Percentage of Blacks in America’s

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Many are descendants of individuals enslaved in Africa and moved to the Americas by Europeans, then forced to labor mainly in European-owned plantations and mines between the 16th and 19th centuries. On the other hand, Ecuador’s black population in Esmeraldas came predominantly from a shipwreck of slaves meant to go to Panama, and those shipwrecked established a claimed republic.

The map below was created by Reddit user abu_doubleu using data from censuses or housing surveys showing the black percentage in the Americas.

This is a map of the self-identified Black population in the Americas. It is very important to note that being “Black” is a matter of self-identification in this map. This is not a genetic map which estimates the average amount of African genetic admixture. This is especially important in Latin America, where many people who have some amount of Black ancestry will not identify as Black or African-descended on censuses like they might in the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean.

Countries by the total population of the African diaspora in the Americas

Rank	Country	Population	Percent of population
1	United States	46,936,733	13.6%
2	Brazil	14,517,961	7%
3	Haiti	8,583,759	95%
4	Colombia	4,671,160	9.34%
5	Jamaica	2,700,000	92%
6	Venezuela	2,641,481	2.9%
7	Mexico	1,386,556	1.2%
8	Canada	1,300,540	3.5%
9	Ecuador	1,200,000	10%
10	Cuba	1,034,044	35%
11	Dominican Republic	1,029,535	10%
12	Puerto Rico	1,000,000	16%
13	Peru	850,000	9%
14	Panamá	623,053	14%
15	Trinidad and Tobago	452,536	34.2%
16	Barbados	256,706	90%
17	Guyana	225,860	36%
18	Suriname	200,406	37%
19	Argentina	149,493	0.37%
20	Grenada	101,309	82%

Haiti has the most significant African diaspora in the Americas by the percentage of the population. Haiti is the only country in the Americas to be over 95% Black. Paraguay is the only country in the Americas to be under 0.1% Black.

Most countries in the Caribbean are majority Black. The practically complete extinction of the Indigenous people here meant that African slaves were always proportionally very large. Some countries, like Trinidad and Tobago Guyana, and Suriname, have more South Asians than Black people.

The United States has the highest black population in North America. African-Americans today have communities in the entire country, but before the Great Northward Migration, they were almost entirely concentrated in what is today still known as the Black Belt. From 1900 to 2020, states like South Carolina went from being 58.4% to 26.8% Black, while states like Michigan went from being 0.6% to 16.2% Black.

59% of Black Canadians immigrated to the country, and another 33% have at least one immigrant parent. Canada’s Black population has almost tripled in the 21st century. Before the recent waves of immigration, Canada had a small Black community centred in the Maritime province of Nova Scotia. Many were escaped American slaves.

Top 20 counties with the highest population of black Americans

Rank	Country	Percent of population
1	Haiti	95%
2	Saint Kitts and Nevis	93%
3	Jamaica	92%
4	The Bahamas	90.6%
5	Antigua and Barbuda	90%
6	Barbados	90%
7	Turks and Caicos	90%
8	Dominica	87%
9	Saint Lucia	85%
10	Grenada	82%
11	Martinique	80%
12	Guadeloupe	77%
13	French Guiana	66%
14	Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	66%
15	Bermuda	55%
16	Suriname	37%
17	Guyana	36%
18	Cuba	35%
19	Trinidad and Tobago	34.2%
20	Belize	31%

The Pacific Coast of Colombia is home to Latin America’s largest concentration of Black people. Many interior slaves fled to the Pacific coast, facing great discrimination from the government even after emancipation. Quibdd, the capital of Chocb Department, is 95.3% Black. It’s also the least sunny city in the world.

Legend in Ecuador says that Esmeralda Province’s large African population descends from a shipwreck that crashed there.

Brazil’s national statistics agency (IBGE) finds that the number of self-reported Black people has close to doubled in the 21st century. Sociologists in Brazil believe that the stigma around Blackness in Brazil, and Latin America as a whole, is decreasing.

France does not have race or ethnic origin reported on its censuses. Scholarly articles were used to find reliable estimates. French Guiana. Martinique, and Guadeloupe are all majority Black. Saint-Martin was once as well, but the influx of mainland French migrants has changed that. Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, on the other hand, may be the only administrative division in North America to have 0 Black people.

Afro-Argentines once made up between 20-30% of the country. The famous tango dance originated from them! Racist policies led to most Afro-Argentinian men dying in wars, while yellow fever outbreaks killed many children. In the early 20th century, most remaining Afro-Argentines were becoming more mixed, while others emigrated to Uruguay, which had, and still has, a larger Black community.

Chile had practically no people of African descent until a large wave of Haitian migration in the past decade. Haitians now makeup close to 2% of the country’s population.

Want to learn more about Americas? Then you might like to read:

• The Americas: A Captivating Guide to the History of the Continents of North and South America, Starting from the Olmecs through the Maya and Aztecs to … (European Exploration and Settlement)
• The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A Captivating Guide to the Atlantic Slave Trade and Stories of the Slaves That Were Brought to the Americas (History of Slavery)
• History of the Indians, of North and South America