Racial polarization
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Racial polarization is the process whereby a population, the individuals of which have varying degrees of diversity in their ancestry, is divided into separate, and distinct (from each other) racial groups.
An example is the case of the demographics of Bermuda. Bermuda was settled from 1609, primarily by English indentured servants. By the end of the century, these white Anglo-Bermudians were still the majority, but four minority groups had appeared. The first of these was Native Americans. In Bermuda, this refers to a diverse collection of peoples shipped to the island and sold into slavery. Many were Algonquian peoples, notably Wampanoags, Pequots, Narragansetts, and Mohegans, all shipped to Bermuda following wars against England or Holland, but Native Americans appear to have been imported from as far away as Mexico. The island's early blacks were a similarly diverse grouping, including free Spanish-speakers, from formerly Spanish territories in the West Indies, who had immigrated as indentured servants, and enslaved blacks from the West Indies, Africa, and elsewhere. As with the Native American population, this was not a cohesive, homogenous demographic group, as it covered people of diverse origins and cultures. The other two minority demographicss were somewhat more homogenous. The larger of these was made up of Irish prisoners-of-war (POW) and ethnically-cleansed civilians, exported to Bermuda after Oliver Cromwell's invasion of Ireland, and sold into slavery for seven years. The last group was made up of Scottish POWs, who arrived in Bermuda under similar circumstances to the Irish and Algonquians. The Irish and Scots were ostracised by the white Anglo-Bermudian majority, and combined with the other minorities over the following generations. Although a great many terms were used in Bermuda in the 17th Century to denote people of different diversities of ancestry, together, that part of the population that was not considered white and English came to form a single demographic group that, despite its diverse ancestry, has been known ever since as black Bermudian. This group also absorbed part of the white Anglo-Bermudian bloodline, and continued to do so. Until the arrival of Portuguese immigrants (which included blacks from the Cape Verde Islands) beginning in the 1840s, the only other demographic group was white Bermudian. By the 19th Century, there was little cultural difference between the two groups.
Due partly to the emigration of 10,000 Bermudians, mostly poorer whites, before American independence closed the door on the efflux, the multi-racial, black-Bermudians were left with a slight majority. Although Portuguese immigration increased the ratio of whites, they were not viewed by either white or black Bermudians as Bermudian, and even now are referred to as Portuguese (or, more generously, Portuguese Bermudians). Portuguese Bermudians are often thought of as constituting a separate racial group, also (akin to Latinos, or Hispanics, in the USA), and their numbers have been offset by large scale immigration from the West Indies which began at the start of the 20th Century. This leaves Bermuda with a population of remarkably diverse origins, today, but this is something which has escaped most Bermudians, and is rarely noted by visitors. Although it has often been pointed out that by far the greatest part of its ancestry is actually European, sixty percent of Bermuda's population, today, is typically described as being black, or of African ancestry (most can be presumed to have more European ancestry). The remainder are described as being of European ancestry (and can be presumed not to have had a black African ancestor). The Portuguese population is sometimes distinguished as amounting to ten percent of the population. Native American ancestry is almost never mentioned, and a Native American demographic group has not been recorded for centuries.
The reduction of this diverse population to two diametrically opposed (black and white) groups is polarization.
