Do black caribbean women (martinique, dominican rep.) have diffent physical traits than black American women?

Question

Doing a history project and I can't find anything on this, but do they generally have different facial features, hair characteristics, skin color than american blacks?

Answer 1

Well, dear, I'd say that most from Martinique (a French Possession) would have a greater statistical probability of having more French blood on average than the average U.S. Black would likely have (except perhaps in Louisiana); and most likely Blacks in the Dominican would have either more Spanish OR French blood OR both, due to the nature of how slavery and freedow developed in those countries and possible also how the various upper-class Spaniards/French saw fit to actually marry, rather than to sexually take advantage of, the Blacks in that island (which includes Haiti). Although that last sentence may not make sense, just hang on til later and it will be cleared up.

The Dominican's sister country Haiti also has a greater mix of French in the gene pool as compared to the Dominican, as Haiti was colonized by the French and the Dominican by the Spanish.

But to actually prove that there is a difference in the features of U.S. Blacks versus those in the Islands that can be attributed to the French mixing you mentioned, one would need both a great ability to look at thousands of photographs of typical African body-types as well as French and Spanish. Even then one could be wrong.

For example, the Celts were the dominant racial group in Europe before Julius Caesar. Through history most of them got pushed into Ireland and Scotland. So it would be a mistake to see someone who looked like they had those features (freckles, red hair, etc.) and assume that they must be Irish or Scottish - a case in point - Craig Biggio of the Houston Astros bears a great resemblance to Bob Weir, formerly of the Grateful dead. Bob Weir is of Scottish ancestry, whereas Craig Biggio is (at least half) Italian. Another thing that will not help you in this is that in all continents one can find contrasting physical types within the same race - just compare those from Kenya, Ethiopia and the "Congo" region (I'm not going to break that out by the countries in the Congo, but keep it general). Or you could see a contrast between the Koreans and Chinese - Koreans with a much greater chance of having brown rather than black hair, freckles, etc.

Getting back to African and French combinations, within France those from Gascony (the area where they harvest truffles) appear rather thick looking, kind of like some of the stocky Irish would appear when contrasted with Prince Charles of England, even though both the Irish and the Germans (the original place where Charles' royal family came from) have "Teutonic" blood in them; the Southern French by and large have more similarities to the Italians and Spanish than they do to those in Paris.

Then you would need to actually collect thousands of copies of marriage records of the countries in question to actually prove that any such differences as you could document were actually attributable to the intermarriage of Black and French, rather than Black and some English dude with a French grandmother. So the records must exist - no out-of-wedlock stuff - even if all the details were passed down from generation to generation verbally, they would not hold the same weight as an actual marriage or christening would I'm afraid. But the Catholic Church did keep records, so in a lot of cases you could prove some connection I'm sure.

I wish you the best of luck - this sounds like a very interesting project you are embarking on and this was a great question!

Answer 2

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RE:
Do black caribbean women (martinique, dominican rep.) have diffent physical traits than black American women?
Doing a history project and I can't find anything on this, but do they generally have different facial features, hair characteristics, skin color than american blacks?

Answer 3

Not usually - no more so than one sees a myriad of skin hues, hair color, eye color, hair texture, facial features, body shapes in American Black women....the same holds true of Caribbean women.

Depending on the island - [say Aruba] you can see certain characteristics that somewhat identify some of them...and that is caused by the historical intermingling of races and nationalities.

Guyanians tend to look one way vs those indigenous to the Dutch side of St. Maarten/St. Martin.

My son is often taken for middle eastern yet is American Black - my youngest daughter is thought to be Southern Italian by many - and my eldest daughter and I are mistaken for being from Aruba or Curacao....So see? It's the same in the States.

Answer 4

Well, we are more pure African in the West Indies. In the Bahamas where I'm from the slave population was 100 to 1. I imagine it was similar elsewhere so less of us have white blood unlike the US where ya'll total like 13% of the population and have a lot of racial mixing going on on the plantation.

Haitians are really African. Haitian slaves didn't produce many children and were subsequently refreshed often with more Africans.

So, I guess we look more African than you on the whole (there are pleny mixed ones) but other than that, you pretty much get the same colour and feature variety.

Answer 5

their skin is more adaptive to the sun, and don't dry out as quick due to their caribbean adaptation of where they live