African Americans are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from any of the black racial groups of Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of enslaved Africans who are from the United States. While some Black immigrants or their children may also come to identify as African American, the majority of first generation immigrants do not, preferring to identify with their nation of origin.
Mestizo is a person of mixed European and indigenous American ancestry in the Spanish Empire.In certain regions such as Latin America, it may also refer to people who are culturally European even though their ancestors are Native American. The term was used as an ethno-racial exonym for mixed-race castas that evolved during the Spanish Empire. It was a formal label for individuals in official documents, such as censuses, parish registers, Inquisition trials, and others. Priests and royal officials might have classified persons as mestizos, but individuals also used the term in self-identification.
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 Its use is considered outdated and offensive in several languages, including English and Dutch, whereas in languages such as Spanish and Portuguese is not, and can even be a source of pride. A mulatta is a female mulatto.
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 one-drop rule was a legal principle of racial classification that was prominent in the 20th-century United States. It asserted that any person with even one ancestor of black ancestry is considered black. It is an example of hypodescent, the automatic assignment of children of a mixed union between different socioeconomic or ethnic groups to the group with the lower status, regardless of proportion of ancestry in different groups.
The Magical Negro is a trope in American cinema, television, and literature. In the cinema of the United States, the Magical Negro is a supporting stock character who comes to the aid of white protagonists in a film. Magical Negro characters, who often possess special insight or mystical powers, have long been a tradition in American fiction.
The Black Arts Movement (BAM) was an African American-led art movement that was active during the 1960s and 1970s. Through activism and art, BAM created new cultural institutions and conveyed a message of black pride. The movement expanded from the incredible accomplishments of artists of the Harlem Renaissance.
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.
In the United States, a Hispanic or Latino is an individual who is of full or partial Hispanic or Latino descent, the largest group being Mexican Americans. Although not differentiated in the U.S. Census definition, White Latino Americans may also be defined to include those who identify as white and either originate from or have descent from not only Spanish speaking countries in Latin America but also other Romance languages other than Spanish, such as Brazil, Haiti, and French Guiana.
Trey Ellis is an American novelist, screenwriter, professor, playwright, and essayist. He was born in Washington D.C. and graduated from Hopkins School and Phillips Academy, Andover, where he studied under Alexander Theroux before attending Stanford University, where he was the editor of the Stanford Chaparral and wrote his first novel, Platitudes in a creative writing class taught by Gilbert Sorrentino. He is a Professor of Professional Practice in the Graduate School of the Arts at Columbia University.
Archibald John Motley, Jr., was an American visual artist. He studied painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago during the 1910s, graduating in 1918. Motley is most famous for his colorful chronicling of the African-American experience in Chicago during the 1920s and 1930s, and is considered one of the major contributors to the Harlem Renaissance, or the New Negro Movement, a time in which African-American art reached new heights not just in New York but across America—its local expression is referred to as the Chicago Black Renaissance.
The legal and social strictures that define White Americans, and distinguish them from persons who are not considered White by the government and society, have varied throughout the history of the United States.
The Black elite is any elite, either political or economic in nature, that is made up of people who are of Black African descent. In the Western World, it is typically distinct from other national elites, such as the United Kingdom's aristocracy and the United States' upper class.
The Creoles of color are a historic ethnic group of Creole people that developed in the former French and Spanish colonies of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Northwestern Florida, in what is now the United States. French colonists in Louisiana first used the term "Creole" to refer to people born in the colony, rather than in France.
Social class in Haiti uses a class structure that groups people according to wealth, income, education, type of occupation, and membership in a specific subculture or social network. Since the colonial period as part of the colony of Saint-Domingue (1625–1804), race has played an important factor in determining social class.
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 2010 United States census, approximately 9 million individuals or 3.2% of the population, self-identified as multiracial. There is evidence that an accounting by genetic ancestry would produce a higher number. The impact of historical racial caste systems, such as that created by admixture between white European colonists and Native Americans, has often led people to identify or be classified by only one ethnicity, generally that of the culture in which they were raised. Prior to the mid-20th century, many people hid their multiracial heritage because of racial discrimination against minorities. While many Americans may be considered multiracial, they often do not know it or do not identify so culturally, any more than they maintain all the differing traditions of a variety of national ancestries.
The term post-blackness is a philosophical movement with origins in the art world that attempts to reconcile the American understanding of race with the lived experiences of African Americans in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Colorism in the Caribbean describes discrimination based on skin tone, or colorism, in the Caribbean.
The term post-soul was coined by Nelson George in a 1992 Village Voice feature article, "Buppies, B-boys, BAPS, and Bohos." The article contained a chronology of significant shifts in African-American culture since the 1970s, exemplified by Melvin Van Peebles, Muhammad Ali, Stevie Wonder, and James Brown. In 2005, George reworked his chronology in a book entitled Post Soul Nation: The Explosive, Contradictory, Triumphant, and Tragic 1980s as Experienced by African Americans . Unlike the wider scope of George's original Village Voice article, Post-Soul Nation focuses on the 1980s to describe a series of political, social, and cultural shifts which helped reshape the African-American experience in the United States after the civil-rights era.
Mulatto is a racial classification to refer to people of mixed black African and white European ancestry.
