Black-American anthropology is a field within anthropology that focuses on the study of Black-American culture and ethnogenesis within the United States. This field encompasses various sub-disciplines, including cultural, physical, and linguistic anthropology.
History and ethnogenesis.
Black-American is an ethnic group constituted via the amalgamation of American Indians, particularly those of Southeastern Woodlands with Western Europeans, and African populations stretching from Senegambia to Madagascar. This origin has been documented by a number of anthropologists.
Though there is some scholarly debate regarding the mechanism of collective enslavement as a point of contact between Africans and Native-Americans in colonial America, it nevertheless is the prevailing explanation for the Native American ancestry of Black-Americans.
Per DNA evidence, Black-Americans are descendants of Native-Americans who encountered enslaved African people via plantations, or refuge, and intermixed with Europeans sometime prior to the Civil War. Using tract lengths, a 2015 23andMe related study "[estimated] that initial admixture between Europeans and Native Americans occurred twelve generations ago, followed by subsequent African admixture six generations ago, consistent with other admixture inference methods dating African American admixture.
However, there is evidence to suggest admixture between Native-Americans and Africans occurred prior to European admixture, as seen with individuals buried in Catocin Furnace cemetery.
In addition to being found to have 8% Asian (as a proxy for Native American ancestry) and 19.6% European ancestry, African-Americans, who were sampled in 2010, were found to be 72.5% African.
Cultural anthropology.
While social justice is a Black-American cultural pillar, social justice movements and institutions particularly in the post civil rights era have often been criticized as "very male-centered" with "[solutions] which further marginalise [sic]…Black women" as a "masculinised [sic] vision of Black empowerment and liberation resonates [throughout the community]".
Patriarchy is also evidenced in the family structure, as "by the early 1970s …abundant research [had demonstrated] that the [Black]-American family was not a tangle of pathologies of black matriarchies. Rather…[since the time of slavery Black-Americans] had created viable, productive, resilient families that … were mostly nuclear, male-headed households".
However, a notable caveat differentiating the Black-American household from their European and other immigrant counterparts is the extended family. "Extended family members constitute an important source of support for [Black-Americans] (, 2012). [Black-Americans] generally rely more heavily on kin than nonkin for support (Taylo Hernandez, , Taylor, & Chatters, 2014) and are more likely than Whites to both provide and receive instrumental assistance such as help with household chores, transportation, and running errands (, 2011). Although some argue that African Americans' greater social involvement in the extended family network is more a function of class, with poorer people more heavily involved in their family networks as a result of need (Gerstel, 2011), (2012) found that both middle- and upper-income African Americans were more likely to be involved in their family networks in terms of providing financial assistance than were Whites. With respect to family structure, African Americans are more likely than Whites to reside in extended family households, which are beneficial living arrangements because they allow for family members to pool economic and social resources and distribute household and caregiving responsibilities (Taylor, Chatters, , 1990)."
It is also important to note that education is highly valued in Black-American culture. "Contrary to what "acting white" advocates say, Black youth have positive attitudes about education. In his analysis of data on student attitudes, found that Black males were the most likely to consider high-achieving students "cool." Moreover, 95 percent of Black girls said that they would be proud to tell their friends about their academic achievements – the highest percentage of any group. Black girls were the least likely to avoid telling friends about academic triumphs; white males were the most likely to do so. Finally, Black females were twice as likely as white males to report that their friends would support their choice to study even if it meant delaying plans to have fun."
Physical anthropology.
Due to shared ancestry and their ethnogenesis within the land that would become the United States, Black-Americans exhibit morphological traits consistent with their founding populations.
The formation of a unique Black-American ethnicity was noted by anthropologists in the early 20th century, "[t]hey noticed a "transformation" in the American Black population that Melville J. Herskovits (1928) termed "racial crossing." They began to publish, from an anthropological view, articles and books to help American Blacks understand their biological origins and culture. Herskovits did much to understand what he termed the "American Negro" and tried to help all Americans in the early 20th century understand that American Blacks were a significant portion of the population and that they have adapted to this environment both culturally and biologically, and are therefore American."
Since the early 18th century, Black-Americans have remained morphologically distinct, yet somewhat intermediate between Europeans and Africans. A University of Tennessee study, found that "West African groups are more similar to one another than any other groups are to each other. The class means of the canonical variables were plotted and represent 64% of the among-group variation, . The between canonical structure indicates that on the first canonical axis West Africans display more facial prognathism, wider nasal apertures, longer malars, and wider mid-facial breadth. Early American Whites display longer and wider vaults, wide biauricular breadth, larger values for cheek height, and larger values for occipital subtense. The second canonical axis is primarily separating groups based on vault height and frontal chord values. The 1600 and 1650 White half-century groups display the lowest vault heights and the 1700 and 1750 White half-century groups display the highest values for vault height. Based on the craniofacial variables used in the present analysis, the early American Black sample is intermediate to the West African and American White samples."
These findings are consistent with earlier literature:
Per the University of Tennessee study, "[t]he most interesting relationship was found between SNPs and craniometrics, both indicating American Blacks to be intermediate between West Africans and American Whites. If craniofacial morphology was influenced by plasticity more than genetics, then the craniometric data would not "fit" well with the SNPs data. While plasticity does likely affect craniofacial morphology, the fit between the SNPs and craniometric data supports a genetic influence." Accordingly, the intermediacy of Black-Americans is supported both craniofacially and genetically.
These findings are reinforced by a 2021 study published in "Forensic Anthropology Volume 4", which found, "the [Black-American] group intermediate to the West and Central Africans and European Americans on the first axis."
The variance of these populations is explained as follows. "Almost all variables contribute to as indicated by the structure coefficients . The pattern of loadings presents a clear pattern of morphometric variation. High scores on CV1 result from a wide cranial base, long cranial base length and vault height, high nasal height and narrow nasal aperture and interorbital distance. The reverse is the case for low scores on CV1. CV1 reflects a pattern of variation normally associated with African-European variation."
These results are further verified using a discrimination matrix to discern whether these populations could be distinguished craniofacially. "Given the similarities between these two groups and their intermediate or dissimilar positions relative to their ancestral groups, an additional analysis, to highlight and contextualize our results within a forensic anthropological framework, was performed. A discriminant functional analysis (DFA) was performed to assess how well these American groups classify when compared to their ancestral groups. A cross-validated classification matrix is presented in . These results agree with the intermediate position of African American presented in our CV plot."
The results of the discrimination analysis showed that while 39 Black-Americans were misclassified as 'European' or 'European-American', just 29 fell into the 'African' category, while approximately 75% of Black-Americans were correctly discriminated, confirming that "the ability to predict group membership can be referred to as affinity", and solidifying craniofacial Black-American affinity overall.
Furthermore, beyond the wider orbital breadths discussed by Trevor, Black-Americans exhibit relatively broad cheekbones which are also a marker of American Indian ancestry.
While both Europeans and Africans at large (with the notable exceptions of Eastern Europeans and Khoisan peoples) exhibit 'retracted' zygomatic bones (cheekbones), the cheekbones of Black-Americans do not exhibit this trait, and are similar to Inuit and Native-American populations in respect to bizygomatic breadth. "Skulls from European ancestry have narrower faces with retracted zygomatic bones…African groups present with retracted zygomatic bones (L'Abbé et al., 2011)..."
More particularly while Sub-Saharan Africans were shown to have an average bizygomatic width of , Black-Americans' bizygomatic widths were on average , which is on par with measurements for Inuit.
Post-cranial traits of Black-Americans are also distinct from Europeans and many Africans, and are proximate to Ancient Egyptians and Nubians.
In terms of dentition, an Ohio State University study found that Black-Americans are approximately intermediate between African and European populations. As noted, "[t]he results of this research support the main hypothesis; African Americans have become genetically closer to the average of western Europeans and West Africans since the two groups came into contact in the American colonies and later, the United States. Dental morphology reflects this change. The difference between West Africans and African Americans doubles in each time period, early, middle and late. African Americans are progressively becoming less like their West African ancestors. Also, when comparing contemporaneous early, middle, and late European Americans and African Americans, the difference shrinks over time. African Americans have tended toward the average of West Africans and western Europeans, and that this microevolutionary pattern is discernible using dental morphology. These conclusions are most clearly seen in the results, but they are also generally true for results."
Furthermore the study found that the founding stock of European-Americans are dentally more similar to Black-Americans overall than modern day American citizens of European origin.
A University of Nevada, Las Vegas study found that "[a] total of thirteen individuals [out of a sample of 50 Black-Americans] had shovel shaped incisor penetration, and two had double shovel incisors" , furthermore, "[s]ince shovel shaped incisors occur more frequently among Native Americans and Asians than other populations… the frequencies of these anterior dental nonmetric traits in a sample of African Americans [serves to substantiate admixture]"
Linguistic anthropology.
Ebonics--(formally known as African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) coined "by a Black scholar in 1975 but never adopted by linguists…[was]...concocted from ebony (a color term from the name of a dark-colored wood) and phonics (the name of a method for teaching reading)"
However, it should not be confused with 'slang' as "an expression [is] slang when it represents a vivid, colloquial word or phrase associated with some subculture and not yet incorporated as part of the mainstream language. No subculture's slang could constitute a separate language."
As linguist Geoffrey K. Pullum states, "[s]lang is by definition parasitic on some larger and more encom- passing host language. It has no grammar of its own; it is a small array of words and phrases used under the aegis of some ordinary language and in accordance with its grammar. The majority of slang words and phrases are in the language already and are merely assigned new slang meanings by some subpopulation." And as he later adds, "[while the] majority of English speakers think that AAVE is just English with two added factors: some special slang terms and a lot of grammatical mistakes. They are simply wrong about this."
Pullum begins by pointing out that "there is obviously a difference between being an incorrect utterance of one language and being a correct utterance in another (perhaps only slightly different). This is obvious when the two languages are thoroughly different, like English and French. When a French speaker refers to the capital of the United Kingdom as Londres, it isn't a mistake; that's the correct French name for London. But the same is true when we are talking about two very closely related languages. There is a strong temptation, especially when one of the two has higher prestige, to take one to be the correct way to speak and the other to be incorrect. But it is not necessarily so."
Discussing the classification of Ebonics as a dialect of English, Pullum states, "Dialects and languages are in fact the same kinds of thing. "Dialect" does not mean a marginal, archaic, rustic, or degraded mode of speech. Linguists never say things like "That is just a dialect, not a language." Rather, they refer to one language as a dialect of another. The claim that Tosk is a dialect of Albanian is a classificatory claim, like saying that the white-tailed deer is a kind of deer. It is not some kind of put-down of Tosk speakers."
Noting that in particular that Ebonics bears a close connection to Early Modern English, Pullum states, "This is not an insulting or demeaning thing to say about AAVE. It merely places it in a linguistic classification that unites the language of Shakespeare and the language of the Oakland ghetto very closely compared to languages in other families or in other parts of the Germanic family."
One such example is the use of 'ax' in Ebonics, as Stanford University linguist John R. Rickford affirms, "Sheidlower says you can trace "ax" back to the eighth century. The pronunciation derives from the Old English verb "acsian." Chaucer used "ax." It's in the first complete English translation of the Bible (the Coverdale Bible): "'Axe and it shall be given.'"
Another such example is the use of double negatives, as "it's only since the eighteenth century that we became loath to use double negatives in this way …and to consider it wrong and illogical. Before then, speakers were using double negatives illogically daily (and probably twice on Sundays), from Chaucer to Shakespeare and many others."
"[t]he origin of [Ebonics] is unknown. Linguists are currently embroiled in the "creolist/anglicist" controversy concerning whether AAL originated as a creole formed on plantations, a working-class speech variety based off of the language of plantation overseers, a mixture of the two… (Thomas 2007)."