Are Black Folks REALLY a Minority?
[Editor: Whites are now and have always been a minority race in the global population. This article says whites make up 5% of the world’s population. I’ve seen estimates as high as 17% but that depends on who is counted as “white”. The majority of the world’s population, by “race”, 60%, are Asians.]
by
I always detested the word minority because of its not so hidden connotation of being minute, as in insignificant. The word is more often than not assigned to classify all individuals who are not of the Anglo persuasion. But is the term misleading? I think so.
Census data is collected every decade and people are urged to classify themselves under any number of arbitrary racial categories, but if we look more closely at the numbers, particularly of those who are of mixed heritage and Latino or Hispanic who come from an African background, the number of African descendant people in this country would be well above the 12.5% recorded in the latest 2010 census data. But what’s more, the terminology of being categorized as a minority is misleading on a global scale.
The truth is White/Anglo/European people make up less than 5% of the world’s population, making them the real ‘minorities’ on the planet. While there are nearly 1 billion people alone currently living in Africa, there are untold millions of Blacks living throughout the world and within the African Diaspora. Take Brazil for instance, which is the home to more Black people outside of the country of Nigeria. That means there are more Blacks living in this South American country than countries in Africa, thanks to the transatlantic slave trade. In fact Brazil is home to an estimated population of nearly 95 million Blacks and mixed race persons of African ancestry.
Are you keeping count here? So far I have only counted 1 continent and 1 country and the figures of Black folks who are assumed to be minorities, is at 1.1 billion.
Haiti boast just over 9 million Black people on the tiny island, Cuba nearly 1.5 million, Jamaica is home to 2 million plus African descendants, and Venezuela has an estimated population of 3 million African identified people. So let’s break this down so that we have a more accurate picture of the total number of Black people in this world, lest we continue to be mislead about our so called minority status.
According to global census reports there are just over 22 million African descendants living in the Caribbean. More than 110 million residing in South America, close to 45 million who make North America their home, and just over 7 million in Europe. So according to these simple calculations the worldwide population of Black people on the planet, including inhabitants on the continent of Africa and throughout the Diaspora and Europe is (drum roll please)…over 1.4 billion African and African descendant people on this planet. Good Lord that’s a lot of Black folk!
It’s important that we understand semantics, and how certain terminology is used to dupe us into believing foolishness. And as Jay-Z says, “Men lie, women lie, but numbers don’t lie.”
Engage! 
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