Afro-Dominicans (Dominican Republic)
| Total population | |
|---|---|
|
1,029,535 Dominicans of full or predominant African ancestry (10.9% of the Dominican population) |
|
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Chiefly in Elías Piña, San Pedro de Macorís, Santo Domingo, and San Cristóbal; also in Dajabón, Pedernales, Independencia, La Romana and Hato Mayor | |
| Languages | |
| majority Dominican Spanish · minority Caribbean English (Samaná English) | |
| Religion | |
| Dominican Vudú, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Dominican people, other Afro-Latin Americans, Afro-Haitians |
Black (Spanish: Negro, colloq. Moreno) is part of a racial classification system in the Dominican Republic,
The census bureau decided to not use racial classification in the 1970 census. The Dominican identity card (issued by the Junta Central Electoral) used to categorised people as yellow, white, Indian, and black, in 2011 the Junta planned to replace Indian with mulatto in a new ID card with biometric data that was under development, but in 2014 when it released the new ID card, it decided to just drop racial categorisation, the old ID card expired on 10 January 2015. The Ministry of Public Works and Communications uses racial classification in the driver’s license, being white, mestizo, mulatto, black, and yellow the categories used.
Black is applied to Dominicans of full or predominant Black African ancestry, which is represented by 5.26% of the Dominican population, according to the leaked 1996 electoral census based on Dominican identity cards data, or by 10.9% of the Dominican population, according to the 1960 population census (the last one in which race was queried).
Most Black Dominicans descend from West Africans and Central Africans (almost the half of them were Kongo, with other important ethnicities being the Mandingo, the Igbo people from the regions of Calabar and Biafra, and people captured near the São Jorge da Mina castle), who arrived from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth century as a result of slavery, while many others descend from immigrants who came from the United States during the 19th century or from the Lesser Antilles during the 20th century.
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Wikipedia