The term black people is an everyday English-language phrase, often used in North America to refer to Americans and Canadians of Sub-Saharan African descent. Outside North America, the term "black people", or close translations of it, is also used in other socially based systems of racial classification, or of ethnicity for persons who are perceived to be dark-skinned relative to other "racial" groups – or else who are defined as belonging to a 'black' ethnicity.
Different societies, such as Britain, Brazil, the United States, Australia and South Africa apply differing criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and these have also varied over time. Often social variables, such as class and socio-economic status, affect classification, so that relatively dark-skinned people can be classified as white if they fulfill other social criteria of "whiteness," and relatively light-skinned people can be classified as black if they fulfill the social criteria for "blackness" in a particular setting. As a result, in North America, for example, the term "black people" is not necessarily an indicator of skin color but of a socially based racial classification related to being African American, with a family history related to institutionalized slavery. In other regions, such as Australia and Melanesia, the term 'black' has been applied to, and used by, populations with a very different history.
Famous quotes containing the words black person, black and/or person:
“Our inherent human charity and our religious beliefs will be taxed to the limit. No poor, rural, weak, or black person should ever have to bear the additional burden of being deprived of the opportunity of an education, a job, or simple justice.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“In families children tend to take on stock roles, as if there were hats hung up in some secret place, visible only to the children. Each succeeding child selects a hat and takes on that role: the good child, the black sheep, the clown, and so forth.”
—Ellen Galinsky (20th century)
“Thus did I keep my person fresh and new,
My presence, like a robe pontifical,
Ne’er seen but wondered at, and so my state,
Seldom but sumptuous, showed like a feast.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)