People from Sub-Saharan Africa
In the 2010 Census, 12.4 percent of the U.S. population was identified as Black or
African American, with ancestry in sub-Saharan Africa. The two terms are often used
interchangeably, but technically Blackis a race that includes Andaman Islanders,
Australian aboriginals, and other people from outside sub-Saharan Africa and does
not apply to the White, Asian, and Khoisan residents of Zimbabwe or Zaire. African
American is an ethnicity, referring to the descendants of Black Africans who came to
North America as slaves between 1500 and 1820 and after slavery were subject to
“Jim Crow” laws that kept Blacks and Whites separate and unequal. They therefore
do share a history and cultural traditions. African Americans are the only group to
immigrate to the United States against their will, as they were forcibly abducted to
serve as slaves in the South and in the Caribbean.
To reinforce that common cultural tradition, some have invented new holidays
like Juneteenth and Kwaanza. Some have fashioned a distinctive dialect of English,
called “Ebonics,” with some terms and grammatical structures borrowed from West
African languages. The creation of new, and distinctly African American, names is
also an invented way to “preserve” traditions. (Historically, slaves were named by
their masters and likely to bear Anglo names like Sally and Bill; the power to name
your child a more African-sounding name, like, say, Shaniqua or Kadeem, illustrates
the power to control the fate of that child.)
Thus, in the process, they transformed race into ethnicity in its own
right. (These invented traditions are controversial in the African Ameri-
can community itself because they replace more Christian holidays like
Christmas.) Contemporary immigrants from Nigeria or South Africa may
be Black, White, or Asian, but they would not be African American.
The African American population is expected to experience modest
growth by 2050, growing from 195.7 million to 210.3 million.
At the turn of the last century, the great African American sociologist
W. E. B. DuBois said that “the problem of the twentieth century is the
problem of the color line.” There are many racial and ethnic minority
groups in the United States, and African Americans are not even the
largest, yet they have always been the “standard” minority. Studies of
prejudice and discrimination often concentrate on White and Black,
ignoring everyone else, and indeed most of the racist legislation in the
United States has been directed primarily if not exclusively against African
Americans. The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s did not need to be
more specific: Everyone realized that it was about the civil rights of African Americans.
Today, African Americans have achieved some measure of political and economic
success. There is a sizeable Black middle class, with educational background and earn-
ings comparable to those of middle-class Whites. Overall, however, African Ameri-
cans lag behind White non-Hispanic Americans in high school graduation rate by 15
percentage points (Mishel and Joydeep, 2006) and college graduation rate by 20 per-
centage points (Journal of Blacks in Higher Education,2007). Black men’s median
earnings are 75 percent of what White men earn (women are roughly equal) (State
of Black America,2007). Nearly 26 percent of Black families and 11.7 percent of
White families are below poverty level (American Community Survey 2009). Young
Black men are nine times more likely to be murdered than are White men, and Black
women three times as likely as White women (State of Black America,2007). In the
mass media, Black actors continue to be segregated, playing streetwise, inner-city
thugs, cops, and other raw or rebellious types, except in movies and television pro-
grams aimed at a Black audience (Hill and Hill, 1985; Marchioso, 2001).
ETHNIC GROUPS IN THE UNITED STATES 267The words hip-hop, hippie, and hipall come
from the African American hep, “cool” or
“up to date,” which ultimately derives from
the Yoruba hipikat, “one who is aware,
finely tuned to his or her environment.”
Other words and phrases derived from West
African languages include guy(gay,
“people”),dig(dega, “understand”),
jamboree(“gathering”), bug(“bother”),
bogus(boku, “fraud”), and kick the bucket
(kikatavoo, “die”).Didyouknow
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