and their descendants whose residency in the country dates from either the time of the old British Empire or that of the new Commonwealth. Persons classified as being of African descent have nevertheless been a recognizable component of British society since at least the Elizabethan period. [1] Some individuals of African or partial African descent were introduced to elite levels of society in the 18th and 19th centuries, such as Dido Elizabeth Belle, the mixed-race child of a British colonial aristocrat, [2] and Sara Forbes Bonetta, the West African adopted goddaughter of Queen Victoria. [3] Others attained political and social prominence, such as Olaudah Equiano, a freed African slave who became a campaigner for the abolition of slavery in the Empire, [4] and Mary Seacole, a heroine of the Crimean War. [5] In the first half of the 20th century the Trinidadian Learie Constantine became a professional cricketer in the Lancashire League and contributed to the campaign for racial equality in Britain. [6]
In the latter 20th and 21st centuries elites have developed within the black British community, with the rise of black and mixed-race national leaders such as Paul Boateng, [7] [8] and the success of numerous black and mixed-race persons in specialized industries, such as the arts (for example, Lenny Henry). [9]
Today, Britain's black and mixed-race people are included in the annual Powerlist —a ranking of the nation's most prominent people of color. [10] A number of them, such as Boateng and Henry, have been made peers and/or knights of the realm. There is also a small community of British aristocrats that are of partially black descent. Emma Thynn (née McQuiston), the Marchioness of Bath as the wife of the 8th Marquess, belongs to this sub-group. [11] Other notable members are Prince Archie of Sussex and Princess Lilibet of Sussex, the partly mixed-race children of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
In the North of the United States, many educated black people (taking advantage of their relative freedom) [12] took part in abolitionist and suffragist activities. They also provided support to stations of the Underground Railroad prior to the abolition of slavery. Later, during the Reconstruction Era, a number of them took part in various professions and grew quite wealthy in places including Brooklyn. [13]
In the South, an elite started forming before the American Civil War among free black people who managed to acquire property. Of the free people of color in North Carolina in the censuses from 1790 to 1810, 80 percent can be traced to African Americans free in Virginia during the colonial period. Most were descended from unions between free white women and enslaved or free Africans or African Americans. Free black people migrated into frontier Virginia and then to other states over several generations in the colonial period, as did many of their neighbors. Extensive research into colonial court records, wills and deeds has demonstrated that most of those free families came from relationships or marriages between white women, servant or free, and black men, servant, free or slave. Such relationships were part of the more fluid relationships among the working class before the boundaries of slavery hardened. [14]
During slavery times, white slaveholders and others were known to rape enslaved African women, fathering mixed-race children. There were also slaveholders who had caring relationships, common-law marriages, and legal marriages to enslaved black women. They sometimes freed such women and their children. Some slaveholders did provide for their mixed-race children by ensuring they were educated; in the earliest periods, they might be apprenticed to a trade or craft. In some cases, fathers arranged to settle property on their "natural" children. Whatever property the father passed on to the child was important in helping that person get a start in life. These mulattos in turn patterned their subsequent lives after "polite" white society. In some places, such as New Orleans, this coalesced into what was known as Plaçage . [15] [16]
In the South, the free black elite often took leadership roles within the church, black schools, and community. Natural leaders rose up from many different classes. Some developed catering businesses or other services that enabled them to take advantage of their white contacts through family and other connections. The black elite also enjoyed the benefits of living within the white neighborhoods, which further isolated them from the darker-skinned African Americans and which caused many of them to blame them for the downward shifts in life-style choices. [17] Some lighter skinned black people even passed for white, and were assimilated into white society thereafter. [18]
The Civil Rights Movement and affirmative action brought about many changes for the black elite. As the old elite died away, a new black elite emerged. Within its ranks are politicians, entrepreneurs, actors, singers, sports figures, and many more who are otherwise part of America's wider upper-middle class. The political leaders Barack Obama and Kamala Harris are prominent members of this new elite. [19]
In addition to those already cited, groups from around the world that either are or once were generally thought to constitute a Black elite include:
Mulatto is a racial classification that refers to people of mixed African and European ancestry. Its use is considered by Nicholas Patrick Beck to be outdated and offensive in some countries and languages, such as English with the exceptions of some Anglophone Caribbean or West Indian countries and Dutch, but it does not have the same associations in languages such as Spanish and Portuguese. Among Latin Americans in the US, for instance, the term can be a source of pride. A mulatta is a female mulatto.
The terms multiracial people or mixed-race people refer to people who are of more than one race, and the terms multi-ethnic people or ethnically mixed people 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, Melezi, Coloured, Dougla, half-caste, ʻafakasi, mestizo, mutt, Melungeon, quadroon, octoroon, sambo/zambo, Eurasian, hapa, hāfu, Garifuna, pardo, and Gurans. A number of these once-acceptable terms are now considered offensive, in addition to those that were initially coined for pejorative use.
Slavery in the colonial history of the United States refers to the institution of slavery that existed in the European colonies in North America which eventually became part of the United States of America. Slavery developed due to a combination of factors, primarily the labor demands for establishing and maintaining European colonies, which had resulted in the Atlantic slave trade. Slavery existed in every European colony in the Americas during the early modern period, and both Africans and indigenous peoples were targets of enslavement by European colonists during the era.
The legal institution of human chattel slavery, comprising the enslavement primarily of Africans and African Americans, was prevalent in the United States of America from its founding in 1776 until 1865, predominantly in the South. Slavery was established throughout European colonization in the Americas. From 1526, during the early colonial period, it was practiced in what became Britain's colonies, including the Thirteen Colonies that formed the United States. Under the law, an enslaved person was treated as property that could be bought, sold, or given away. Slavery lasted in about half of U.S. states until abolition in 1865, and issues concerning slavery seeped into every aspect of national politics, economics, and social custom. In the decades after the end of Reconstruction in 1877, many of slavery's economic and social functions were continued through segregation, sharecropping, and convict leasing.
In the context of the history of slavery in the Americas, free people of color were primarily people of mixed African, European, and Native American descent who were not enslaved. However, the term also applied to people born free who were primarily of black African descent with little mixture. They were a distinct group of free people of color in the French colonies, including Louisiana and in settlements on Caribbean islands, such as Saint-Domingue (Haiti), St. Lucia, Dominica, Guadeloupe, and Martinique. In these territories and major cities, particularly New Orleans, and those cities held by the Spanish, a substantial third class of primarily mixed-race, free people developed. These colonial societies classified mixed-race people in a variety of ways, generally related to visible features and to the proportion of African ancestry. Racial classifications were numerous in Latin America.
In the British colonies in North America and in the United States before the abolition of slavery in 1865, free Negro or free Black described the legal status of African Americans who were not enslaved. The term was applied both to formerly enslaved people (freedmen) and to those who had been born free, whether of African or mixed descent.
In societies that regard some races or ethnic groups of people as dominant or superior and others as subordinate or inferior, hypodescent refers to the automatic assignment of children of a mixed union to the subordinate group. The opposite practice is hyperdescent, in which children are assigned to the race that is considered dominant or superior.
The tragic mulatto is a stereotypical fictional character that appeared in American literature during the 19th and 20th centuries, starting in 1837. The "tragic mulatto" is a stereotypical mixed-race person, who is assumed to be depressed, or even suicidal, because they fail to completely fit into the "white world" or the "black world". As such, the "tragic mulatto" is depicted as the victim of the society that is divided by race, where there is no place for one who is neither completely "black" nor "white".
Plaçage was a recognized extralegal system in French and Spanish slave colonies of North America by which ethnic European men entered into civil unions with non-Europeans of African, Native American and mixed-race descent. The term comes from the French placer meaning "to place with". The women were not legally recognized as wives but were known as placées; their relationships were recognized among the free people of color as mariages de la main gauche or left-handed marriages. They became institutionalized with contracts or negotiations that settled property on the woman and her children and, in some cases, gave them freedom if they were enslaved. The system flourished throughout the French and Spanish colonial periods, reaching its zenith during the latter, between 1769 and 1803.
Partus sequitur ventrem was a legal doctrine passed in colonial Virginia in 1662 and other English crown colonies in the Americas which defined the legal status of children born there; the doctrine mandated that children of slave mothers would inherit the legal status of their mothers. As such, children of enslaved women would be born into slavery. The legal doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem was derived from Roman civil law, specifically the portions concerning slavery and personal property (chattels), as well as the common law of personal property; analogous legislation existed in other civilizations including Medieval Egypt in Africa and Korea in Asia.
Edward Ball is an American author who has written multiple works on topics such as history and biography. He is best known for works that explore the complex past of his family, whose members were major rice planters and slaveholders in South Carolina for nearly 300 years. One of his more well known works is based around an African-American family, descended from one member of this family and an enslaved woman, whose members became successful artists and musicians in the Jazz Age.
Multiracial Americans or mixed-race Americans are Americans who have mixed ancestry of two or more races. The term may also include Americans of mixed-race ancestry who self-identify with just one group culturally and socially. In the 2020 United States census, 33.8 million individuals or 10.2% of the population, self-identified as multiracial. There is evidence that an accounting by genetic ancestry would produce a higher number.
The Healy family was an Irish-American and African-American family notable for the high achievements of its first generation of children, who were born into slavery in Georgia in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Slavery in Virginia began with the capture and enslavement of Native Americans during the early days of the English Colony of Virginia and through the late eighteenth century. They primarily worked in tobacco fields. Africans were first brought to colonial Virginia in 1619, when 20 Africans from present-day Angola arrived in Virginia aboard the ship The White Lion.
The treatment of slaves in the United States often included sexual abuse and rape, the denial of education, and punishments like whippings. Families were often split up by the sale of one or more members, usually never to see or hear of each other again.
Slavery in Cuba was a portion of the larger Atlantic Slave Trade that primarily supported Spanish plantation owners engaged in the sugarcane trade. It was practised on the island of Cuba from the 16th century until it was abolished by Spanish royal decree on October 7, 1886.
Colorism in the Caribbean describes discrimination based on skin tone, or colorism, in the Caribbean.
The ownership of enslaved people by indigenous peoples of the Americas extended throughout the colonial period up to the abolition of slavery. Indigenous people enslaved Amerindians, Africans, and —occasionally— Europeans.
Simon Taylor was a Jamaican-born planter and politician. Taylor was the wealthiest planter on the island, according to its governor, and died leaving an estate estimated at over £1 million, equivalent to £82,417,303 in 2023.
African American slave owners within the history of the United States existed in some cities and others as plantation owners in the country. During this time, ownership of slaves signified both wealth and increased social status.