How does the Black (African descent) racial/ethnic group differ from other racial/ethnic groups in ancestry, language, or culture?

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Karen P.L. Hardison eNotes educator| Certified Educator

People of African descent, whether in England, Europe, the United States or South America all have in common the connect of ancestry that originated in recent centuries in one of the regions of Africa. A common area of the same ancestral connection is to the Ivory Coast because of the Atlantic Slave Trade between Africa and European and American locations. The difference that this ethnic/racial group of people will have from others is that others will ancestral connections to other continents or subcontinents, like India, for example.

If immigration is recent, first, second and perhaps third generation immigrants from African countries, say for example immigrating to England, will speak the same language that is native to their ethnic tribe and to their country (e.g. Xhosa and Afrikaans and English). This will be different from other ethnic/racial languages because, for example, indigenous people from South America will not be native speakers of either Xhosa or Afrikaans.  

Cultural connections to the same culture as that of their ancestral lands may be expressed in clothing, songs, harmonies, and story-telling. Cultural differences from other racial/ethnic groups would be apparent the same categories. For instance, racial/ethnic groups from Slavic countries will not wear the headdresses and brilliant clothes colors of the African countries nor have the powerfully rhythmic harmonies found in ethnic/racial groups from Africa.