Afro-Asians

Robert Scott Bryan Clay Kamala Harris Naomi Campbell Staceyann Chin Tyson Beckford Jean Ping Chanel Iman Crystal Kay
Total population
Official global population numbers are unknown. United States: 185,595 (2010)[Americas-US 1]
Regions with significant populations
Democratic Republic of the Congo •  Guyana •  India •  Kenya •  Madagascar •  Jamaica •  Puerto Rico •  Réunion •  South Africa •  Suriname •  Trinidad and Tobago •  United Kingdom •  United States

Afro-Asian or Blasian is a moniker used to refer a person of mixed Black and Asian (specifically East or Southeast Asian) ancestry.^[1]

  History

  Africa

  Democratic Republic of the Congo

  Katanga Afro-Japanese

During the 1970s, an increased demand for copper and cobalt attracted Japanese investments in the mineral rich southeastern region of Katanga Province. Over a 10-year period, more than 1,000 Japanese miners relocated to the region, confined to a strictly male-only camp. Arriving without family or spouses, the men often sought social interaction outside the confounds of their camps. In search of intimacy with the opposite sex, sometimes resulting in cohabitation, the men openly engaged in interracial dating and relationships, a practice mostly embraced by the local society. As a result, a number of Japanese miners fathered children with native Congolese women. However, most of the mixed race infants resulting from these unions died, soon after birth. Multiple testimonies of local people suggest that the infants were poisoned by a Japanese lead physician and nurse working at the local mining hospitale. It is widely speculated that their actions would have been dictated by the Japanese national constitution which forbade the procreation of mixed-race children. Subsequently, the circumstances would have brought the miners shame as most of them already had families back in their native Japan. The practice forced many native Katangan mothers to hide their children by not reporting to the hospital to give birth. Other women their raised their child more rural or remote areas as blasian children were sought after and murdered in the city by Japanese officials.

Today, fifty Afro-Japanese have formed an association of Katanga Infanticide survivors. The organization has hired legal council seeking a formal investigation into the killings. The group submitted official inquiry to both the Congolese and Japanese governments, to no avail. Issues specific to this group include having no documentation of their births, since not having been born in the local hospital spared their lives. The total number of survivors is unknown.^{[Africa-Congo 1]}

  Kenya

  Zheng He's fleet

In 1999, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times reported a surprising encounter on the island of Pate, where he found a village of stone huts. He talked to an elderly man living in the village who said that he was a descendant of Chinese explorers who were shipwrecked there centuries before. The Chinese had supposedly traded with the locals, and had even loaded giraffes onto their ship to take back to China. However, the Chinese ran aground on a nearby reef. Kristof found evidence that confirmed the man's story. Such evidence included the Asian features of the people in the village, plus Asian-looking porcelain artifacts.^{[Africa-Kenya 1][Africa-Kenya 2]} These descendents of Zheng He's fleet occupy both Pate and Lamu Islands.

  New immigration

New interest in Kenya's natural resources has attracted over $1billion dollars of investment from Chinese firms. This has propelled new development in Kenya's infastruction with Chinese firms bringing in their own males workers to build roads.^{[Africa-Kenya 3]} The temporary residents usually arrive without their spouses and families. Thus, a rise of incidents involving local college-aged females has resulted in an increased rate of Afro-Chinese infant births to single Kenyan mothers.^{[Africa-Kenya 4]}

  Cape coloured school children of South Africa

  Madagascar

The majority of the population of Madagascar is primarily a mixture in varying degrees of Austronesian and Bantu settlers from Southeast Asia (Borneo) and East Africa (primarily Mozambique), respectively.^{[Africa-Madagascar 1][Africa-Madagascar 2]} Years of intermarriages created the Malagasy people, who primarily speak Malagasy, an Austronesian language with Bantu influences.^{[Africa-Madagascar 2]}

In the study of "The Dual Origin of the Malagasy in Island Southeast Asia and East Africa: Evidence from Maternal and Paternal Lineages" shows the African Maternal origin to be 38% and Paternal 51% while the Asian Paternal to be 34% and Maternal 62%.^[2] In the study of Malagasy Autosomal DNA shows the highlanders ethic group like Merina are almost an even mixture of Asian and African origin, while the Coastal ethnic group have much higher African mixture in their autosomal DNA suggesting they are mixture of new African migrants and the already established highlander ethnic group.

Intermarriage between Chinese men and native Malagasy women was not uncommon.^[3] Several thousands Cantonese men intermarried and cohabited with Malagasy women. 98% of the Chinese traced their origin from Guangdong more specifically Cantonese district of Shunde. For example the census alone in 1954 census found 1, 111 "irregular" Chinese-Malagasy unions, and 125 legitimate, i.e., legally married. Registered by their mothers under a Malagasy name.

  South Africa

The Cape Coloured population descend from indigenous Khoisan and Xhosa peoples; European immigrants; and Malagasy, Ceylonese and South-East Asian (primarily Indonesian) laborers and slaves brought by the Dutch from the mid-17th Century to the late 18th Century. The majority of Coloureds, particularly in the Western Cape and Northern Cape, speak Afrikaans as a first language, while those in other parts of South Africa tend to speak English as well. Coloureds with Javanese or other Indonesian ancestry may often be regarded as Cape Malay and are primarily Muslims, while the majority of Coloureds are Christian (generally Protestant) or agnostic. Due to similar social adversities experienced under the Apartheid regime from the late 1940s to the late 1980s, Coloured and Indigenous South African communities generally fall under the Black social category when it comes to employment and affirmative action policies.^{[Africa-South-Africa 1]}

DNA of South Africa's ethnic minority

The mtDNA study of ethnic minority from South Africa shows substantial African genetic mtDNA contribution in both the Cape Malay and South African Indians. mtDNA of cape Malay shows 10% African mtDNA contribution in their gene pool including 20% (1 in 5) of South African Indians, there appears to be no African Y-DNA contribution detected but this could be due to the fact that the sample size was small. mtDNA study also revealed that about 1 in 10 South African Black people have mtDNA lineages derived from Eurasian (3.0%) and Asian of Indian origins (7.1%)^[4]

Cape coloured

There is significant genetic mixture of East/Southeast Asian, Indian, African and European DNA in the modern ethnic group of Cape coloured. The highest genetic contribution to the Cape coloured are from African maternal mtDNA displaying an very high frequencies at 79.04% followed by African Paternal Y-DNA frequencies at 45.18%. European Genetic contribution is the second highest after Africans with a high frequency of 37.72% from European Y-DNA but with low contribution of European mtDNA at 4.26%. The Indian genetics also displayed significant frequencies, the mtDNA contribution stands at 13.85% and Y-DNA at 9.65%, and lastly the East/South East Asian Y-DNA in the Cape coloured also displayed an significant frequency at 8.54% but with an very low contribution of Southeast East Asian mtDNA at only 1.6%, some of the Southeast Asian contribution from the Cape colored gene pool may have partially derived from both Southeast East Asian and Malagasy who both also exhibit haplogroups O1a and O2a and B4a, B5a, F1c. The only acception of the completely East/Southeast Asian lineage in Cape coloured are haplogroup O3-M122 (3.58%) and K-M9 (1.32%) both which are found among Chinese and Southeast Asians but not among the Malagasy.^[5]

  Asia

  China

The strengthening trade relations between Africa and China has openned African immigration into China. In October 2010, Chinese officials estimated about 500 mix marriages between African and Chinese.^[6] In places such as Guangzhou, a progressive population of about 10,000 African entrepreneurs continue to thrive.^{[Asia-China 1]} Facing a nationwide male-to-female sex-ration imbalance, the long and endogamous nation has seen a spike in Afro-Asian offspring. Sparked by new intercontinental social relations, dating and marriage between Africans and Chinese is on the rise.^{[Asia-China 2]} Subsequently, China's new emerging population of Afro-Asians includes Pate and Lamu Island descendants of ancient shipwrecked Chinese explorers. Awarded Chinese citizenship by the Chinese government, many students have been provided full scholarships to Universities in China.^{[Asia-China 3]} One of China's most famous Afro-Asian citizens is Shanghai born Lou Jing who, in 2009, was subjected to public racist attacks as she rose to fame competing on popular reality TV show Dragon TV's Go Oriental Angel.^{[Asia-China 4]}

  South Korea

Since 1954, U.S. occupation in South Korea has resulted in a multitude of Afro-Asian births, mostly between Africa-American servicemen and native South Korean women. While many of these births have been to married Black/Korean interracial couples, others were born out-of-wedlock. Already facing the dilemma of 85,000 children left homeless throughout the country after the Korean War, South Korea saw a spike in orphaned Black-Korean infants.^{[Asia-Korea 1]} Often, the Afro-Korean orphans were purposely starved, as the society deemed mixed-raced children less worthy of food needed by non-mixed Korean children. In some areas, the mixed-raced youth were even denied education. In 1955, the U.S. State Department made a public plea asking American families to open their doors to the ostracized youth and in 1956 the Holt Adoption Program launched a gateway for Christian faith-based adoption of children of G.I. soldiers that also included Eurasian offspring. However, in addition to the race-based discrimination faced in their country of birth, Afro-Korean orphans were still picked over by adopting American families based on skin color preferences.^{[Asia-Korea 2]}

  Vietnam

During the Vietnam War, African-American servicemen had children with local Vietnamese women. Some of these children were abandoned by the Vietnamese family, or sent to orphanages. Many orphans and children were airlifted to adopting families in the United States in 1975 during "Operation Babylift" before the fall of South Vietnam. The Afro-Vietnamese (or Afro-Amerasian) children suffered much discrimination in Vietnam at that time.^{[Asia-Vietnam 1]} There was also some controversy as to how these orphaned Afro-Amerasian children were placed in new homes in the United States.^{[Asia-Vietnam 2]}

  Pakistan

Most Makranis in Pakistan have Black Africans links from the female side. Many Sindhi feudals imported African female slaves; so did the Omani Arabs of Gwadar, a coastal city of Balochistan which was in control of Oman in the 17th century. According to Dr. Sengupta's seminal study, the Y-DNA analysis reveals E3a at a frequency distribution of 5%. On the other hand, mtDNA analysis reveals approx 40% L1a, L2a, L2b, L2d.^[7]

  Sri Lanka

The Sri Lanka Kaffirs are partially descendants of African soldiers and laborers who were brought by the Dutch colonialists around 1600. They married local women Sri Lankan women and acknowledge their African ancestry.

  Europe

  United Kingdom

The UK population includes people of mixed-race and some Afro-Asian peoples. Some Afro-Asian Britons include Naomi Campbell, Freema Agyeman and David Jordan.^{[citation needed]}

  The Americas

  Latin America

In Latin America, significant numbers of Chinese first started arriving in the mid 19th century as part of the Coolie slave trade. By the mid 20th century, Cuba, Guyana and Peru had the largest Chinese populations. By the end of WWII, there were considerable high numbers of Latin American descended from Chinese fathers and local women. One of the most famous of these is the Chinese-Afro-Cuban artist Wifredo Lam, known as the Cuban Picasso. There are also small numbers of Latin American residents of Asian and African descent in countries like Puerto Rico, Haiti and Dominican Republic.

Cuba

120000 Cantonese coolies (all males) entered Cuba under contract for 80 years, most did not marry, but Hung Hui (1975:80) cites there was an frequency of sexual activity between black women and Cantonese coolies. According to Osberg (1965:69) the free Chinese conducted the practice of buying slave women and freeing them expressly for marriage. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Chinese men (Cantonese) engaged in sexual activity with white Cuban women and black Cuban women, and from such relations many children were born. (For a British Caribbean model of Chinese cultural retention through procreation with black women, see Patterson, 322-31).^[8]

In the 1920s an additional 30000 Cantonese and small groups of Japanese also arrived; both immigrations were exclusively male, and there was rapid with white, black, and mulato populations.^[9] CIA World Factbook. Cuba. 2008. May 15, 2008. claimed 114,240 Chinese-Cuban with only 300 pure Chinese.^[10]

In the study of Genetic origin, admixture, and asymmetry in maternal and paternal human lineages in Cuba. Thirty-five Y-chromosome SNPs were typed in the 132 male individuals of the Cuban sample. The study does not include any people with some Chinese ancestry. All the samples were White Cubans and Black Cubans. 2 out of 132 male sample belong to East Asian Haplogroup O2 which is found in significant frequencies among Cantonese people is found in 1.5% of Cuban population.^[11]

Peru

About 100,000 Cantonese coolies (almost all males) in 1849 to 1874 migrated to Peru and intermarried with Peruvian women of mestizo, European, Ameridian, European/mestizo, African and mulatto origin. Many Peruvian Chinese today are of mixed Chinese, Spanish, African, Ameridian. Estimates for Chinese-Peruvian is about 1.3 – 1.6 millions. Asian Peruvians are estimated to be 3% of the population, but one source places the number of citizens with some Chinese ancestry at 4.2 million, which equates to 15% of the country's total population.^[12]

  The Caribbean

In the 1860s, Chinese and East Indian immigrants arrived in the West Indies as indentures servants. Chinese male laborers and male migrants who went to Peru, Cuba, Guyana, Madagascar, America, Jamaica, Trinidad where Chinese often intermarried with local black women which resulted in large population of mulatto children. According to the 1946 Census from Jamaica and Trinidad alone, 12,394 Chinese were located between Jamaica and Trinidad. 5,515 of those who lived in Jamaica were Chinese Jamaican and another 3,673 were Chinese-Trinidadians living in Trinidad. The Chinese men who married African women in Guyana and Trinidad Tobago were mostly Cantonese, while the Chinese men who married African women in Jamaica were mostly Hakka.

In Haiti, there is a small percentage within the minority who are of Asian descent. For example, Haitian painter Edouard Wah was born to a Chinese father and Haitian mother.

In Jamaica, Guyana, and Trinidad a percentage of the population of people are of Indian descent, some of whom have contributed to Afro-Asian Caribbean children.^{[citation needed]}

Jamaica

Many thousands of Chinese men (mostly Hakka) and Indian men married local Jamaican women. In the study of "Y-chromosomal diversity in Haiti and Jamaica: Contrasting levels of sex-biased gene flow." shows the paternal Chinese haplogroup O-M175 at a frequency of 3.8% in local Jamaicans ( non-Chinese Jamaicans) including the Indian H-M69 (0.6%) and L-M20 (0.6%) in local Jamaicans.^[13]

  United States

In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed and Chinese workers who chose to stay in the U.S. could no longer be with their wives who stayed behind in China. Because White Americans looked at Chinese labor workers as stealing employment, they were harassed and discriminated against. Many Chinese men settled in black communities and in turn married Black women.^{[Americas-US 2]} In the mid 19th to 20th centuries, the Chinese that migrated were almost entirely of Cantonese origin. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese men in the U.S, mostly of Cantonese origin from Taishan migrated to the United States. Anti-miscegenation laws in many states prohibited Chinese men from marrying white women.^[14] After the Emancipation Proclamation, many intermarriages in some states were not recorded and historically, Chinese American men married African American women in high proportions to their total marriage numbers due to few Chinese American women being in the United States. After the Emancipation Proclamation, many Chinese Americans immigrated to the Southern states, particularly Arkansas, to work on plantations. For example, in 1880, the tenth US Census of Louisiana alone counted 57% of interracial marriages between these Chinese Americans to be with African Americans and 43% to be with European American women.^[15] Between 20 and 30 percent of the Chinese who lived in Mississippi married black women before 1940.^[16]

  U.S. Census reports

According to the 2010 United States Census, there are 185,595 people of Black, or African-American, and Asian descent in the United States. Reports further offer the following break-down of all groups having Black, or African-American, and Asian descent:

  Population by state

Black, or African-American, and Asian population by state:

Rank	State	Population as of 2010 Census[Americas-US 1]
1	California	41,249
2	Texas	11,132
3	New York	20,896
4	Florida	16,040
5	Illinois	4,935
6	Pennsylvania	4,508
7	Ohio	3,666
8	Michigan	3,213
9	Georgia	7,918
10	North Carolina	4,929
11	New Jersey	5,814
12	Virginia	7,056
13	Washington	6,290
14	Massachusetts	2,495
15	Indiana	1,603
16	Arizona	2,986
17	Tennessee	1,971
18	Missouri	1,662
19	Maryland	6,487
20	Wisconsin	1,032
21	Minnesota	1,934
22	Colorado	2,693
23	Alabama	1,632
24	South Carolina	2,227
25	Louisiana	1,817
26	Kentucky	970
27	Oregon	1,059
28	Oklahoma	1,313
29	Connecticut	1,666
30	Iowa	519
31	Mississippi	1,934
32	Arkansas	668
33	Kansas	1,011
34	Utah	466
35	Nevada	3,569
36	New Mexico	544
37	West Virginia	181
38	Nebraska	442
39	Idaho	171
40	Hawaii	2,694
41	Maine	101
42	New Hampshire	152
43	Rhode Island	323
44	Montana	-
45	Delaware	693
46	South Dakota	107
47	Alaska	530
48	North Dakota	-
49	Vermont	-
50	District of Columbia	900
51	Wyoming	-
	United States	185,595

  See also

  References

  Africa

  Congo

  Kenya

  Madagascar

  South Africa

  Asia

  China

  South Korea

  Vietnam

  Europe

  The Americas

  External links

• The Indian Diaspora at the UCLA
• Manas project
• African and Asian connections in history
• HalfKorean.com
• www.blasianton.com A community for Blacks, Asians, and Blasians