AFRICAN STUDIESconceptions of race are derived from a hierarchi-
cal European worldview that assigns the lowest
status to Africans, who are equated with black-
ness—the opposite of whiteness or European an-
cestry. When carefully examined in either an Afri-
can or European context, racial identity loses much
of its force as a concept. ‘‘White’’ and ‘‘black’’ are
more political designations than physical ones.
Thus, although there are indigenous Africans who
have lighter complexions than some indigenous
Europeans, widespread views of Europe as white
and Africa as black persist. By the same token, race
is often reified and incorrectly attributed charac-
teristics that are in point of fact intellectual, social,
cultural, or economic rather than biological. Gen-
erally speaking, race is incorrectly presumed to
incorporate characteristics that extend far beyond
human physical traits.
Apartheid in South Africa provides an excel-
lent example of the politically motivated, exclu-
sionary nature of racial classification systems (as
does the historical case of ‘‘Jim Crow’’ segregation
in the U.S. South). The assignment of people to
categories of White, Coloured, and African (Black)
in South Africa, coupled with the subdivision of
each racial category into smaller racial groups
(e.g., Whites = Afrikaner and English-speaking;
Asians = East Indian and Malaysian; Coloureds =
European/African and Asian/African; and Blacks
= Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho), was largely determined by
white efforts, as a demographic minority of the
population, to maintain their historic political,
economic, and social dominance. Apartheid relied
on an elaborate system of ‘‘racial markers,’’ such as
hair texture, skin color, and parentage, to classify
people into distinct racial groups. Associated with
each racial group were certain privileges and re-
strictions. Restrictions were heaviest and privileg-
es least for black Africans, the group at the bottom
of the South African color hierarchy. Thus race, as
a socially constructed, politically manipulated re-
ality in South Africa, exerted overwhelming force
in limiting black and coloured Africans’ access and
opportunities. The myth of the color hierarchy
became—to some degree—a self-fulfilling, self-
perpetuating prophecy in that many people, irre-
spective of race, internalized this value system.
The result was often self-imposed ranking, with
people of color creating additional levels within
the established hierarchy, thereby constructing
intricate designations for race that extended far
beyond traditional definition.Discussions of African racial identity are addi-
tionally complicated by the vast global population
of people of African ancestry. People of African
descent are present in sizeable numbers in the
Americas, Western Europe, and in parts of Asia
and the South Pacific. In most instances, the dis-
persion of African people around the world—
notably in Brazil, the United States, the Caribbean,
and Britain—is directly traceable to the European
conquest, domination, and distribution of African
people. Europe created, installed, and operated a
system of racial slave trade that fueled the econom-
ic, agricultural, and industrial development of the
Americas and of Europe. The slave trade displaced
millions of Africans and struck a crippling blow to
social, economic, political, and cultural life on the
African continent. The traffic in slaves was a demo-
graphic disaster for the African continent, taking
away people in the prime of their reproductive
and productive lives. The African slave trade left in
its wake destroyed villages, ruined crops, disrupt-
ed cultures, and crumbling social institutions. So
traumatic was the devastation of this trade in
human lives, and the subsequent colonial exploita-
tion of Africa for natural resources, that four
centuries later Africa has not yet fully recovered.Dramatic and extensive dispersion of Africans
confounded questions of race and racial identity
because of the extensive intermingling of Africans
with other so-called racial groups. This was par-
ticularly true in the Americas, where systematic
and legalized rape was characteristic of the era of
enslavement. The manipulation of race and racial
identity was a central feature in this drama. White
men used sexual subjugation as another means of
reinforcing their domination, resulting in the es-
tablished pattern of African hybrid identity. Yet
under the legal guidelines of American enslave-
ment, the children who resulted from this institu-
tionalized rape were considered black, and there-
by referred to by Chief Justice Taney (Dred Scott v.
Sandford, U.S. Supreme Court, 1857) as a people
with ‘‘no rights which the white man was bound to
respect.’’ African ancestry combined with Native
American, Asian, and European bloodlines to fur-
ther diversify the already rich biological heritage
of Africans. The extension of the African diaspora