Notable Afro-Asians: Robert C. Scott • Bryan Clay • Kamala Harris • Naomi Campbell • Staceyann Chin • Tyson Beckford • Jean Ping • Chanel Iman • Crystal Kay |
Total population |
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Official population numbers are unknown; United States: 106,782 (2000)[1] |
Regions with significant populations |
United States • Puerto Rico • Jamaica • Trinidad and Tobago • Guyana • South Africa • Kenya • United Kingdom • Réunion • Suriname • India • Madagascar |
Afro-Asian or Blasian is a moniker used to refer a person of mixed Black and Asian (specifically East or Southeast Asian) ancestry.[2]
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In Latin America, significant numbers of Chinese first started arriving in the mid 19th century as part of the Coolie slave trade. By the mid 20th century, Cuba and Peru had the largest Chinese populations. By the end of WWII, there were considerable high numbers of Latin American descended from Chinese fathers and local women. One of the most famous of these is the Chinese-Afro-Cuban artist Wifredo Lam, known as the Cuban Picasso. There are also small numbers of Latin American residents of Asian and African descent in countries like Puerto Rico, Haiti and Dominican Republic.
The majority of the population of Madagascar is primarily a mixture in varying degrees of Austronesian and Bantu settlers from Southeast Asia (Borneo) and East Africa (primarily Mozambique), respectively.[3][4] Years of intermarriages created the Malagasy people, who primarily speak Malagasy, an Austronesian language with Bantu influences.[4]
The Cape Coloured population descend from indigenous Khoisan and Xhosa peoples; European immigrants; and Malagasy, Ceylonese and South-East Asian (primarily Indonesian) laborers and slaves brought by the Dutch from the mid-17th Century to the late 18th Century. The majority of Coloureds, particularly in the Western Cape and Northern Cape, speak Afrikaans as a first language, while those in other parts of South Africa tend to speak English as well. Coloureds with Javanese or other Indonesian ancestry may often be regarded as Cape Malay and are primarily Muslims, while the majority of Coloureds are Christian (generally Protestant) or agnostic. Due to similar social adversities experienced under the Apartheid regime from the late 1940s to the late 1980s, Coloured and Indigenous South African communities generally fall under the Black social category when it comes to employment and affirmative action policies.[5]
During the Vietnam War, African-American servicemen had children with local Vietnamese women. Some of these children were abandoned by the Vietnamese family, or sent to orphanages. Many orphans and children were airlifted to adopting families in the United States in 1975 during "Operation Babylift" before the fall of South Vietnam. The Afro-Vietnamese (or Afro-Amerasian) children suffered much discrimination in Vietnam at that time. [6] There was also some controversy as to how these orphaned Afro-Amerasian children were placed in new homes in the United States.[7]
In the 1860s, Chinese and East Indian immigrants arrived in the West Indies as indentures servants. Chinese male laborers and male migrants who went to Peru, Cuba, Guyana, Madagascar, America, Jamaica, Trinidad where Chinese often intermarried with local black women which resulted in large population of mulatto children. According to the 1946 Census from Jamaica and Trinidad alone, 12,394 Chinese were located between Jamaica and Trinidad. 5,515 of those who lived in Jamaica were Chinese Jamaican and another 3,673 were Chinese-Trinidadians living in Trinidad.
In Haiti, there is a small percentage within the minority who are of Asian descent. For example, Haitian painter Edouard Wah was born to a Chinese father and Haitian mother.
In Jamaica, Guyana, and Trinidad a percentage of the population of people are of Indian descent, some of whom have contributed to Afro-Asian Caribbean children.
The UK population includes people of mixed-race and some Afro-Asian peoples. Some Afro-Asian Britons include Naomi Campbell, Freema Agyeman and David Jordan.
In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed and Chinese workers who chose to stay in the U.S. could no longer be with their wives who stayed behind in China. Because White Americans looked at Chinese labor workers as stealing employment, they were harassed and discriminated against. Many Chinese men settled in black communities and in turn married Black women.[8]
As of the census of 2000, there were 106,782 Afro-Asian individuals in the United States.[9]
In 1999, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times reported a surprising encounter on the island of Pate, where he found a village of stone huts. He talked to an elderly man living in the village who said that he was a descendant of Chinese explorers who were shipwrecked there centuries before. The Chinese had supposedly traded with the locals, and had even loaded giraffes onto their ship to take back to China. However, the Chinese ran aground on a nearby reef. Kristof found evidence that confirmed the man's story. Such evidence included the Asian features of the people in the village, plus Asian-looking porcelain artifacts.[10][11]
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