Black People are all over the world! I’ve heard this before but I never realized how true it was until I got older and began to travel and meet people from all around the world. When President Obama was elected I saw footage of Black Iraqi’s celebrating. After looking them up I found out there is in the neighborhood of 2 million people of African Descent living in Iraq. Now the phrase of African Descent can be tricky. Since the Garden of Eden is known to have been in Africa technically everyone is of African Descent. In this article when I say of African Descent I am referring to people whose ancestors came from Africa between 1500 – 1900 roughly the time of the Trans- Atlantic Slave Trade. During that period of time Africans were transported to various countries and use as a source of free labor…we all know that, but did you know more Africans were brought to Brazil than America? There is actually more Black people in Brazil than any country outside the continent of Africa. While African Americans were being discriminated against for being black in America our black brothers and sisters in nearly every country around the world were facing the same discrimination sometimes even worse. Below is the statistics for Black people around the world along with pictures and video.

According to a study by the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute, about 90% of the contemporary Dominican population has African ancestry however, most Dominicans do not self-identify as black, in contrast to people of African ancestry in other countries. A variety of terms are used to represent a range of skin tones, such as morena (brown), canela (red/brown) “cinnamon”, india (Indian), blanca oscura (dark white), and trigueño (literally “wheat colored”, which is the English equivalent of olive skin) among others.

Many have claimed that this represents a reluctance to self-identify with African descent and the culture of the freed slaves. According to Dr. Miguel Anibal Perdomo, professor of Dominican Identity and Literature at Hunter College in New York City, “There was a sense of ‘deculturación’ among the African slaves of Hispaniola. There was an attempt to erase any vestiges of African culture from the Dominican Republic. We were, in some way, brainwashed and we’ve become westernized.

Estimated Black Population and Distribution