Black race

Black people is a skin group-based classification used for specific people with a mid to dark brown complexion. Not all 'black people' are dark skinned. However, in certain countries, often in socially based systems of racial classification in the Western World, it is used to describe persons who are perceived to be dark-skinned when compared to other populations. Depending on the usage, it is mostly used for the people of Sub-Saharan Africa and the indigenous peoples of Oceania, Southeast Asia and India. Different societies apply differing criteria regarding who is classified as 'black', and these social constructs have also changed over time. In a number of countries, societal variables affect classification as much as skin color, and the social criteria for 'blackness' vary. In the United Kingdom, 'black' was historically equivalent with 'person of color', a general term for non-European peoples. In other regions such as Australasia, settlers applied the term 'black' or it was used by local populations with different histories and ancestral backgrounds. For many other individuals, communities and countries, 'black' is also perceived as a derogatory, outdated, reductive or otherwise unrepresentative label, and as a result is neither used nor defined in African cultures that have dealt with little-to-no colonial history. Some have pointed out that labeling people groups 'black' is erroneous due to the fact that the people being labeled as 'black' have a brown skin color. The Romans interacted with and later conquered parts of Mauretania, an early state that covered modern Morocco, western Algeria, and the Spanish cities Ceuta and Melilla during classical period. The people of the region were noted in classical literature as Mauri, which was subsequently rendered as Moors in English. Numerous communities of dark-skinned peoples are present in North Africa, some dating from prehistoric communities. Others descend from immigrants via the historical trans-Saharan trade or, after the Arab invasions of North Africa in the 7th century, from slaves from the Arab slave trade in North Africa. In the 18th century, the Moroccan Sultan Moulay Ismail 'the Warrior King' (1672–1727) raised a corps of 150,000 black soldiers, called his Black Guard. According to Carlos Moore, resident scholar at Brazil's University of the State of Bahia, in the 21st century Afro-multiracials in the Arab world, including Arabs in North Africa, self-identify in ways that resemble multi-racials in Latin America. He claims that darker toned Arabs, much like darker toned Latin Americans, consider themselves white because they have some distant white ancestry.