WHAT IS A DIASPORA

The  etymology of  “diaspora”  comes from  the  Greek “diaspeirein”, “to  spread  about” where “dia” means “apart” and “speirein” to  “to sow” or “scatter”. It was first coined with the dispersal of the Jewish diaspora outside Israel when they were exiled to Babylonia into slavery under the last king Zedekiah. It is used today to describe a community of people who live outside their shared country of origin or ancestry but maintain active connections with it.

 

FINDING AN ACCEPTABLE DEFINITION

In 2005, the African Union called on experts  to find  an acceptable definition which they adopted at the  end  of  their  session: “People  of  African  origin  living  outside  the continent, irrespective  of their citizenship and nationality and who are willing to contribute to the development of the continent and the building of the African Union.”

 

BIRTH OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA

The starting point of this Diaspora is generally set at the time of their dispersion predominantly in the Americas, Asia and Europe during the time of the discovery of the New World by Europeans and in Africa by Arabs. Millions of Africans (men, women and adolescents) were thus deported for essentially forced labour over a span of 400 years. In the distant lands of their exile they created other identities, mixing their customs and languages with that of their masters. The integration that followed produced mixed heritage with one or more ethnic parentage.

 

Possibility was given for the undesirable and volunteers to return to Africa: England founded Sierra Leone in 1792 and America established Liberia in 1820 for this purpose, both new settlements on the West coast of Africa. As for those who remained behind, regular new arrivals of enslaved Africans would constantly fuel their memory of a distant homeland.

 

The other dispersion of Africans abroad came from voluntary migration, less after the end of slavery to replace the newly freed slaves than that of the 20th century after World War II and the African territories independence from imperial European rule in search of education, employment, and better quality of life for themselves and their children.

 

The sometimes sketchy transmission of identities united with the dedicated work of intellectuals; the accession to independence; the militancy and influence of leaders; the consolidation of organisations; greater and wider (physical, terrestrial, educational and technological) means of communications and truth seeking individuals have made possible for the various black communities across the globe to recognise in each other common roots, past struggles and perhaps carve for themselves a better future together.

 

HOW BIG WAS THE DEPORTATION OF AFRICANS

Some 23 million Africans who endured forced marching to the posts of dispatch, the borstals and the horrid voyages were deported across the seas and lands. Between 1441 and 1900, estimates accepted in academic circles, 

 

• Roughly four million to the plantations of the Indian Ocean, referring to the Arab Slave trade to Asia,

• Approximately eight million to Mediterranean countries, referring to the Arab Trans-Saharan slave trade to the North African coastal countries,

• About eleven million survived the Middle Passage, that is the voyage between the western coasts of Africa, to the New World, the Americas

 

WHEN WAS “AFRICAN DIASPORA” FIRST USED

The expression “African Diaspora” is quite recent emerging between the 1950s and 1960s in the English-speaking world, especially in the United States. The “Negritude” society writers from French-speaking Africa and the Caribbean islands did not use it. Instead, the term used to define and mobilize African populations globally was “Pan-Africanism.”

 

HOW SHOULD BLACK PEOPLE BE CALLED

Diverse and complex with changing racial labels here called “Afro”, there called “Black” and in bygone era “Negro” and “Coloured” slipping to “Half-cast”, “Mixed race”, “Mulatto” (Spanish), Mulâtre” (French). What would we find in the languages of the other colonial powers, i.e. Dutch, Swedish, Arab?  Since freedom rang, the Blacks relentlessly have tried to recapture their identity to gain respect and standing in a society that has held them to be subordinate and inferior.

 

The fact remains for so many blacks in the Diaspora today, whether they are citizens of countries with white or black majorities, theirs is still an essentially colonial world in which white power sets the limits to their lives.

By effect of Americanisation, many Backs have come to labelled themselves as Afro-Europeans, Afro-Indians as in the Caribbean islands, Afro-Arabs, Afro-Cubans, etc.

 

ESTIMATED POPULATION AND DISTRIBUTION1

Largest 15 populations of the diaspora