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The African diaspora is the Diaspora created by the movements and cultures of Africa ns and their descendants throughout the world, to places such as the Americas , (including The United States , Canada , the Caribbean , Central America , and South America ) Europe and Asia . Much of the African diaspora is descended from people who were Enslaved and shipped to the Americas during the Atlantic Slave Trade , with the largest population living in Brazil (see Afro-Brazilian ). DEFINITIONS More broadly, the African diaspora comprises the descendants of the indigenous peoples of Africa, wherever they are in the world outside Africa itself. . The African Union has defined the African diaspora as " {Link without Title} of people of African origin living outside the continent, irrespective of their citizenship and nationality and who are willing to contribute to the development of the continent and the building of the African Union." Its constitutive act declares that it shall "invite and encourage the full participation of the African Diaspora as an important part of our Continent, in the building of the African Union." Most societies that apply the "black" label on the basis of a person's ancestry justify it as applying to members of the African diaspora. Between 1500 and 1900, approximately four million enslaved African were transported to island plantations in the Indian Ocean , about eight million were shipped to Mediterranean-area countries, and about eleven million survived the Middle Passage to the New World .Pier M. Larson, Reconsidering Trauma, Identity, and the African Diaspora: Enslavement and Historical Memory in Nineteenth-Century Highland Madagascar , ''William and Mary Quarterly'' 56, no. 2 (1999): 335-62. Their descendants are now found around the globe. Due to intermarriage and genetic assimilation, just who is a descendant of the African diaspora is not entirely self-evident. NORTH AMERICA British North America imported only about 500,000 Africans out of the 11 million shipped across the Atlantic.Hugh Thomas, ''The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440-1870'' (New York, 1997), 793, 804-5. Nevertheless, the United States has preserved two surprisingly distinct genetic populations: one of mostly African ancestry, the other overwhelmingly European.Heather E. Collins-Schramm, et al., "Markers that Discriminate Between European and African Ancestry Show Limited Variation Within Africa," ''Human Genetics'', 111 (September 2002), 566-99. All other New World states (except Canada) that enslaved African have unimodal Afro-European genetic admixture scatter diagrams. Indeed, two thirds of white Americans have no detectable African ancestry at all, other than the prehistoric African ancestry shared by all humans. Only one-third of white Americans have detectable African DNA (averaging 2.3 percent) from ancestors who passed through the endogamous color line from black to white.Mark D. Shriver and others, "Skin Pigmentation, Biogeographical Ancestry, and Admixture Mapping," ''Human Genetics'', 112 (2003), 387-99. Furthermore, U.S. government's surveys continue to categorize on a strict color-line. The federal census has no provision for a "multiracial" or "biracial" self-identity and, until 2000, forbade checking off more than one box. The EEOC has strict regulations defining who is black or white and implicitly denies the existence of mixed people. LATIN AMERICA At an intermediate level, in or Puerto Rico ), the number is larger, but all are still of mixed ancestry.Clara E. Rodriguez, "Challenging Racial Hegemony: Puerto Ricans in the United States," in ''Race'', ed. Steven Gregory and Roger Sanjek (New Brunswick NJ, 1994), 131-45, 137. See also Frederick P. Bowser, "Colonial Spanish America," in ''Neither Slave Nor Free: The Freedmen of African Descent in the Slave Societies of the New World'', ed. David W. Cohen and Jack P. Greene (Baltimore, 1972), 19-58, 38. EUROPE See Also: Afro-European Most of the presence of people of African descent living in Europe is not due to slave-trade, but to recent Human Migration , chiefly Refugee s. There are about 1.2 million British Afro-Caribbeans , a group largely attributable to immigration from the British West Indies after World War II . France has about 4 million residents of African descent (largely from Algeria and the Magreb generally), the Netherlands ca. 700,000, and Germany Ca. 300,000 . Altogether, the European population with African ancestry is estimated to ca. 5 million. There is also some Sub-Saharan DNA Admixture in the Genetic History Of Europe . EXAMPLES A few examples of populations who are seen as "Black" or who see themselves as "Black" because they descend from native Africans are: African Americans, many Latin Americans, and most residents of the Republic of South Africa (basically those with "obvious" African features). African Americans — (see description above) or visit African American . Afro-Latin Americans — Among the Afro-Latin American populations in South and Central America there are populations that identify as ''negros''. Some with high levels of admixture as well. The difference is that, contrary to the USA, membership in the Black ethnicity is usually by upbringing and not by an imposed concept of One-drop pism. Afro-Arabs — Various people of the Middle East whose ancestors were brought during the Arab Slave Trade period. A Legacy Hidden in Plain Sight (washingtonpost.com) Siddi s — Black people of African descent in Pakistan and India . Many share the similar name "Saeed" (Sheedis, Shudra, and Siddi). ESTIMATED POPULATION AND DISTRIBUTION Note that population statistics from different sources and countries use highly divergent methods of rating the "race", ethnicity, or national or genetic origin of individuals, from observing for color and racial characteristics, to asking the person to choose from a set of pre-defined choices, sometimes with an Other category, and sometimes with an open-ended option, and sometimes not, which different national populations tend to choose in divergent ways. Color and visual characteristics were considered an invalid way to determine the genetic "racial" branch in anthopology (the field of science that original conceived of "race", as a genetic branch of people who could have a relative success together compared with other branches, now considered invalid) as of 1910. Top 10 African Diaspora populations The Americas
Canada See Also: African Canadian Much of the earliest black presence in Canada came from the United States , comprising former slaves who escaped along the Underground Railroad to locations in Nova Scotia and Southwestern Ontario . Slavery had begun to be outlawed in British North America as early as 1793. Later black immigration to Canada came primarily from the Caribbean , in such numbers that fully 70 per cent of all blacks now in Canada are of Caribbean origin. As a result of the prominence of Caribbean immigration, the term "African Canadian", while sometimes used to refer to the minority of Canadian blacks who have direct African or African American heritage, is ''not'' normally used to denote all black Canadians. Blacks of Caribbean origin may be denoted as "Caribbean Canadian" or "Afro-Caribbean Canadian", but there remains no widely used alternative to "Black Canadian" which is considered inclusive of both the African Canadian and Caribbean Canadian communities. Europe
Russia While there may have been black people in . Czar Peter The Great was recommended by his friend Lefort to bring Africans to Russia for doing hard work. Alexander Pushkin was the descendant of the African slave Abram Petrovich Gannibal , who became Peter's protege, was educated as a Military Engineer in France, and eventually became general-en-chef for building of sea forts and Canal s in Russia. During the 1930s fifteen review of family memoir entitled ''Three Very Rare Generations'']As African states Became Independent in the 1960s, the Soviet Union offered them the chance to study in Russia; over 40 years, 400,000 African students came, and many settled there. MediaRights: Film: Black Russians Лили Голден и Лили Диксон. Телепроект "Черные русские": синопсис. Info on "Black Russians" film project in English Note that there are also non-African people within the former Soviet Union who are colloquially referred to as "the blacks" (''chernye''), and often face social discrimination. 2002 p36-37 . See also Racism In Russia . SEE ALSO
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