Aspinall Peter John, Chinouya Martha
Centre for Health Services Studies, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK.
Ethn Health. 2008 Jun;13(3):183-202. doi: 10.1080/13557850701837294.
The main objective of this paper is to review the literature on the term 'Black African' with respect to a number of themes: its use in the census and official data collections; the acceptability of a colour-based term; the heterogeneity concealed within the 'Black African' collectivity; the invisibility of distinct populations; the concealment of disparities in health, health care, and determinants; the capture of 'Black Africans' in other countries; and a set of possible alternatives for classifying this population.
Structured searches were undertaken on a wide range of government and other grey literature sources and on two biomedical databases (Medline and EMBASE), using combinations of search terms for the collectivity and specific national origin groups.
Analyses of the data show that the term 'Black African' conceals substantial heterogeneity with respect to national origins, religion, and language. It includes many who have come to the UK since the 1960s from former colonies but also sizeable groups arriving as refugees and asylum seekers from a wide range of African countries. Moreover, its boundaries are fuzzy, especially with regard to those originating in Horn of Africa countries. Marked variations are found in the (albeit limited) available disaggregated data on health and the determinants of inequalities.
Given the substantial increase in the size of the group, the extent to which such heterogeneity can continue to be tolerated in a single term must be questioned. The 'Black African' collectivity merits categorisation that addresses this issue and the proposed regional subdivisions in the Scotland 2006 Census Test currently offer the best solution.
本文的主要目的是就若干主题对“黑非洲人”这一术语的相关文献进行综述：其在人口普查和官方数据收集中的使用情况；基于肤色的术语的可接受性；“黑非洲人”群体中隐藏的异质性；不同人群的不可见性；健康、医疗保健及决定因素方面差异的隐藏情况；其他国家对“黑非洲人”的统计情况；以及对这一人群进行分类的一系列可能替代方案。
利用该群体及特定原籍国群体的搜索词组合，对广泛的政府及其他灰色文献来源以及两个生物医学数据库（Medline和EMBASE）进行结构化检索。
数据分析表明，“黑非洲人”这一术语在国籍、宗教和语言方面隐藏着巨大的异质性。它包括自20世纪60年代以来从前殖民地来到英国的许多人，也包括从众多非洲国家作为难民和寻求庇护者抵达的相当规模的群体。此外，其界限模糊，尤其是对于那些来自非洲之角国家的人。在（尽管有限的）关于健康及不平等决定因素的现有分类数据中发现了显著差异。
鉴于该群体规模大幅增加，一个单一术语中这种异质性在多大程度上还能继续被容忍是值得质疑的。“黑非洲人”群体值得进行能解决这一问题的分类，苏格兰2006年人口普查测试中提议的区域细分目前提供了最佳解决方案。
