Racial isolates in the United States
ethnic group
Racial isolates in the United States, also variously known as tri-racial isolates, biracial isolates, or American isolates, is a term used by anthropologists to classify approximately two hundred distinct mixed-race communities, traditionally speculated to be of African-American, European-American, and Native American ancestry, located along the Atlantic Seaboard and throughout the American Southeast. The veracity of Native American ancestry claimed among some racial isolate communities has been questioned in recent years with advances in genealogical and genetic research. Historically, some members of isolate communities, particularly those in Appalachia, claimed Portuguese or Spanish, sometimes collectively termed as "Moorish", ancestry to explain their appearances.
Groups that have been described as racial isolates include the Melungeons, Carmelites, Delaware Moors, Brandywine people, Lumbee, Brass Ankles, Chestnut Ridge people, Dominickers, and Alabama Cajans, among others.
Some descendants of the Lumbee, comprising the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, have been federally recognized as a Native American tribe through Congressional legislation first advanced through executive order and later into law by President Donald Trump. Other descendants of racial isolate communities have been state-recognized as Native American tribes by certain state governments, including the Lenape Indian Tribe of Delaware and the Nanticoke Indian Association of Delaware, the Wassamasaw Tribe of Varnertown Indians in South Carolina, the Piscataway-Conoy Tribe of Maryland and Piscataway Indian Nation and Tayac Territory in Maryland, the MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians in Alabama, and the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation and Ramapough Mountain Indians in New Jersey.
About
There are approximately 200 groups of racial isolates in the Eastern United States, with most being in the Southeast. Because there is no single unified group and because "racial isolate" or "triracial isolate" is a term used by social science, some members of these groups reject the terminology. Common features of groups characterized as racial isolates often include claiming a mix of African, European, and Native American ancestry as well as living in geographically isolated small towns and rural areas. Members of racial isolates often intermarried with fellow group members, rather than with outsiders who were Black or white.
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