Africans and Native Americans: the language of race and the evolution of Red-Black peoples

Abstract

This ground-breaking volume explores key issues relating to the evolution of racial terminology and European colonialists' perceptions of color, analyzing the development of color classification sysems and the evolution of specific terms including black, mulatto, mestizo, and moor, which no longer carry their original meanings. Jack Forbes presents strong evidence that Native American and African contacts began in Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean and that Native Americans may have crossed the Atlantic long before Columbus.

Contents

Africans and Americans: Inter-Continental Contacts Across the Atlantic, to 1500 -- The Intensification of Contacts: Trans-Atlantic Slavery and Interaction, after 1500 -- Negro, Black and Moor: The Evolution of These Terms as Applied to Native Americans and Others -- Loros, Pardos and Mestizos: Classifying Brown Peoples -- The Mulatto Concept: Origin and Initial Use -- Part-Africans and Part-Americans as Mulatos -- The Classification of Native Americans as Mulattoes in Anglo-North America -- Mustees, Half-Breeds and Zambos -- Native Americans as Pardos and People of Color -- African-American Contacts and the Modern Re-Peopling of the Americas.