African-Caribbean
Afro-Caribbean people or African Caribbean are Caribbean people who trace their full or partial ancestry to Sub-Saharan Africa. The majority of the modern African-Caribbeans descend from Africans taken as slaves to colonial Caribbean via the ...
descent. The group (also referred to as African-Scottish, Afro-Scottish, or Black Scottish) represent approximately 0.7 percent of the total population of Scotland.
Background
Census
According to the 2011 UK Census, Black Scottish people (self-described as African, Caribbean, Black or any other Black background) were numbered at about 36,000. This figure indicates an increase in population of 28,000 Black Scottish since the previous UK census in 2001. The group represents around 0.7% of Scotland's population, compared to 3.0% of the overall UK population.
Identity
The identity of Black Scottish people has evolved since the arrival of Black people in Scotland as early as the fifteenth century, with significant numbers arriving in the twentieth century after
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
. The development of a cohesive Black Scottish identity has progressed, with Black African and Afro-Caribbean descent the most commonly claimed ancestry involved in the sense of identity. Among other factors, studies into the experiences of Scottish Somalis, who tend to be historically newer immigrant groups to the nation, have shown that ethnoreligious factors can complicate the expression of any monocultural or racial identity of Black Scottish.
Mercury Prize
The Mercury Prize, formerly called the Mercury Music Prize, is an annual music prize awarded for the best album released in the United Kingdom by a British or Irish act. It was created by Jon Webster and Robert Chandler in association with the ...
winners
Young Fathers
Young Fathers are a Scottish band based in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 2014, they won the Mercury Prize for their album '' Dead''.
History
Formed in Edinburgh in 2008 by Alloysious Massaquoi, Kayus Bankole and Graham 'G' Hastings, the group st ...
Finley Quaye
Finley Quaye (born 25 March 1974, Edinburgh, Scotland) is a Scottish musician. He won the 1997 MOBO Award for best reggae act, and the 1998 BRIT Award for Best Male Solo Artist.
Life
Finley Quaye is the son of vaudeville pianist Cab Kaye and ...
Eunice Olumide
Eunice Olumide MBE is a Scottish fashion model and actress.
Early life
Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, Olumide has dual British and Nigerian nationality. The name "Olumide" means "God has come" or "My Hero has come" in the Yoruba language.
A ...
(model)
*
Luke Sutherland
Luke Sutherland (born 1971) is a Scottish novelist and musician. A full-time member of two independent bands and an occasional member of Mogwai, active also as a music producer, he has also published a number of written works.
Biography
Sutherla ...
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...
veteran Arthur Roberts has been noted as an important historical document, for its preservation of the historical record of one of the earliest known Black Scottish soldiers.
association football
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...
er of Black heritage (his father was White and mother Black) to play at international level. He was capped three times for Scotland between 1881 and 1882. Watson also played for Queen's Park, the leading Scottish club at the time, and later became their secretary. He led the team to several
Scottish Cup
The Scottish Football Association Challenge Cup,
With some brief exceptions, such as Jamaican born Gil Heron at
Celtic
Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to:
Language and ethnicity
*pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia
**Celts (modern)
*Celtic languages
**Proto-Celtic language
*Celtic music
*Celtic nations
Sports Foo ...
, Walter Tull signing for Rangers, and John Walker at Hearts, Black players largely disappeared from Scottish football for the next 100 years until the arrival of Mark Walters at Rangers in 1988. Walters arrival at the club resulted in incidents of racial abuse.
The Scotland national team did not call up a second player of Black heritage until
Nigel Quashie
Nigel Francis Quashie ( ; born 20 July 1978) is an English-born Scottish former footballer who played more than 300 games as a midfielder in the Football League. Between 2004 and 2006, he represented Scotland, the country of his grandfather, a ...
(Black Ghanaian father and White English mother), made his debut against
Estonia
Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, an ...
in May 2004. He qualified to play for Scotland, due to having a grandfather from Scotland. Subsequently Coatbridge-born Chris Iwelumo (Black father from Nigeria), has also played for Scotland. Other notable players with black heritage who were born in Scotland, and have represented Scotland, include:
*
Ikechi Anya
Ikechi Anya (born 3 January 1988) is a Scottish former professional footballer. A versatile player, Anya was fielded in a number of positions, including winger, wing-back and full-back.
He played for Wycombe Wanderers, Northampton Town, W ...
Scotland national football team
The Scotland national football team gd, Sgioba Ball-coise Nàiseanta na h-Alba sco, Scotland National Fitbaa Team represents Scotland in men's international Association football, football and is controlled by the Scottish Football Association. ...
Brian McPhee
Brian McPhee (born 23 October 1970 in Glasgow, Scotland) is a Scottish retired footballer who last played for Wishaw Juniors. He had a long career as a striker in the Scottish Football League with several clubs.
Career
McPhee joined Queen's ...
Jai Quitongo
Jai Quitongo (born 14 September 1997) is a Scottish professional footballer who plays as a winger for Greenock Morton.
He has previously played for Morton, Partick Thistle, Machine Sazi, Dumbarton and Queen's Park. Throughout his youth career ...
Sean Crombie
Sean Crombie (born 25 June 1986) is a former Scotland 7s international rugby union player. He played at hooker.
Rugby Union career
Amateur career
He won the Scottish Premiership with Boroughmuir.
Crombie received the first ever U.A.E Pla ...
, Rugby
*
Kieron Achara
Kieron Robert Nnamdi Achara MBE (born 3 July 1983) is a Scottish professional basketball player who last played for the Glasgow Rocks. He is a 6'10" (2.08 m) forward who played college basketball at Duquesne University and represented Scotland a ...
, Basketball
*
Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong
Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong (born 19 December 1974), nicknamed "The Snow Leopard", is a Ghanaian skier and is the first person from Ghana to take part in the Winter Olympics, which he did at the 2010 Winter Olympics Vancouver, British Columbia ...
In 2017, the SNP's Graham Campbell was elected as Scotland's first Rastafarian councillor, and
Glasgow
Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popu ...
's first to have
African Caribbean
Afro-Caribbean people or African Caribbean are Caribbean people who trace their full or partial ancestry to Sub-Saharan Africa. The majority of the modern African-Caribbeans descend from Africans taken as slaves to colonial Caribbean via the t ...
ancestry.
Social and political issues
Discrimination
The group have faced prejudice and racism in Scottish society. In a Strathclyde University survey, almost 45 percent of black Scottish reported experiencing discrimination between 2010 and 2015.
In fiction
* "
Of Ane Blak-Moir
"Of Ane Blak-Moir" is a short poem in Scots by William Dunbar (born 1459 or 1460).
It takes the form of a hymn in praise of a beautiful lady, but is a parody of the form. The lady addressed is apparently an African woman playing a role in a tou ...
", a poem describing an African woman at the court of James IV of Scotland.
*Tavish Finnegan DeGroot, more well known as the Demoman from '' Team Fortress 2'', is a self-described "black Scottish cyclops".
* Jerome "Chef" McElroy, a character from '' South Park'', hails from Scotland.
* Jim "Jock" McClaren, a character in '' Porridge''.
*Elmo McElroy in '' The 51st State'' is a descendant of a relationship between a slave and their owner who is of the McElroy clan; thereby making him the heir to the ancestral estate.
*In 2019, multiple media sources reported that
African-American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ensl ...
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
Demographics of Scotland
The demography of Scotland includes all aspects of population, past and present, in the area that is now Scotland. Scotland has a population of 5,463,300, as of 2019. The population growth rate in 2011 was estimated as 0.6% per annum accordin ...