Afro-Asian

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For other uses, see Afro Asians (African Asians).

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]}

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]}

Asia

China

The strengthening trade relations between Africa and China has openned African immigration into China. In places such as Guangzhou, a progressive population of about 10,000 African entreprenuers continue to thrive.^{[Asia-China 1]} Facing a nationwide male-to-female sex-ration imbalance, the long an 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]}

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.

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.

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]}

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]}

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 Group	Total Number
Black or African-American, Asian	185,595
Black or African-American, Asian, and White	61,511
Black or African-American, Asian, and some other race	8,122
Black or African-American, Asian, American Indian, and Alaskan Native	9,460
Black or African-American, Asian, Native Hawaiian, and other Pacific Islander	4,852
Black or African-American, Asian, White, and some other race	2,420
Black or African-American, Asian, American Indian, Alaskan Native, Native Hawaiian, and other Pacific Islander	1,011
Black or African-American, Asian, American Indian, Alaskan Native and White	19,018
Black or African-American, Asian, American Indian, Alaskan Native, White, and some other race	1,023
Black or African-American, Asian, American Indian, Alaskan Native, White, Native Hawaiian, and other Pacific Islander	6,605
Black or African-American, Asian, American Indian, Alaskan Native, and some other race	539
Black or African-American, Asian, American Indian, Alaskan Native, Native Hawaiian, other Pacific Islander, White, and some other race	792
Black or African-American, Asian, Native Hawaiian, and other Pacific Islander, White and some other race	268

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

References

^ Bird, Stephanie Rose (2009). Light, bright, and damned near white : biracial and triracial culture in America. Westport, Conn.: Praeger. pp. 118. ISBN 0-2759-8954-2. http://books.google.com/books?id=BDEDuqIaKEYC&dq=blasian+definition&source=gbs_navlinks_s.

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