Joined: 07 Feb 2007 {Posts: 1829 } Location: Lookin DC Metro, Feelin Geneva
Posted: Wed 01 Jul 2009 13:52 Post subject: South African Coloureds
Quote:
A little under 10% of South Africa's population are Cape Coloureds. They speak Afrikaans and generally worship in Reformed Christian churches, but exhibit discernible non-European ancestry, in particular African ancestry. In the United States anyone who manifests African ancestry is coded as "black." Though hypodescent started out as a tool for maintaining white racial purity against colored taint, today it is accepted within black America as the social norm. Barack Obama has obvious mixed ancestry but he is accept as fully black racially by both black and white Americans. In South Africa someone who looked like Obama obviously would not be white, but, they might be Coloured, as this group exhibits a wide range of appearance, as is the norm among very mixed populations.
In the course of research I stumbled upon the fact that the past two winners of Miss South Africa are Coloured, or at least likely Coloured as there is some ambiguity. Tansey Coetzee clearly has Coloured ancestry just by her surname, Coetzee, which is known among Afrikaners (note that Afrikaner surnames are not necessarily Dutch, as Huguenots and Germans were part of the original Cape Colony population). But Tansey Coetzee also has an Asian Indian mother (she offers this in interviews on YouTube). I assume in South Africa that someone who is Coloured + something else is most likely to self-identify as Coloured. The second Miss South Africa is Tatum Keshwar. Her identity is a bit more confused, as the surname has convinced many Indian publications that she's Indian, while Coloureds are complaining that she is in fact a Coloured. Most people in the world who look like Tatum Keshwar are probably South Asian (there 1.3 billion South Asians, and a substantial minority of this is hundreds of millions), and her surname suggests that like Tansey Coetzee she has Indian ancestry. But listening to Tatum Keshwar on YouTube it sounds like she speaks English with an Afrikaans accent, strongly suggesting Coloured cultural background. She also refers to going on a modeling job to India (naturally, she looks like a lot of Indian models, so it would be a good fit), but she doesn't talk about India like a "Non-resident Indian" might from what I can tell, alluding to how "exotic" it is and not mentioning any family connection. In most of the world someone who looked like Tatum Keshwar and had her name would be Indian. But not necessarily in South Africa.
I wanted to note ambiguities in Keshwar and Coetzee's ancestry because genetics can now supplement what we know about the Cape Coloureds.
History tells us that the Cape Coloureds are the result of unions between Europeans, mostly men, and colored women of various races. The most prominent of these are the indigenous peoples of the Cape, the Khoisan, who were the natives of South Africa before whites and Bantu Africans pushed in from the south and north respectively. The Bushmen are the most famous Khoisan, though there are several other groups, and likely were many more before they were absorbed into the Coloured population. Though genetically related to other Africans these populations have their own history, and some of the Cape Coloureds reflect the distinctive features of the Khoisan. Additionally the Muslim Cape Malays attest to the presence of Asian slaves and settlers (the latter were exiles and political dissidents relocated by the Dutch). But how much of the ancestry of the Cape Coloured is Asian? Because of similarities to Afrikaner culture (in the Western Cape whites and Coloureds have a tendency to vote together politically, and some Afrikaners of less racialist bent are attempting to create a common identity whereby the Coloureds and white Afrikaners view each other as part of one people with a shared history) and aspects of their appearance Cape Coloured European ancestry is undisputed. The distinctive features and the indigenous status of the Khoisan in the region where they are most numerous, the Cape, also results in an assumption of certain ancestry derived from this group. The Asians are the wild card. But the recent massive paper surveying African genetics, The Genetic Structure and History of Africans and African Americans, there is data on Cape Coloureds which is highly informative.
This is from figure 6 of the above paper. K = 14 using the Structure software to break apart ancestry by K number of ancestral populations. The African American populations on the right are rather straightforward, the orange corresponds mostly to African ancestry, the magenta + blue to European. Black Americans are about 80% African and 20% European, so the ratios make sense. The Cape Coloureds on the other hand present a more complex picture. To understand this we need to look at a wider range of populations.
Below is a figure I generated by slicing and dicing a set of populations from another part of figure 6 which have particular relevance to illuminating the ancestry of the Cape Coloureds. I've circled the Cape Coloureds (they're labeled as "Mixed Ancestry" seventh from the top) for clarity. The left column represents the average proportion of ancestry for the whole population from the set of K ancestral groups, while to the right you see the variance within the population from individual to individual as they vary in ancestral quanta.
colouredcontext.jpg
Points of significance:
1) Though only some African populations are shown, because African populations are so diverse vis-a-vis non-Africans they have more "colors," that is, they span more of the K ancestral populations. Non-Africans are to some extent simply subsets of Africans.
2) Uyghurs the are result of an ancient admixture event (~2,000 years B.P.) and now have little within population structure. In contrast both Cape Coloureds and African Americans are byproducts of much more recent admixture events, on the order of 200-300 years at most (generally less), and so manifest far more within population variance in ancestral quanta.
3) The magenta and blue ancestral populations combine to span almost all West Eurasian groups, what in older physical anthropology would be termed "Caucasoid." The magenta is more Indian, while the blue is more non-Indian (European + Middle Eastern). Some Middle Eastern groups seem to have recent African admixture. The group which does not, the Druze of Lebanon, stopped intermarrying with outsiders ~1,000 years ago. This was approximately the time that the African slave trade fostered gene flow from Sub-Saharan Africa to the Muslim world. There's also a lot of variance in African ancestry in some of these Middle Eastern groups, further evidence of recency of inflow and its structure, as opposed to a deep time component of variation. The African ancestry in South Asia is generally associated with Muslim states, which employed slave soldiers just as Middle Eastern ones did, with the Makran coast and Sindh being under Islamic hegemony longer than any other part of the subcontinent.
What can we say about the Cape Coloured? The Khoisan component of their ancestry is clear, as is their Bantu African proportion. Since both European and Indian populations have blue & magenta the key is to look at the ratio. It seems to me that there has to be significant Indian ancestry among the Cape Coloured, as the parental European populations from northern Europe don't have enough of the putative ancestral population represented by magenta. Seeing as how many prominent early Afrikaners are known to have had Indian ancestry this should not be surprising. The pink component is almost certainly Southeast Asian, "Malay" is probably too anachronistic of a term, but the data here suggests that many of the Southeast Asian slaves lost their Muslim religion and were absorbed into the Christian Afrikaner Cape Coloured sector. The fact that such a significant Southeast Asian ancestral component is evident reinforces my contention that there is likely a large South Asian fraction of ancestry as well, as all of southern Asia was a possible source of forced labor (see the multiethnic character of Dutch Suriname as an example). Finally, the variance in ancestry among the Cape Coloureds looks to be quite high. Using the examples of Tansey Coetzee and Tatum Keshwar it is obvious how such variance could be maintained; the Cape Coloureds are still mixing with other populations, and strict legal apartheid was a relatively new feature of 20th century South Africa. Even if intermarriage between various groups was much more common in 18th century South Africa than in later periods it was likely a significant parameter before strict enforcement of laws against interracial marriage, which were only operative for only two generations.
These data suggest that the Cape Coloureds have a very diverse and balanced ancestry. In particular, the proportion of European, Indian, Khoisan and Bantu ancestry averaged over the group seems at rough parity, while the Malay element is less significant, but not trivial. But among Coloureds there is a great deal of variance, with some individuals being disproportionately of one ancestral component. I believe that some, but not all, of the latter phenomenon is probably due to the fact that when Cape Coloureds intermarry with other groups the offspring often identify as Cape Coloured.
Posted: Fri 03 Jul 2009 03:40 Post subject: Re: South African Coloureds
Dragon Horse wrote:
Quote:
A little under 10% of South Africa's population are Cape Coloureds. They speak Afrikaans and generally worship in Reformed Christian churches, but exhibit discernible non-European ancestry, in particular African ancestry. In the United States anyone who manifests African ancestry is coded as "black."
What about Hispancis and Arab-Americans? Notice how there seems to be a tacit rule that the "one drop" myth is to be promoted as true while (wink, wink) maintaining a gentlemen's agreement that Hispanics and Arabs are not to be offended by having their African ancestry even mentioned.
Though hypodescent started out as a tool for maintaining white racial purity against colored taint, today it is accepted within black America as the social norm. Barack Obama has obvious mixed ancestry but he is accept as fully black racially by both black and white Americans. In South Africa someone who looked like Obama obviously would not be white, but, they might be Coloured, as this group exhibits a wide range of appearance, as is the norm among very mixed populations.
In the course of research I stumbled upon the fact that the past two winners of Miss South Africa are Coloured, or at least likely Coloured as there is some ambiguity. Tansey Coetzee clearly has Coloured ancestry just by her surname, Coetzee, which is known among Afrikaners (note that Afrikaner surnames are not necessarily Dutch, as Huguenots and Germans were part of the original Cape Colony population). But Tansey Coetzee also has an Asian Indian mother (she offers this in interviews on YouTube). I assume in South Africa that someone who is Coloured + something else is most likely to self-identify as Coloured. The second Miss South Africa is Tatum Keshwar. Her identity is a bit more confused, as the surname has convinced many Indian publications that she's Indian, while Coloureds are complaining that she is in fact a Coloured. Most people in the world who look like Tatum Keshwar are probably South Asian (there 1.3 billion South Asians, and a substantial minority of this is hundreds of millions), and her surname suggests that like Tansey Coetzee she has Indian ancestry. But listening to Tatum Keshwar on YouTube it sounds like she speaks English with an Afrikaans accent, strongly suggesting Coloured cultural background. She also refers to going on a modeling job to India (naturally, she looks like a lot of Indian models, so it would be a good fit), but she doesn't talk about India like a "Non-resident Indian" might from what I can tell, alluding to how "exotic" it is and not mentioning any family connection. In most of the world someone who looked like Tatum Keshwar and had her name would be Indian. But not necessarily in South Africa.
I wanted to note ambiguities in Keshwar and Coetzee's ancestry because genetics can now supplement what we know about the Cape Coloureds.
History tells us that the Cape Coloureds are the result of unions between Europeans, mostly men, and colored women of various races. The most prominent of these are the indigenous peoples of the Cape, the Khoisan, who were the natives of South Africa before whites and Bantu Africans pushed in from the south and north respectively. The Bushmen are the most famous Khoisan, though there are several other groups, and likely were many more before they were absorbed into the Coloured population. Though genetically related to other Africans these populations have their own history, and some of the Cape Coloureds reflect the distinctive features of the Khoisan. Additionally the Muslim Cape Malays attest to the presence of Asian slaves and settlers (the latter were exiles and political dissidents relocated by the Dutch). But how much of the ancestry of the Cape Coloured is Asian? Because of similarities to Afrikaner culture (in the Western Cape whites and Coloureds have a tendency to vote together politically, and some Afrikaners of less racialist bent are attempting to create a common identity whereby the Coloureds and white Afrikaners view each other as part of one people with a shared history) and aspects of their appearance Cape Coloured European ancestry is undisputed. The distinctive features and the indigenous status of the Khoisan in the region where they are most numerous, the Cape, also results in an assumption of certain ancestry derived from this group. The Asians are the wild card. But the recent massive paper surveying African genetics, The Genetic Structure and History of Africans and African Americans, there is data on Cape Coloureds which is highly informative.
This is from figure 6 of the above paper. K = 14 using the Structure software to break apart ancestry by K number of ancestral populations. The African American populations on the right are rather straightforward, the orange corresponds mostly to African ancestry, the magenta + blue to European. Black Americans are about 80% African and 20% European, so the ratios make sense. The Cape Coloureds on the other hand present a more complex picture. To understand this we need to look at a wider range of populations.
Below is a figure I generated by slicing and dicing a set of populations from another part of figure 6 which have particular relevance to illuminating the ancestry of the Cape Coloureds. I've circled the Cape Coloureds (they're labeled as "Mixed Ancestry" seventh from the top) for clarity. The left column represents the average proportion of ancestry for the whole population from the set of K ancestral groups, while to the right you see the variance within the population from individual to individual as they vary in ancestral quanta.
colouredcontext.jpg
Points of significance:
1) Though only some African populations are shown, because African populations are so diverse vis-a-vis non-Africans they have more "colors," that is, they span more of the K ancestral populations. Non-Africans are to some extent simply subsets of Africans.
2) Uyghurs the are result of an ancient admixture event (~2,000 years B.P.) and now have little within population structure. In contrast both Cape Coloureds and African Americans are byproducts of much more recent admixture events, on the order of 200-300 years at most (generally less), and so manifest far more within population variance in ancestral quanta.
3) The magenta and blue ancestral populations combine to span almost all West Eurasian groups, what in older physical anthropology would be termed "Caucasoid." The magenta is more Indian, while the blue is more non-Indian (European + Middle Eastern). Some Middle Eastern groups seem to have recent African admixture. The group which does not, the Druze of Lebanon, stopped intermarrying with outsiders ~1,000 years ago. This was approximately the time that the African slave trade fostered gene flow from Sub-Saharan Africa to the Muslim world. There's also a lot of variance in African ancestry in some of these Middle Eastern groups, further evidence of recency of inflow and its structure, as opposed to a deep time component of variation. The African ancestry in South Asia is generally associated with Muslim states, which employed slave soldiers just as Middle Eastern ones did, with the Makran coast and Sindh being under Islamic hegemony longer than any other part of the subcontinent.
What can we say about the Cape Coloured? The Khoisan component of their ancestry is clear, as is their Bantu African proportion. Since both European and Indian populations have blue & magenta the key is to look at the ratio. It seems to me that there has to be significant Indian ancestry among the Cape Coloured, as the parental European populations from northern Europe don't have enough of the putative ancestral population represented by magenta. Seeing as how many prominent early Afrikaners are known to have had Indian ancestry this should not be surprising. The pink component is almost certainly Southeast Asian, "Malay" is probably too anachronistic of a term, but the data here suggests that many of the Southeast Asian slaves lost their Muslim religion and were absorbed into the Christian Afrikaner Cape Coloured sector. The fact that such a significant Southeast Asian ancestral component is evident reinforces my contention that there is likely a large South Asian fraction of ancestry as well, as all of southern Asia was a possible source of forced labor (see the multiethnic character of Dutch Suriname as an example). Finally, the variance in ancestry among the Cape Coloureds looks to be quite high. Using the examples of Tansey Coetzee and Tatum Keshwar it is obvious how such variance could be maintained; the Cape Coloureds are still mixing with other populations, and strict legal apartheid was a relatively new feature of 20th century South Africa. Even if intermarriage between various groups was much more common in 18th century South Africa than in later periods it was likely a significant parameter before strict enforcement of laws against interracial marriage, which were only operative for only two generations.
These data suggest that the Cape Coloureds have a very diverse and balanced ancestry. In particular, the proportion of European, Indian, Khoisan and Bantu ancestry averaged over the group seems at rough parity, while the Malay element is less significant, but not trivial. But among Coloureds there is a great deal of variance, with some individuals being disproportionately of one ancestral component. I believe that some, but not all, of the latter phenomenon is probably due to the fact that when Cape Coloureds intermarry with other groups the offspring often identify as Cape Coloured.
A little under 10% of South Africa's population are Cape Coloureds. They speak Afrikaans and generally worship in Reformed Christian churches, but exhibit discernible non-European ancestry, in particular African ancestry. In the United States anyone who manifests African ancestry is coded as "black."
Quote:
What about Hispancis and Arab-Americans? Notice how there seems to be a tacit rule that the "one drop" myth is to be promoted as true while (wink, wink) maintaining a gentlemen's agreement that Hispanics and Arabs are not to be offended by having their African ancestry even mentioned.
To be honest, historically Arabs in the U.S. have come from the Levant, no? They are generally Mediterranean in appearance and don't manifest noticeable African ancestry. If most residing here were from the Gulf or North Africa that would a different story.
Hispanics in the U.S. are predominantly Chicano or Mexican and for most Americans outside of places like New York, other cities in the Northeast, and some places in the Midwest, Latino means basically a mestizo or Amerindian. Most Americans assume all Hispanics look like Mexicans.
If most Hispanics or a larger percentage of them in the U.S. were from the Caribbean then I think their African ancestry would be a big deal, but since most are not from that part of Latin America, those who are sort of like tri-racial isolates where ever they reside in large numbers IMO. Therefore, exceptions are made for them. Once they leave these areas, they may in fact be seen as black.
Posted: Tue 07 Jul 2009 13:35 Post subject: definitions
G-Man wrote:
Quote:
A little under 10% of South Africa's population are Cape Coloureds. They speak Afrikaans and generally worship in Reformed Christian churches, but exhibit discernible non-European ancestry, in particular African ancestry. In the United States anyone who manifests African ancestry is coded as "black."
Quote:
What about Hispancis and Arab-Americans? Notice how there seems to be a tacit rule that the "one drop" myth is to be promoted as true while (wink, wink) maintaining a gentlemen's agreement that Hispanics and Arabs are not to be offended by having their African ancestry even mentioned.
To be honest, historically Arabs in the U.S. have come from the Levant, no? They are generally Mediterranean in appearance and don't manifest noticeable African ancestry. If most residing here were from the Gulf or North Africa that would a different story.
Hispanics in the U.S. are predominantly Chicano or Mexican and for most Americans outside of places like New York, other cities in the Northeast, and some places in the Midwest, Latino means basically a mestizo or Amerindian. Most Americans assume all Hispanics look like Mexicans.
If most Hispanics or a larger percentage of them in the U.S. were from the Caribbean then I think their African ancestry would be a big deal, but since most are not from that part of Latin America, those who are sort of like tri-racial isolates where ever they reside in large numbers IMO. Therefore, exceptions are made for them. Once they leave these areas, they may in fact be seen as black.
Personally. I've met many Arabs (Palestinians included) and Mexicans who looked "mulatto." Why is Sotomayor's African ancestry never mentioned? I don't buy the "just don't know" argument.
Posted: Tue 07 Jul 2009 15:02 Post subject: Re: definitions
Powell wrote:
Personally. I've met many Arabs (Palestinians included) and Mexicans who looked "mulatto."
Are they a significant percentage of the Arab and Chicano population of the U.S.? I doubt it.
Powell wrote:
Why is Sotomayor's African ancestry never mentioned? I don't buy the "just don't know" argument.
It's not mentioned for several possible reasons:
1. It isn't visible to most people.
2. Many people assume she is some kind of Mexican because ALL Hispanics are really some kind of Mexican.
3. Many people are ignorant of Puerto Rican history and Latin American history in general and don't know there is an African component in Latin America outside of Brazil. You'd be surprised at the level of ignorance I've encountered about Latin America where I live currently.
4. Many people don't want to offend her by bringing up the possibility that she may have some African ancestry. This was a common attitude wrt Puerto Ricans when I was growing up. In essence not mentioning it or imposing a black identity on them, even if they are very African in appearance, is done out of respect for them. I've encountered this even here in the DC Metro Area as small as the Dominican and Puerto Rican populations are.
Posted: Sun 12 Jul 2009 10:01 Post subject: Re: definitions
G-Man wrote:
You'd be surprised at the level of ignorance I've encountered about Latin America where I live currently.
I've encountered the same level of ignorance. The majority of Carribean Hispanics live in cities along the east coast so many Americans haven't had exposure to Hispanics other than Mexicans or Chicanos, and the few Puerto Ricans that people are exposed to on television or popuculture tend to look more like Jlo or Marc Anthony. To my eyes, the SSA ancestry isn't visible in most Puerto Ricans I've met.
It's not unreasonable to assume that if the majority of Hispanics were from Cuba or DR, the SSA ancestry of Hispanics would be mentioned more often. Those countries had a greater presence of African slaves and more immigrants from other Carribean countries than PR and hence, more "black looking" people.
What I've witnessed on the internet is that people only mention it during flame wars in which a Hispanic makes a deragatory comment about Blacks. This usually takes place on youtube and the people involved are almost always from New York, Philadelphia or other cities with large Caribean Hispanic populations.
Posted: Tue 22 Sep 2009 21:32 Post subject: Re: definitions
BlackHaze wrote:
It's not unreasonable to assume that if the majority of Hispanics were from Cuba or DR, the SSA ancestry of Hispanics would be mentioned more often. Those countries had a greater presence of African slaves and more immigrants from other Carribean countries than PR and hence, more "black looking" people.
Posted: Mon 16 Nov 2009 23:06 Post subject: A bit of a correction or more accurate info.
I SPOKE to mark Shriver way back
all african americans do not have white genes.i spoke to shiver and this is what he told me on the phone.
he said the up to 60 to 70% of african americans have some form of admixture.NOT ALL GULLAHS HAVE WHITE GENES ETC.
SOURCE OF HOW MUCH RACE MIXING REALLY HAPPENED
Miscegenation- Admixture in the United States.
this is a study i found too on wikipedia.
A recent study by Mark D. Shriver of a European-American sample found that the average admixture in the white population is 0.7% African and 3.2% Native American. However, 70% of the sample had no African admixture. The other 30% had African admixture ranging from 2% to 20% with an average of 2.3%. By extrapolating these figures to the whole population some scholars suggest that up to 74 million European-Americans may have African admixture in the same range (2-20%).
not all african american have white admixture.the est admixture is 75% of african americans have some form of white admixture. 25% of african americans do not have any and this is not counting all blacks in america.
Since little is known of the proportions and dynamics of admixture
in the US, one major effort is to construct and interpret a US admixture MAP.
not all african american have white admixture.the est admixture is 75% of african americans have some form of white admixture. 25% of african americans do not have any and this is not counting all blacks in america.
http://www.science.psu.edu/forensics/faculty/shriver.html
HERE IS A MORE BALANCE VIEW.
ANYWAY THIS IS ABOUT AFRICAN AMERICANS.NOT ALL BLACKS IN AMERICA BECAUSE IF YOU INCLUDE ALL OF THEM THAN THAT NUMBER WILL GO DOWN TO 67% OR AROUND THERE.
Yes many or most black americans do have some form of admixture.
Only about 65% do,for african americans it's 80%.
(THE 65% IS INCLUDING ALL BLACKS IN AMERICA,NOT JUST AFRICAN AMERICANS.)
CHECK OUT
mark shriver -Associate Professor of Anthropology and Genetics
recent studies suggest the white admixture on average is around 17% or lower.it was not has high we thought.
mark
shiver has the recent info,but it's a work in progress.
Posted: Tue 17 Nov 2009 00:10 Post subject: Re: A bit of a correction or more accurate info.
kendo wrote:
All african americans do not have white genes.
The great majority of African Americans do carry Euro DNA markers. I think what you meant to say was "Not all African Americans have White genes (more correctly, Euro DNA markers)."
kendo wrote:
It was not has high we thought.
Please try to avoid using first-person plural. It is confusing. See The Rules 2.4.
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