Maafa

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Maafa , or alternatively the African Holocaust , Holocaust of Enslavement , or Black Holocaust , are political neologisms that have been popularized since around 1988. They describe the history of the atrocities inflicted on Africans by non-Africans, particularly by Europeans and Arabs , and the effects that continue to exist to this day. This primarily refers to acts in the context of the history of slavery, including the East African slave trade and the Atlantic slave trade . They are portrayed as "continuing to this day" through imperialism , colonialism and other forms of oppression.

History and terminology

The use of the Swahili term: Maafa , literally "great misfortune", was introduced in Marimba Anis' 1988 book Let the Circle Be Unbroken: The Implications of African Spirituality in the Diaspora . It was derived from the Swahili term for "misfortune, terrible incident or great tragedy". The term was popularized in the 1990s. While both Maafa and the African Holocaust describe the same subject matter , their terminology is part of an ongoing debate.

The term African Holocaust is preferred by some academics like Maulana Karenga as it implies an intention. Karenga notes that it is problematic that the word Maafa can also be translated as “accident” and, according to some scholars, the Holocaust of slavery was not just an accident. Ali Mazrui calls the word “Holocaust” a “double plagiarism ” because the term is derived from ancient Greek and therefore, although it is associated with the genocide of the Jews , no one can have a monopoly on the term: “This lending of lenders without attribution is what I call 'double plagiarism'. But this plagiarism should be defended because the vocabulary of atrocities such as genocide and slavery should not be subject to copyright restrictions. ”Others, such as Weldon Williams, criticize the term Holocaust as inadequate in this context, as it is a false symbol because it is linked to another historical context put.

Some Afrocentric theorists prefer the term Maafa to the term African Holocaust because they believe that this indigenous African terminology conveys events more truthfully. The term Maafa possibly serves “a similar culturally psychological purpose for Africans as the idea of ​​the Holocaust serves to name the culturally specific Jewish experience of the genocide under German National Socialism ”. Other critics, who speak for Maafa instead of the African Holocaust , emphasize that the denial of the validity of the human condition of the African people is a phenomenon that has been unparalleled for centuries: “The Maafa is a continuous, constant, complete and comprehensive system of human negation and Cancellation. "

The historian Sylviane Diouf calls the terms transatlantic slave trade , Atlantic slave trade and slave trade deeply problematic because they would serve as euphemisms for intense violence and mass murder. Calling it "trade," this prolonged period of persecution and suffering is portrayed as a commercial dilemma rather than a moral atrocity. With trade as the primary focus, the broader tragedy shifts to mere collateral damage to a commercial company and becomes secondary. Others, however, argue that avoiding the term trade is an apologetic act on behalf of capitalism that relieves capitalist structures of involvement in human disasters.

Maulana Karenga (2001) places slavery in the broader context of the Maafa and suggests that its effects go beyond mere physical persecution and legal incapacitation: The “destruction of human possibilities meant redefining African humanity to the world, past, present and future to poison future relationships with others who only know us through this stereotyping and thereby damage the truly human relationships between peoples ”.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ William D. Wright, Black History and Black Identity: A Call for a New Historiography, p. 117
  2. ^ What Holocaust . "Glenn Reitz".
  3. ^ A b Ryan Michael Spitzer, "The African Holocaust: Should Europe pay reparations to Africa for Colonialism and Slavery?", Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, vol. 35, 2002, p. 1319.
  4. ↑ a b Barndt, Joseph. Understanding and Dismantling Racism: The Twenty-First Century . 2007, p. 269.
  5. ^ A b The Global African: A Portrait of Ali A. Mazrui . Omari H. Kokole (editor). Africa World Press, 1998. ISBN 978-0-86543-533-9
  6. ^ A b Reparations for the Slave Trade: Rhetoric, Law, History and Political Realities ”. . Retrieved October 14, 2015.
  7. ^ A b c " The Maafa is a continual, constant, complete, and total system of human negation and nullification ", Jones, Lee and West, Cornel. Making It on Broken Promises: Leading African American Male Scholars Confront the Culture of Higher Education . 2002, p. 178.
  8. ^ William D. Wright: Black History and Black Identity: A Call for a New Historiography ( en ). Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001, ISBN 978-0-275-97442-8 .
  9. ^ Marimba Ani: Let The Circle Be Unbroken: The Implications of African Spirituality in the Diaspora. Nkonimfo Publications, New York 1988 (orig. 1980).
  10. ↑ Dove, Nah. Afrikan Mothers: Bearers of Culture, Makers of Social Change . 1998, p. 240.
  11. ^ Gunn Morris, Vivian and Morris, Curtis L. The Price They Paid: Desegregation in an African American Community . 2002 p. X
  12. ^ Harp, OJ Across Time: Mystery of the Great Sphinx . 2007, p. 247.
  13. ↑ Denise Nicole Cheeves: Legacy 2004, p. 1.
  14. ↑ Pero Gaglo Dagbovie: African American History Reconsidered . University of Illinois Press, 2010, p. 191.
  15. ^ " Interview With Dr. Maulana Karenga | The Two Nations Of Black America | FRONTLINE | PBS .
  16. ↑ “This borrowing from borrowers without attribution is what I call 'the dual plagiarism.' But this plagiarism is defensible because the vocabulary of horrors like genocide and enslavement should not be subject to copyright restrictions ”, Ancestry, Descent And Identity . Igcs.binghamton.edu. Archived from the original on March 13, 2012. Retrieved October 14, 2015.
  17. ^ Weldon Williams: Naming the Unspeakable: Breaktroughs in Afrological Nomenclature . In: Katherine Bankole Medina (Ed.): Africalogical Perspectives: Historical and Contemporary Analysis of Race and Africana Studies . iUniverse, New York / Lincoln / Shanghai 2006. ISBN 978-0-595-47398-4 , pp. 51–72, here p. 56.
  18. ↑ Tarpley, Natasha. Testimony: Young African-Americans on Self-Discovery and Black Identity . 1995, p. 252.
  19. ↑ Aldridge, Delores P. and Young, Carlene. Out of the Revolution: The Development of Africana Studies . 2000, p. 250.
  20. ^ Diouf, Sylviane Anna : Fighting the Slave Trade: West African Strategies . 2003, p. Xi.
  21. ^ Henry Epps: A Concise Chronicle History of the African-American People Experience in America . Lulu.com, ISBN 978-1-300-16143-1 , p. 57, (accessed February 24, 2015).
  22. ↑ "destruction of human possibility involved redefining African humanity to the world, poisoning past, present and future relations with others who only know us through this stereotyping and thus damaging the truly human relations among peoples." Letter by Maulana Karenga, 2001 . H-net.msu.edu. April 29, 2010. Retrieved October 14, 2015.