Are Aboriginal Australians Black?

I remember asking this question in Australia, but referring to actual colour. The aborigines I came across in central and northern Australia were indeed nearly black in colour, darker than most Africans, but the ones I met on the east coast were only mid-brown. When I asked why, I was told that the coastal ones were in fact mixed blood, perhaps more white than genuine aboriginal, but perceived themselves as aboriginal and followed the culture to some extent - and availed themselves of state benefits e.g. special housing for aborigines.

Are Indians from southern India black? They are also as dark as many Africans. Or what about the Nubians of southern Egypt, who are much darker than Arab Egyptians but nothing like as dark as most Africans?

All this proves is that it is a nonsense to classify people as "black" or otherwise.

As I understand things, Indians from southern India don't have other characteristics typical in Africa, e.g. hair type, facial features, etc. Skin color isn't enough alone. But the question is whether skin color plus these other things is, and aboriginal Australians seem to have that.

Nubians are an interesting case. They have less of all the features than sub-Saharan Africans, as far as I know. They might serve as a borderline case. But they are clearly related to other Africans in a way that Australian aborigines are not, so it doesn't affect the question I'm asking.

As for those with lighter skin, they seem parallel to lighter-skinned blacks in the U.S. So I'm not sure that makers a difference to my question either.

This does not remotely prove that it's nonsense to classify people as black. What it proves is that there might be borderline cases, people who are hard to classify and that there might be different systems of classification. That's true of most things we classify, including species. It doesn't mean that there are no criteria or that there aren't clear cases. There are rules that govern how people use these terms, and I'm interested in figuring out what they are.

I think that if you are using "black" to describe a skin color, then it works (as if describing a person you are attempting to identify).

If you are speaking of origin, it makes more sense to use the place-name.

When describing a culture, aboriginal simply means "having existed in a place from the beginning" and anthropologists refer to Native Americans as aboriginal people.

If politicians refer to Obama as not having the "black experience", then they are speaking of a particular culture in the USA, so here (USA), Australian aborigines would not be "black", since they cannot have had the experience of the civil rights struggle, etc.

;-)

It's not just skin color here, since some people with dark skin color don't have any of the other physical features associated with being black.

Do people use the word 'black' to speak of origin? I know I don't.

I'm speaking of aboriginal Australians, not aborigines in the general sense.

The Obama thing is referring to black culture in the U.S., something black people in England have without failing to be black. I don't think that's what would cause most resistance to calling Australian aborigines black. It's their ancestry that seems to me to be the main issue.

Humans began populating New Guinea and Mainland Australia roughly 40,000 years ago via Indonesia. Due to rising sea levels following the end of the last ice-age (10k years ago) Australia and New Guinea became isolated from southeast asia. Genetically, they distinct from Africans, and much closer to Asians despite any initial impressions.

I think Americans mean African when they use the term black. I think part of this has to do with African Americans claiming ownership to a whole lineage of words associated with them throughout American History as well as those they identify with culturally, including black.

The only thing shared by Aboriginals and Africans is an unfortunate subjugation in the last 500 years by Europeans also shared by Native Americans.

I'm sure African Americans have mixed opinions about accepting certain other subjugated peoples like aboriginals as "black" simply because many of them look the same.

I would speculate though that Aboriginals would have a harder time accepting being called black, at least in the states as it would tend to imply mistaken identity.

The only thing shared by Aboriginals and Africans is an unfortunate subjugation in the last 500 years by Europeans also shared by Native Americans.

But that's not really true. It's not even the most obvious thing they have in common. They share the same basic look. The properties of gross morphology that people normally use to identify someone according to race are mostly common to these two groups.

So if the aborigines are receiving special benefits (housing and such)... are we to start calling them Native Australians? I am just kidding.. trying to be funny.

Jeremy, I love your blog. I read it everyday and I have to do a lot of research just to follow the conversations. So thank you for stretching me!

I think from first sight aborigonies are 'black' and it seems quite a lot of somewhat dark skinned people seem to like to associate themselves with being black because of all the strong role models like '50 cents' and 'diddy', for example some polynesians.

So there is an unintelectual way in which they are 'black' but from an intelectual perspective (and we should aim to be intelectual) they are not. the problem probably aries from the way such a simple term as black is applied as a description of a race.

Im from NZ

I think basically is genealogy that should count most, not appearance.

I guess I mentioned subjugation in the question of "is he black or not?" because, I am speculating that the black identity, as seen by the African American majority has more to do with a sense of shared experience and values than appearances.

Think about B.Obama now, and the questions being asked like "Is he black enough?" and on the flip side a guy like Eminem who at the beginning of his career was put through a sort of "test" to see if he would be accepted into the mainstream of black hip-hop... "Is he black enough?"

So basically I think there are two main sides you can take. To me, asking if Obama is black enough is a stupid question because I'm defining black based genealogy...
its a scientific identity.

Some people base the question on shared values and kinship...
its an emotional identity.

I don't know a good argument claiming its an identity based on appearance, and it doesn't belong as part of the scientific or emotionally based arguments.

I'm not talking about black identity. I'm talking about whether the word 'black' can refer to aboriginal Australians without misusing the language. Black identity is something on top of whether someone is black. No one would deny that Clarence Thomas is black. He couldn't be seen as a race traitor unless he really is black. What people question about him is whether he has a black identity. They know nothing about him if they think he doesn't, but where they find a disconnect is between his race and his racial identity. So someone can be black without having a black identity in the sense you're talking about.

I just stumbled across this thread and found it interesting so thought I'd make a late addition. I'm an Australian and have recently moved to the US.

I'm unsure whether your comment that "Australians call people from India black" was meant derisively, as in "Australians don't know any better". Personally, I don't call Indians black I call them Indian. Apart from some ignorant people (which are found in every country), I don't think Australians in general would refer to Indians as black. Yet I have heard some Indians refer to themselves as black so go figure.

I would also not call Australian aboriginies black - I'd refer to them as aboriginal. Aboriginies aren't generally referred to individually as "black" in the mainstream Australian media (as African Americans are in the USA) but are sometimes referred to as a group as "black" when the connotation is that of a positive identity separate from white Australians. (e.g. On a TV show such as Crimestoppers, an aboriginal suspect would not be described as "black" but "of aboriginal appearance". Yet an article in a magazine may have a title of "A Will to Win: The Heroic Resistance, Survival and Triumph of Black Australia".)

Apart from that, often Australian aboriginies refer to themselves as "blackfella" and the white Australian population as "whitefella". But I don't know whether an African American would be included as "blackfella" by Australian Aboriginies and I suspect not - this term is specifically for aboriginies.

In the same way, I don't think the term "black" as used by Americans can include Australian aboriginies at all. I actually don't think it can apply to any group outside of the USA - "black" as used by Americans means "African American". An American using the term "black" to include Australian Aboriginies is no different to an Australian using the term "black" to include Indians - in fact the variety of skin colours found amongst the Australian aboriginal population is very similar to that found amongst the Indian population, if skin colour is all that you are referring to. Personally, I don't think you can take identity out of the equation.

I heard this from someone who is Indian whose husband is Australian. I was assuming she learned it from him, and he's not remotely the type of person who would count as an ignorant racist.

I actually don't think it can apply to any group outside of the USA - "black" as used by Americans means "African American".

I can't accept that. Even if there are people who resist calling Barack Obama black because his black father is African rather than African American, he is still racially black in some sense. Americans can talk about black Africans and white Africans. We can speak of black Hatians, black Hispanic people in Cuba, black British people, and so on. The terms can easily extend to other contexts. I think the resistance to calling Barack Obama black reveals something, but it doesn't mean that there's no sense in which the word can apply to people like him. So I'm wondering if there's no sense in which it can apply to Australian aborigines, and if any sense in which it does should count as racial.

in fact the variety of skin colours found amongst the Australian aboriginal population is very similar to that found amongst the Indian population, if skin colour is all that you are referring to.

But this is because of mixing with whites, right? In that case it's much less like Indian variety (which is found in India completely apart from mixing with whites) and more like the variety of skin colors among blacks in the U.S., which is largely due to mixing with whites.

Personally, I don't think you can take identity out of the equation.

I'm not sure what you're getting at. How do you think I'm taking identity out of the equation? I do think we should distinguish between race and racial identity. Once we've done that, certain things might follow. I don't call that taking it out of the equation. It's just that it's not the same thing as race. Identity concerns might cause certain things to happen that affect who is what race. But how people perceive their own identity racially won't always line up with what race they are assigned to by society.

I am an African American Female, and I know peoples of many nations who refer to themselves as Black. Just as many people from different ethnic groups refer to themselves as White from other countries. My question is why is it that people can be white from other nations, but they can't be Black? And who decides what we call ourselves?

OK ... obviously I can't speak for the whole of Australia but the point I was trying to make is that generally Indians are not referred to as black, they are referred to as Indian. I would never describe one of my best friends to someone as black when she's Northern Indian - she would think it was weird and it wouldn't be an accurate description. So to say "Australians call Indians black" is a big generalisation. Same goes for aboriginal Australians - not generally referred to as black but "aboriginal".

The information regarding the variety of skin colour of indigenous Australians which was posted earlier in this thread is not exactly correct. Aboriginal Australians, despite sharing common ancestory, are comprised of a number of groups with separate cultural traditions, languages and variations in skin colour, based on geographical location (e.g. the Kooris from NSW, the Murris from Queensland). The southern part of Australia has a very different climate to northen Australia, so the amount of melanin in the skin is clearly going to vary amongst a widely dispersed group of people who have lived in the country for approximately 40,000 years.

The usage of the word "black" to describe aboriginal Australians is a tricky one. When used by non-aboriginal Australians it certainly has racial connotations and usually negative ones and, therefore, is generally avoided. There have been a number of incidents (which were given a lot of media coverage in Australia) of aboriginal players being called "black" by non-aboriginal players during professional sports games and the non-aboriginal players being punished by the relevant sports body for racism - which is fair enough, if an aboriginal Australian does not want to be referred to as "black" by a non-aboriginal because it has negative connotations, nobody can argue with that. Therefore, as an anglo Australian, I would avoid using the term as I don't wish to racially insult anyone.

On the other hand, there are aboriginal Australians who embrace the term "black". Again, this is fair enough. But, as an anglo Australian, I would still not use the term because clearly not all aboriginal Australians would be comfortable with it being used to describe them. I believe it is for this same reason that the term "black" is only used in the media in Australia when it has positive connotations e.g. "Black Pride", not when it refers to an aboriginal Australian as an individual. So, the term "black" as it applies to aboriginal Australians is totally acceptable when used to describe identity but not so acceptable when used to describe race.

To tell the truth, I found it difficult adjusting to the way the term "black" is used in the USA because for me (given the above) it has negative racial connotations if I use it to individually describe someone. Same as for me, being called "white" has negative racial connotations because if I'm called that in Australia it is normally in a derogatory way. So, in answer to your question RaeJene, in my opinion YOU decide what you call yourself, definitely not me - African Americans seem to be generally happy with being called black because it obviously doesn't have the negative connotations that it has for many aboriginal Australians. I don't have a problem with people referring to themselves as black and wanting me to refer to them as black as long as they are happy with the term. It's just not what I'm used to. I can also tell you that when the term "white Australia" is used, it doesn't normally have positive connotations, it is normally used in the context of differentiating in order to point out the injustices perpertrated against indigenous Australians - not something to be proud of at all.

Personally I don't like the terms white and black as nobody is REALLY the colour black nor the colour white, we're all varying shades of brown and beige and it seems just to be used to distinguish people by their skin colour, not their actual race e.g. there are dark-skinned, medium-skinned and light-skinned Moroccans but they all have the same (very mixed) racial ancestory so what is the point of distinguising them by "black" and "white"? They are Moroccan.

In America Being Black Does NOT mean you are African American; No matter what the american media says. Jamaicans, Bahamians, Cubans, Dominicans, American Indians (seminoles for example, Are all Black in General Terms but not necessary African.

As an American, who calls herself "Black" let me say that it highly annoys me that people equate Black with African American. I am NOT African American...even though by American slavery standards anyone with 1 drop of African blood is "African American". Of Course it's funny to me that my African Bloods comes from my African-Cuban Grandfather (mother's side). But depending on who you talk to this is of no importance since I have no Cuban Culture.

I often wonder if Chinese children who are adopted by White parents are therefore not considered Chinese becuase they don't have the "Chinese Experience" or culture.

My mother is 1/2 African-Cuban, 1/8 Irish (Black Irish which where actually Spanish/moors that ground in Ireland and mixed in) and 1/8 American Indian (Blackfoot and Crow).
Should I confuse the matter by saying my mother's father is actually 1/4 british, 1/4 Spanish and 1/2 African?

My father is 1/2 unknown White....and Cherokee.

So I'm basically half American Indian, 1/4 Cuban and 1/4 white (Irish).

I know these things because I have my family tree on both sides. But in general it's too confusing to go through that linege every time someone questions me when they meet me for the first time or when coworkers get into water cooler arguments over MY ETHNICITY. (And to comment on the question of hair that someone brought up....I do not have Kinky hair...but then neither do many Somalians).

In American Being Black is more about culure...then being from one paricular place. And being African American is more about politics. (Who stands with who...Much like being Latino...All Latinos are not Mexican).

Think of it like this: People speak in general terms. If I say "He's white" I don't expect to hear in response "AHHHH, His family is Viking or German". So it totally confuses me as to WHY so many people, especially in America, want to lump all blacks with African Americans?

In America, Jamaicans and all people of the Caribbean call themselves Black until you ask them specific questions. When I say I'm Black...Caribbeans actually say "Yes, but where are your people from?" Whereas InnerCity African Americans get upset if you admit to anything other than Black...But let not he ignorant or the media define all people.

Remember there is ancestry, there is Nationality,and there is culture. Most African Americans tell me I "act white but look Spanish or High Yellow". Lots of my Latino friends don't speak spanish either and either accept me as mixed or not depending on how highly they value culture over blood. It helps that many Full BLooded latinos, that I know, also grew up with parents feeling they should assimilate. And Yes, some of those friends, will tell you they are African American....So go fiqure...It's really not an Easy answer. The bottom line is that if you are born in American and your family assimilates you are American and it's easier to generalize and fall under a community banner (especially for political reasons). So depending on the politics I'm Black and Latina...and I waver from one side to the other depending on politics. Just don't bring up Native American Rights because you know what side I'll lean to!!!!

But to answer the original question: Yes to me at least (as an american) Aboriginals are Black...just not African....And Obama is Black just without a Deep American sense of the historical 4 generations or more of being African in America. (That again is why I don't call myself African American...even though the American Black experience is largely what I grew up in).

Anyway, Everyone that reads this will make up their own minds (as it should be). But please open up and realize we all use generic labels for the sake of convience. Remember Even Israelis are Living on what used to be termed part of Africa before they change the peninsula's name to the middle east.

Well, I think it's helpful to distinguish, as Tommie Shelby does, between thin black identity and thick black identity. A thin black identity is the kind of identity formed merely because of how someone looks (i.e. everyone sees them and responds a certain way because they look black). This is true of Clarence Thomas, Barack Obama, and anyone else whose blackness might be questioned in the ways that have come up in this conversation. A thick black identity involves certain cultural connections, behavior patterns, beliefs, and family connection with the most significant black population in the U.S. Clarence Thomas has a lot of that in terms of his upbringing, but his political views disqualify him in some people's minds (even though his reasons for them are based in the lived experience of being black). Barack Obama has only a little of it, and while his political views don't disqualify him his ancestry and later adoption of those patterns (and only some of the time) disqualify him in some people's minds. A black person raised in a white family would be similar, as would African-descended people from other countries.

It's not the thick sense of blackness I'm interested. That's cultural. It's the thin sense I'm interested in, which is racial. In this sense Obama, Thomas, and people from African and the Caribbean can be as black as any American descended from U.S. slaves.

The question, then, is whether aboriginal Australians are black in that sense.

I'm white Australian, my wife is Indian (but sometimes mistaken for an aboriginal)and I have studied Aboriginal culture at university under a lecturer who spent his lifetime working and living amongst aboriginal peoples in central Australia. That doesn't mean my views are any more correct than others, just thought I'd throw that in by way of introduction.
Our lecturer taught us that aboriginal Australians who are still linked to their traditional beliefs - even if Christian - do not think in terms of race or even skin colour but rather in terms of family or clan. So, a white person who is initiated into the lore of a particular clan or group (as some have been) is regarded as fully one of them regardless of skin colour. At the same time, an unitiated aboriginal may not be regarded as fully belonging to the clan. Race doesn't come into it. Race, in fact, is largely a European construction which was introduced into the aboriginal worldview.
But, I have noticed that aboriginal Australians who live in urban areas and are thus more exposed to western/American popular culture have taken to calling themselves "black". This is strange as it was quite common in the past for white Australians to refer to aboriginals as "blacks", although this is not quite so common now. Perhaps its adoption by urban aboriginals people is a way of claiming for positive use what was previously a negative term for themselves.
"Indigenous" is more commonly used now amongst educated whites in preference to "black", as it carries no pejorative connotations.
You might be interested to know that the aboriginal experience in Australia does include a civil rights movement roughly paralelling the black American movement in the 1960s.
I have *never* heard a white Australian refer to an Indian as a "black". They are always called Indians. But most Australians *would* refer to African-Americans as "black Americans".
Hope this helps.

Jeremy and Mark you both making interesting comments.

I think, Jeremy, In the "thin sense" aboriginal australians would then be considered black.

Thanks to all for making this an interesting and enlightening discussion.

Jeremy, Yasmin, et al, I thought it worth adding this: I have heard that up to the 1960s, indigenous Australians who travelled to the US (not many indigenous Australians, btw, would have had that privilege, but some individuals did) were treated as "black" by the whites in your society. But I am quite sure that they would not themselves have related to the black American identity. So I guess that means that in the "thin" sense they may be black, but not in the "thick" sense.
Btw, I think it would be by and large correct to say that when black Americans come to Australia, they are generally not subject to any of the prejudices white Australians have unfortunately inherited in regard to indigenous Australians.

Btw, I think it would be by and large correct to say that when black Americans come to Australia, they are generally not subject to any of the prejudices white Australians have unfortunately inherited in regard to indigenous Australians.

Then why is it considered offensive to call them black? I thought it was considered offensive because they were being associated with a group that has historically been considered lower, i.e. the descendants of Africans. That can't be the reason if the descendants of Africans aren't considered lower. Or are Australians of African descent considered lower than the descendants of indigenous Australians?

This is complicated. Well, I don't think most Australians think of race in the Darwinian terms of lower or higher; perhaps in the past, and then oddly only among intellectuals, but certainly not now. Why is it offensive to call aboriginals "black"? This is difficult to explain, but the term black in regard to indigenous folk would often be used with a certain inflection or non-verbal signals that indicated a pejorative sense was intended. But this was really a cultural, not a racial clash, _imo_.
That's also why Indians were never referred to as blacks in colloqiual language, because they did not share the cultural characteristics of the indigenous people which white Australia found offensive. The same with African-Americans. Here's an example - in the 1970s Australia's favourite pop singer was an African-American import, Marcia Hines. She is presently universally repsected here and a judge on Australian Idol. I think it might be true to say that her "race" actually opened doors for her here, rather than being a hindrance to her career. Only now could an indigenous Australian hope to receive such adulation and fame in that field, and in fact several indigenous singers have made it to the finals of that show and secured record contracts (I'm not really a fan, just find it interesting sociologically).
Oh yes, and Australians call African-Americans "black Americans" because they know it is not impolite to do so; it is an adoption of the common American usage.
Being a multi-cultural society, most white Australians accord a high priority to getting along with all people, regardless of colour, "race" or origins. Social cohesion is highly valued. That's not to say there are not social problems in some areas, or individual racists, but being openly racist is definitely placing oneself beyond the pale (no pun intended!).
Jeremy, when all is said and done, I just don't think race is the issue in Australia that is appears to be in the US. I'd be interested in what other Aussies would say in regard to that.

Perhaps one way to get at what you're saying is that the Australian problems similar to U.S. race problems are not about race but about something else, e.g. culture or ethnicity or something else in the area.

Regardless, the issue I'm mainly concerned about is what people in the U.S. will say about aboriginal Australians. Are they black in the thin, racial sense I outlined above, according to what people in the U.S. mean when they call people black? Ultimately the issues about whether or why Australians call people black will not answer the primary question I'm interested in, even if those issues are interesting for other reasons.

Jeremy,
Yes, I think it would be fair to say that.
There is a difference between the paternalism that white Australia displayed towards the aborigines up until c1967, and a full blown racist doctrine. Australians are pragmatic, not ideological. Racism is fundamentally opposed to the egalitarianism which is central to our ethos. While a minority of Australians may still harbour bigotry towards indigenous folk, people who espouse racist doctrines are regarded as "ratbags", i.e. one should be wary of them.
Also, I realise much of this was ancillary to your concern, but I hope it was of interest nonetheless. Although Australia and the US are superficially similar at the surface cultural level, at a deeper level they are quite different. Therein lie the problems of making easy comparisons, I think.
Can I suggest that in most parts of the US Australian aboriginals would de facto be regarded as racially black, even though culturally they have nothing to do with that identity? Does that make sense?
I'm also interested in how Indians are perceived in the US. My wife has several relatives who feel quite comfortable in the US, but they live in California. How is it elsewhere in the country, I wonder?
Btw, early in our marriage my wife confided in me as to the typical Indian attitudes towards whites: we are uncultured, ill-mannered, insensitive, dirty (because we don't douche our bottoms after going to the toilet) and we have an odd and offensive smell! It was an eye-opener for me :-)
pax!

Attitudes toward Indians vary. Among college-educated people of my generation, particularly in the northeast and on the west coast, Indians are probably regarded as smart, hard-working people, because many of the Indians they've been exposed to have been. Among working class America, you'll probably find people thinking Indians are like the Apu stereotype from the Simpsons (i.e. the convenience store worker or taxi driver). You might find some who immediately think of Muslim terrorists when seeing Indians in traditional garb, especially in more rural environments or among older people. So I think it's a mixed group of reactions.

I find this question to be un-ethical in all forms. Truly, why is it important? Understanding, that I don't care to ask, "Why do white people tint their skin?"
I, for one don't consider aboriginal Australians, nor African americans as being Black, nor do I consider them as Africans. Logically, I have always believed if I was born in Africa (and raised up culturally) then I am African. And if I'd moved to America, I would be considered as an African American, not the other way around. However, if you want to categorize dark people as being "Black"(including aborigines), please consider the fact that, most of Us are mixed with euro blood,(as I am) which would explain our diffrent features (as we all Do Not look alike!), skin color, eye color and hair textures. Now, I am not dening we aren't mixed with African decendents, bc we are,until proving otherwise. But Bc history has been tampered with,we may never know why aboriginies look soo unique compared to other dark skin people of the world. Their trully beautiful people.

I, for one don't consider aboriginal Australians, nor African americans as being Black, nor do I consider them as Africans.

Not considering African-Americans to be black is what I would consider to be un-ethical. Pretending that racial classification doesn't occur masks social phenomena about race and perpetuates it because we can't address it. Racialization is very real, and it's a huge mistake, and I would say an immoral one, to pretend it doesn't go on. We have a moral obligation to recognize social ills.

Logically, I have always believed if I was born in Africa (and raised up culturally) then I am African. And if I'd moved to America, I would be considered as an African American, not the other way around.

You're using the term 'African' to refer to continental and cultural origin. That's not what I'm talking aboutt. I'm talking about race here.

However, if you want to categorize dark people as being "Black"(including aborigines), please consider the fact that, most of Us are mixed with euro blood,(as I am) which would explain our diffrent features (as we all Do Not look alike!), skin color, eye color and hair textures. Now, I am not dening we aren't mixed with African decendents, bc we are,until proving otherwise.

I never denied any of this. In fact, it's very important for a number of things. I'm not sure what it has to do with what I'm talking about, though. The fact that most black Americans have a lot of European ancestry doesn't stop them being classified as black racially.

But Bc history has been tampered with,we may never know why aboriginies look soo unique compared to other dark skin people of the world. Their trully beautiful people.

I'm not sure what you mean by history being tampered with. History happened, and it's what it is. It involved people mixing at some times and places, and it involve people being isolated from each other at other times and places. I don't see how any of that counts as tampering. It simply occurred.

As for beauty, I haven't been talking about that at all. Everything I've been saying is consistent with whatever view you might happen to hold about who is beautiful and who is not. I'm not doing aesthetics here. I'm doing metaphysics.

Truly, why is it important?

Well, race is a real issue. We've classified people into races, and society treats people racially according to those categories. To explain real social phenomena, we need to talk about race. We need to analyze what people mean by their racial terms and racially-tinged practices. So I'm interested in what race is, what determines racial classifications, and what racial terms mean. So here I'm interested in what people mean by the word 'black'. Does it include Australian aborigines? If so, then it has implications for the theory of race that I'm offering in my dissertation on the philosophy of race.

Jeremy,
Are you taking anthropological views of race into consideration in your dissertation as well as the social and political constructs? It seems to me that the socio-political construct of race has survived in some societies long after the anthropological notion of race has moved on.
(It always amuses me when in American TV cop shows "Caucasian" means white - as if a "Caucasian" person cannot be brown or black skinned!)

Mark, I have no idea what distinction you're relying on. Could you explain what you mean by anthropological race as opposed to social and political constructs? Do you mean something like a biological view?

By and large, the word 'Caucasian' is synonymous with the term 'white' for most people in the U.S., and since usage determines meaning that means the terms are often functionally synonymous. That wasn't always the case, but I think it largely is now.

Jeremy,
Yes, I'm talking about the biological evidence for race. As far as I understand it(and I confess at the outset to be a layman when it comes to anthropology, so check out what I say for yourself), most scientists who work in this area now concede that ideas of race coming out of the 18th & 19th centuries are not presently sustainable on a scientific basis. Advances in genetic analysis in particular have exploded the idea of discrete racial groups. Rather, what is observed is a continuum from the darkest African to the fairest northern European where genetic pools overlap one another.
The problem with the social construct of race is that it tends to rely on readily identifiable physical characteristics despite scientific evidence that such characteristics are in fact only superficial indicators of ethnic origin. Virtually all of the physical characteristics that are commonly thought to be specific to one race are actually present in most of the larger ethnic groupings. (Didn't National Geographic do an exercise in this several years ago where people were asked to identify about 20 individuals' racial background from photographs? The editors rightly took great delight in subsequently pointing out the errors most respondents made.)
But the socio-political construct persists despite scientific advances. The example of Caucasian = white in US colloquial language is a good one: it was not even accurate when anthropologists believed Caucasian was a valid racial grouping, as in practice it presumably excludes several dark skinned ethnic groups (e.g. several north African and middle-eastern peoples as well as a good proportion of the population of India) who were always classified as Caucasian in the scientific literature of the day because they were all believed to be descended from an original group who migrated outwards from the region of the Caucasus.
Sorry, I don't have any references readily to hand, but I did some fairly wide reading in this area several years ago.

No one today thinks the 18th-19th century biological conceptions of race can be fit to contemporary science. There are scientists and philosophers today arguing for a biological conception of race. I think a few of those conceptions refer to something real, but I don't think those classifications will match up with actual racial groups. For instance, one of these categories places a lot of stock in ancestral tree structures, and that means some East Asian or Pacific Island groups are closer to Africans than they are to other East Asian or Pacific Island groups. (I don't remember the details offhand, but I remember if not fitting with common racial classifications.)

The problem with the social construct of race is that it tends to rely on readily identifiable physical characteristics despite scientific evidence that such characteristics are in fact only superficial indicators of ethnic origin. Virtually all of the physical characteristics that are commonly thought to be specific to one race are actually present in most of the larger ethnic groupings.

I suppose it depends on what you mean by "the problem with". If the goal is to make our social constructs correspond with groups that fit with what's biologically non-arbitrary, then this is a a problem. But that's an unrealistic goal, and it would defeat the purpose of calling it a social construction. The point of calling it a social construction is that there really is a social phenomenon of dividing people according to visible characteristics, and that social phenomenon generates a social category. Just as with other social categories (e.g. conservative, liberal, university professor, president, boundary line, copyrighted material) you end up with a real group whose origin is not connected up with anything determined by biology alone. But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist, because it's a social category.

Now another thing you might mean is that the process of socially creating race involved some immoral decisions to go with arbitrary features as definitive of something deeper than a social construction. That's certainly true. It's also a historical fact, and it led to the practice of treating these groups as important, thus making socially-caused races, which are therefore real entities just as universities, nations, and corporations are real entities. The problem is that people have false beliefs about these entities, and that's what we need to fight against. It doesn't mean the races don't exist. Social practices make them what they are, and there's nothing we can do about that except perhaps to push social practices in a different direction so as to change how people think of the groups gradually.

Accuracy when it comes to the reference class of a given word depends entirely on what that word means, which in turn depends entirely on how people use it. I don't think very many people use the word 'Caucasian' as a technical term the way it used to be used in the days of biological notions of race with all that cranium-measurement stuff. In my experience, it more or less maps on to how people use 'white'. So I don't think any mistake is being made when people use them as synonyms. But there's even support for synonymy among those doing old-style racialist science. See the Arthur de Gobineau quote in the Wikipedia entry.

Jeremy,
Ultimately, what I'm concerned about is that social constructs of race often rely on outdated science or psedo-science to perpetuate stereotypes and injustice, and they often continue to exist solely to subvert the bonds of human fellowship in multi-ethnic societies (that probably makes me sound like a left-winger, but actually I'm a social conservative,at least in Australian terms, fwiw). That's what I mean by "the problem with..." So, I would see the continued misuse of the word Caucasian to mean white as not merely ignorant but also problematic because it perpetuates unhelpful distinctions. That's probably why police forces in most (all?) other English speaking countries have long since abandoned its use.
I agree, one can write about the cultural and social phenomenon of race in an analytical way without reference to a scientific basis, purely sociologically, but I wonder whether a philosophical approach, which is ultimately concerned with the question of truth, does not require interacting with the anthropological theories? But that is really dependant on the scope of your dissertation.
It's a very interesting subject area to be working in.

Wow, this is a very interesting thread. I am a person of Spaniard, Puerto Rican and African American ancestry. I am medium brown and I have been leary of visiting Australia because I have heard they are very racist. Now, this thread is refreshing as I see that Australia is more mixed then I previously believed.

In America, whether or not you would be considered "black" depends on what part of the country you are in. The larger cities understand that not everyone with a darker shade is of totally African American descent. However, in less culturally diverse parts of the US, everyone with a darker shade is considered black. I live in NYC and most try to figure out what ethnicity I am as I look mixed.

Funny but African Americans tend to be very mixed themselves. Many have Native American blood and white blood. Slave masters mixed with the female slaves and there was interbreeding between the Native Americans and African Americans years ago. For the most part, they are more mixed then those in the Carribbean islands (ex Jamaica, Virgin Islands). It seems as though we are obsessed with race here in the US instead of embracing that we are all American.

i think that australians should be noted as their own race, because there is no direct correlation between austalians and africans besides skin tone. And i can always tell the difference between an african from an aboriginee.

and by the way im nigerian

I don't think the term `black`' is an insult in any sence, and the concept `black' should be viewed in colour and not the place or geographical location. Let it be categorical, blacks in Africa, black in Asia,black in America and black in Australia, what wrong with that? It is like the way we have white in America, but the original home is Europe, should we then deny the fact that the American are white?.. It is the colour of the skin and that is not a mistake..am black and proud of that..it is my colour, so is white and red. It should not be a labelling factor or be used to deny others their basic right they deserve...

But American whites are white because they're descended from Europeans. Aboriginal Australians aren't descended from Africans, at least not in anywhere the same kind of recent descent that you might think matters for race. I suppose, though, that we ought to factor in the common African ancestry that the scientific consensus holds to be true of all of us. The first humans were black, and the Australian aborigines and Africans today are descended from them without losing their blackness the way other peoples have. If you think about it that way, it's hard to resist seeing Australian aborigines as black.

The point of labeling is to be accurate. What counts as accurate in this kind of case is if it fits with people's actual usage, since that's what generates racial groups as social kinds.

I am what many and I would call an African American woman. Both my parents have dark skin and are from America. Their ancestors for many generations have also come from here. However, how can one classify me as being black when I have England (white) great great great grandfather on my fathers side and a great great Indian (I think Cherokee) on my mothers side. However, I am Carmel complexion everywhere but my face, a very light brown to rosy pink complexion in my face (which really looks very white in the winter and when I take pictures) at the moment with a wide nose, high cheek bones, almond eyes, curvy hourglass figure (big butt, big thighs, big breasts, flat stomach), kinky hair when it is not relaxed, full sized lips, and brown eyes. However, when I was born I had more slanted like eyes, full naturally curly hair (not kinky), and I was lighter completed. And no it was not just because I was a baby that I was light completed it was until I started getting into doing a lot of outside activities that my skin got darker to a Carmel instead of a light bright black girl. One thing many people need to learn about some black people hair is that yes most of us do have kinky or nappy hair (by the way there is nothing wrong with saying nappy because I love and embrace my roots). Actually my sister (we don’t have the same father is she is darker skinned than I (more of a very dark brown color). However we both were born with very curly hair and were naturally like this until we put relaxers on our hair. People need to know that many black people hair texture changes due to the harshness of relaxer ingredients onto the hair. Also when I was born my nose was not as big as it is now and actually got bigger when I started to gain weight. I am 5’3” and weigh 130 pounds, but I am not fat because I have the hour glass shape. Most of my weight is in my butt, hips, and thighs. However up until I was 13 I was only 95 pounds (but I still had a big butt, but not big thighs and hips). So my point is just because you have certain features at the moment does not mean they can’t be alerted due to things like climate, relaxers, perms, weight gain, etc.. I have attached some websites that I think you all should check out. Some of you may know about it and some of you may not. It basically is saying that they believe all mankind came from one color and this color was not white. It was a dark color and we all evolved to other colors due to migration and things of that sort. So I honestly think I should be considered an American woman of dark complexion. However, if their findings are very true they say we all came from Africa. Therefore I guess really whites are White African, blacks are Black African, and so on. However, my skin is not black it is more brown (but don’t get it confused I think the black color is beautiful), therefore I am a Brown American. So I guess I could classify myself along with some Latinos, Hispanics, Whites, Indians, and Asians in the same category. Also I think that therefore I would consider there to be Black Americans who are also from those same ethnicities. Therefore I would have to say that I would the ones of black skin color to be black Aboriginals, the ones of brown skin color to be brown Aboriginals, and white skin color to be white Aboriginals. However, this is just another way to divide us up into groups. Why do we need this why can’t we just be HUMANS?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/15/AR2005121501728_pf.html

http://www.stewartsynopsis.com/first_appearance_of_white_skin_i.htm

http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-First-Inhabitants-of-the-Americans-Were-Black-64307.shtml

You're 13/16 black and wondering how you can be classified as black? Plessy v. Ferguson legally justified segregation of someone who was 1/8 black as black. The way social classification of races has generally taken place is according to the one-drop rule, whereby someone with any recent black ancestry black. It's a racist rule, but it's still in operation in many places and contexts. It's changing, though, and I think that's good. But it's not hard to see why someone who is 13/16 black will count as black by many people's reckoning, particularly if enough of your visible features are associated enough with what black people are expected to look like.

There's a distinction between being or relatively recent African descent (which is true of you) and being of much further back African descent (which is true of all of us).

I have been comparing skin color between Australian Aborigines and Africans for 11 years now. I collect hundreds of pictures of Australian aborigines. The Blackest Africans occupy the Western, Eastern and Subharran region of the continent. I even compared the blackest Africans to the blackest Australian Aborigines. The Blackest Australian aborigines definitely outblacked the blackest Africans. The blackest Africans have black skin in the shade, but dark grey or almost black skin under direct sunlight. However, the blackest Australian aborigines have pitch black skin in the shade and yet still have completely black skin under direct sunlight. The Buka people in Northeast Papua New Guinea of the South Pacific were famous for having the world's blackest skins yet they are all of Australian aboriginal descent. AND YES EVENTHOUGH HUMANS EVOLVED FROM AFRICA, THE BLACK SKINS OF AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES WERE SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN NOT TO BE AFRICAN MADE. 99.9% of people deny this true revelation especially many Africans who think that all black skins only belong to them.

It depends on what you mean by "African-made". If you just mean that the particular person doesn't come from Africa, that's fine. If you mean the genes behind the skin color don't ultimately come from Africa, that really does contradict current science, which holds that every person ultimately descends from Africans, and thus all skin color genes are African-made except for the light skin color genes that diverges after the ancestors of other races left Africa.

hat I meant by African-made was that these Australian aborigines were once Southeast Asians who were light skinned and once they entered Australian deserts and their skins turned black. Also, scientists have proven out that the Australian aborigines had no genetic input from outsiders once they entered the continent to the modern era of their present blacks skins. Which means that they did not have dark skins right before they entered Australia. All humans have African genes, however if the blacks skins of Aborigines were directly African made then they wouldn't be called Australian aborigines. Their were atleast five different places between Africa and Australia that humans migrated which took thousands of years. As a result, these migrated people definitely lost all of their African appearances before they even reached South East Asia let alone Australia.

I'm going to need to see some source-citation for claims like that. I do know that aboriginal Australians are genetically closer to some Asian groups than they are to Africans. That's surprising if you consider merely what they look like, but there are two possibilities, the second of which makes a good deal of sense:

1. Asians diverged from Africans, and then they lost their dark skin. At some subsequent point, the branch that led to the aboriginal Australians somehow got it back.

2. Asians diverged from Africans, and then the Asian group split into the ancestors of contemporary Asians, who eventually lost their dark skin, and the ancestors of contemporary Australian aborigines, who did not.

Of those two options, the second is by far the simpler and more likely. Unless you know of some specific evidence for 1 over 2, then I suspect what you've seen is just the fact that Asians diverged from Africans before aboriginal Australians branched off, but that thesis doesn't decide between 1 and 2. It's Ockham's Razor that decides that.

Or are you suggesting scientific evidence for an even more radical thesis, i.e. the idea that dark skin color came later than light skin color? Last I knew that view had been pretty decisively refuted.

This isn't a response to Bob, but a quick Google search for what he might have been referring to did give me something interesting in relation to the broader point of this post. It didn't turn much up in relation to what I was looking for, but the first two searches were the Wikipedia entry for black people) and this post. The Wikipedia entry interestingly discusses indigenous Australians and Australian peoples as if they are one category of black people. There is a comment on the discussion page asking for it to be separated into different pages rather than treating all the groups it includes as being in one category, but nevertheless I do think it's a sign that some people are thinking about this the way I think many do think about it, and that's what matters for my thesis.

There are several scientific sources declaiming that present day Australian Aborigines have African black skins.

1) Luca Cavalli-Sforza, a Stanford population geneticist, stated that "Cavalli‑Sforza found that the genetic diversity, of populations was better explained by geograph­ic origin than by skin color. His book includes more than 500 maps color‑coded to show areas of ge­netic similarity.He found the biggest genetic differences between African and Australian populations. Yet many Australian aborigines have skin as black as Africans"(Sforza 1995). This article was published on March 12, 1995 in the Sunday Gazette.
Who's website is

2) Article written by Margery Post Abbot "Who's DNA Is It Anyway" states that: "The more we know about human genetics, the clearer it becomes that our notions of race are not a valid biological classification for humans. Genes may give us a particular skin color, but genetically, dark-skinned Australian Aborigines are not closely related to Africans"(Abbot 20). This article was found in

3)In a London News Article "We've all got roots in Africa (if you go back 60,000 years)" states that:
"However, Cambridge University scientists were able to demonstrate that Australia's settlers share common ancestors with the rest of the world by testing DNA samples more extensively than had been possible before. Dr Peter Forster, who led the research, said: "For the first time, this evidence gives us a genetic link showing that the Australian Aboriginal and New Guinean populations are descended directly from the same specific group of people who emerged from the African migration.The scientists reported their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They wrote that Australian and New Guinean populations share characteristics found nowhere else because they evolved with no genetic input from outsiders once they had settled in Australasia"(8/5/2007). This article was found in

But I think all of that is consistent with thesis 2. So what leads you to prefer thesis 1? I don't think this evidence supports that out of the two, so the fact that 2 is the simpler explanation should favor it.

This does help because the darker skinned earlier peoples of Southeast Asia are divided in to Negritos and other Native peoples of that area. At darkest their skins reach brown to dark brown. This is them alone who were the very first people to enter Australia along with lighter skinned Asians. However, I have seen some Australian Aborigines with completely black skin under direct intense sunlight. Which also blacker than the darkest of Africans I have seen even in the Western, Eastern and Subharran part of their continent and I have been comparing skin color between the darkest Africans and the blackest Aborigines for the past 11 years for personal research. Therefore, these Southeast Asians definitely gained skin color when they entered Australia because this continent is much dryer and hotter than Southeast Asia. As a result, the development of some of them with jet black skins makes me finally understand.---

I am born of a Ethiopian mother and a african american father. If you know anything about ethiopians we are considered cushtics as many east africans are then you have the bantu witch are the majority of africa and then there are the northern africans many people say that we (cushtics) are mixed between arab and black but we are not my mother has been mistaken as indian but she is black and I am very much black but to answer the question every person on the planet came from an African man so you could consider aborigens people as balck.

Their skin is now brown to dark brown. Europeans' skin is now much lighter than that, but it doesn't mean they're not descended from darker-skinned people. Why shouldn't the same be true of the peoples of Southeast Asia? Aboriginal Australians aren't descended from the current people of Southeast Asia. They're descended from their ancestors.

Indigenous people in Australia DO use the term 'Black' no matter what their skin colour. Racist government policies of the past had an obsession with categorising people based on the colour of their skin. Policies of child removal (the Stolen Generations) accompanied the assimilation of ‘half-caste’ (mixed race) children with the aim of having them disappear into white society. In other words, the colonisers tried to 'breed out' evidence of Aboriginality. Today, many Aboriginal peoples carry the burden of such policies, when their identity is questioned and interrogated by those who determine Aboriginality based on the colour of skin. It is highly offensive to interrogate ones Aboriginality on the basis of how 'Black' ones skin is. An Aboriginal person can have red hair, freckles, blue eyes and the palest of skin - they are still Aboriginal.

PS. I am from Australia.

Mr Pierce said that as he understood that Indians in Southern India didn't have other charcteristics typical of Africa. I don't think that is entirely accurate. please look up Sathya Sai Baba, he is a South Indian who does not gel his hair. Indians have some common features with Africans, particularly in Southern India. It really depends upon the Indian. Sudanese and Ethiopians have features that are often similar to Southern Indians. An Ethopian friend met my husband once and both kept trying to clarify each other's origins. He felt she must be from India, she felt he must be from Ethopia. My Ethopian friend was regarded as black by Americans. Sudanese can have a very Indian look. While, like all people, there is a broad range of looks that can describe Indian, they generally have very distinct features that Identify them. Some of these features are similar to African and others European. For instance, my husband (a South Indian) has a very long nose but very large nostrils. My husband appears to have straight or slightly wavy hair because, like most South Indians, he combs and gels it. Without the gel it grows up, not down. South Indian hair is usually wavy to curly, occasionally straight or kinky. Our pastor is repeatedly mistaken for African American. One of our friends recently had to have his hair cut twice because the beautician assumed he was "black" (African American) and she cut it afro-style. My children are brown but never mistaken for Indian. They have too many distinctly European features.

to answer the question
- aboriginal australians are NoT black
dey are brown nd dark brown
black is not only the skin colour but the culture the african culture including the african americans black british afro brazilians jamacians ect
blacks are negros (negros= someone of african descent)
africans and people with african blood are black
today africans are black - 40 000 years ago africans were black
today aus aboriginals are "black" - 40 000 years ago they werent black
i live in Aus and see aboriginals some indians islanders (pacific) trying to be black black meaning african american some not being black but brown
some even use the "N" word (which they shouldnt)
in conclusion black means someone of african descent no matter how far back their african descent is from and black meaning black or brown skin

If being black requires having African culture, then very few Americans are black. That position is pretty much a non-starter. Black Americans have pretty much nothing of African culture. There's been some diluted impact from African culture, but that's almost as present in American culture at large at this point.

Now there is a culture that many people call black in the U.S. But that's not the same thing as being racially black, and it's not the same thing most people mean most of the time when calling someone black. I'm pretty sure I made that distinction above pretty clearly.

I think many of the same issues might come up with 'Negro'. Would someone in the 1870s, 1920s, or 1950s have called an aboriginal Australian a Negro? I have no idea. You can't use that as a starting point, since it raises the same questions.

You're final suggestion can't be right. If someone who has African ancestry is black, no matter how far back that ancestry is, then everyone is black according to our current scientific consensus. That's clearly not going to get you results that fit with how the word is used.