Maafa

2012-12-09T21:49:08Z

JuneteenthDOC: The addidtion of information on the national day set aside for remembering the maafa in America is important.

{{redirect|African Holocaust|the [[Steel Pulse]] album|African Holocaust (album)}}

'''Maafa''' (or '''African Holocaust''', '''Holocaust of Enslavement''' and '''Black holocaust''' as alternatives)<ref>William Wright points to the differences between ''black'' history, and ''African'' history, and argues that the African Holocaust is a major reason why these two histories are not synonymous: William D. Wright, Black History and Black Identity: A Call for a New Historiography, p. 117</ref><ref name="Temple News">{{cite web|url=http://www.temple-news.com/media/storage/paper143/news/2003/10/30/Opinion/What-African.Holocaust-543918.shtml?norewrite200612211320&sourcedomain=www.temple-news.|publisher="Glenn Reitz"|title=What Holocaust}}</ref><ref>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.</ref>are terms used to describe the history and on-going effects of atrocities inflicted on [[African people]].<ref>Barndt, Joseph. ''Understanding and Dismantling Racism: The Twenty-First Century''. 2007, page 269.</ref><ref>Mazrui, Ali. ''The Global African: A Portrait of Ali A. Mazrui''. Omari H. Kokole.</ref><ref>http://humanrights.uconn.edu/documents/papers/Howard-Hassmann_Slavetrade.pdf Reparations for the Slave Trade: Rhetoric, Law, History and Political Realities”</ref><ref name=joneswest>Jones, Lee and West, Cornel. ''Making It on Broken Promises: Leading African American Male Scholars Confront the Culture of Higher Education''. 2002, p. 178.</ref> The Maafa is held to have started with the [[Arab Slave Trade|Arab]] and [[Atlantic Slave Trade|Atlantic]] slave trades, and continued through [[imperialism]], [[colonialism]], and other forms of [[oppression]] to the present day.<ref name="Maafa Defined">{{cite web|url=http://www.africanholocaust.net/html_ah/holocaustspecial.htm|title=African Holocaust | Maafa}}</ref><ref>http://books.google.co.za/books?id=8KKeSy7AhpAC&pg=PA164&dq=African+holocaust&hl=en&sa=X&ei=BDDJT_XLKMGJhQeByqjnDw&ved=0CEMQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=African%20holocaust&f=false Black History and Black Identity: A Call for a New Historiography, William D. Wrigh</ref><ref>Barndt, Joseph. ''Understanding and Dismantling Racism: The Twenty-First Century''. 2007, page 269.</ref><ref>Mazrui, Ali. ''The Global African: A Portrait of Ali A. Mazrui''. Omari H. Kokole.</ref><ref>http://humanrights.uconn.edu/documents/papers/Howard-Hassmann_Slavetrade.pdf Reparations for the Slave Trade: Rhetoric, Law, History and Political Realities”</ref><ref>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.</ref><ref name=joneswest />

==History and Terminology==
{{African American topics sidebar|right}}
[[File:Slave ship diagram.png|left|thumb|Diagram of a slave ship from the Atlantic slave trade. From an Abstract of Evidence delivered before a select committee of the House of Commons in 1790 and 1791.]]Usage of the Swahili term ''Maafa'' ("Great Disaster") in English was introduced by [[Marimba Ani]]'s book ''Let the Circle Be Unbroken: The Implications of African Spirituality in the Diaspora''.<ref>Dove, Nah. ''Afrikan Mothers: Bearers of Culture, Makers of Social Change''. 1998, p. 240.</ref><ref name=morris>Gunn Morris, Vivian and Morris, Curtis L. ''The Price They Paid: Desegregation in an African American Community''. 2002, p. x.</ref>
It is derived from a [[Swahili language|Swahili]] term for "[[disaster]], terrible occurrence or great [[Tragedy (event)|tragedy]]".<ref name=oj>Harp, O.J. ''Across Time: Mystery of the Great Sphinx''. 2007, p. 247.</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Cheeves |first=Denise Nicole |title=Legacy |year=2004 |page=1}}</ref> The term was popularised in the 1990s.<ref>{{cite book |title=African American History Reconsidered |author=Pero Gaglo Dagbovie |publisher=University of Illinois Press |date=2010|page=191}}</ref>

The term ''African Holocaust'' is preferred by some academics, such as [[Maulana Karenga]], because it implies intention.<ref name="Ethics on Reparations">{{cite web|url=http://www.africanholocaust.net/news_ah/ethics%20of%20the%20holocaust.htm|publisher="[[Ron Karenga]]"|title=Problem with Maafa}}</ref> One problem noted by Karenga is that the word ''Maafa'' can also translate to "accident", and in the view of some scholars the holocaust of enslavement was no mere accident. [[Ali Mazrui]] notes that the word "holocaust" is a "dual plagiarism" since the term is derived from [[Ancient Greek]] and thus, despite being associated with the [[The Holocaust|genocide of the Jews]], no one can have a monopoly over the term. Marzui states: "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."<ref>http://igcs.binghamton.edu/igcs_site/mltrs/Newsletter17.pdf ANCESTRY, DESCENT AND IDENTITY</ref>

Some [[Afrocentric]] scholars prefer the term ''Maafa'' to ''African Holocaust'',<ref>Tarpley, Natasha. ''Testimony: Young African-Americans on Self-Discovery and Black Identity''. 1995, p. 252.</ref> because they believe that indigenous African terminology more truly confers the events.<ref name=morris /> The term ''Maafa'' may serve "much the same cultural psychological purpose for Africans as the idea of the ''Holocaust'' serves to name the culturally distinct Jewish experience of genocide under German Nazism."<ref name=outof>Aldridge, Delores P. and Young, Carlene. ''Out of the Revolution: The Development of Africana Studies''. 2000, p. 250.</ref> Other arguments in favor of ''Maafa'' rather than ''African Holocaust'' emphasize that the denial of the validity of the African people's humanity is an unparalleled centuries-long phenomenon: "The Maafa is a continual, constant, complete, and total system of human negation and nullification."<ref name=joneswest />

The terms "[[Transatlantic Slave Trade]]", "Atlantic Slave Trade" and "Slave Trade" are said by some to be deeply problematic, as they serve as euphemisms for the intense violence and mass murder inflicted on African peoples, the complete appropriation of their lands and undermining of their societies. Referred to as a "trade", this prolonged period of persecution and suffering is rendered as a commercial dilemma, rather than as a moral atrocity.<ref name=diouf>Diouf, Sylviane Anna. ''Fighting the Slave Trade: West African Strategies''. 2003, p. xi.</ref> With trade as the primary focus, the broader tragedy becomes consigned to a secondary point, as mere "[[collateral damage]]" of a commercial venture. Others, however, feel that avoidance of the term "trade" is apologetic act on behalf of capitalism, absolving capitalist structures of involvement in human catastrophe.{{Citation needed|date=December 2010}}

==National Day of Remembrance==
The National [[Juneteenth]] Christian Leadership Council (NJCLC)<ref>http://www.njclc.com</ref>, [[Ronald Myers|Rev. Ronald V. Myers, Sr.]], Founder & Chairman, has established the "18th of June" as the National Day of Reconciliation and Healing from the Legacy of Enslavement<ref>http://www.nationaldayofreconciliation.com</ref> and the National Day of Remembrance of the Maafa<ref>http://www.nationaldayofreconciliation.com</ref> in America. [[Juneteenth]], the "19th of June", is the day that freedom from enslavement is celebrated in America. The day before freedom is celebrated, reflection on the loss of life from the maafa of the middle passage, lynching and murders before and after the [[Civil War]], the [[Red Summer of 1919]], the [[Tulsa Race Riot]], etc., all from the legacy of enslavement in America, is reflected upon.

==In scholarship==
[[Image:ApartheidSignEnglishAfrikaans.jpg|thumb|left|"For use by white persons" – sign from the apartheid era.]]
While Maafa can be considered an area of study within [[African history]] in which both the actual history and the legacy of that history are studied as a single discourse, it can also be taken as its own significant event in the course of global or world history.<ref name="Maafa of the African Holocaust">{{cite web|url=http://www.africanholocaust.net/html_ah/holocaustspecial.htm|publisher=[[Owen 'Alik Shahadah]]|title=African Holocaust: Holocaust Special}}</ref> When studied as African history, the paradigm emphasizes the legacy of the African Holocaust on [[African people]]s globally. The emphasis in the historical narrative is on African agents and the pattern of oppression, in opposition to what is perceived to be the conventional [[Eurocentric]] voice; for this reason Maafa is an aspect of [[Pan-Africanism]].

[[Owen 'Alik Shahadah]] traces a pattern of "Eurocentric" scholarship to the era of slavery and colonialism, when it first came to serve as a means of removing any noble claim from the victims of systemic persecution; this served to rationalize their plight as "natural" and a continuation of a preexisting historical status, in order to eschew moral responsibility for destroying societies and undermining indigenous social and political systems. The first expressions of this academic trend appeared in the claim that "Slavery was a natural feature of Africa, and that Africans sold each other everyday." This contention sought to justify the commercial exploitation of humanity while denying the moral question, a pattern Shahadah perceives to have continued beyond the eclipse of slavery and colonialism.<ref name="Agency and Africa">{{cite web|url=http://www.africanholocaust.net/news_ah/agencyandafrica.htm|publisher="[[Owen 'Alik Shahadah]]"|title=Removal of Agency from Africa|accessdate=2005}}</ref>

[[Maulana Karenga]] puts slavery in the broader context of the Maafa, suggesting that its effects exceed mere physical persecution and legal disenfranchisement: the "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."<ref name="Ethics on Reparations">{{cite web|url=http://www.africanholocaust.net/news_ah/ethics%20of%20the%20holocaust.htm|publisher="[[Ron Karenga]]"|title=Effects on Africa}}</ref>

==Further reading==
* Anderson, S. E., ''The Black Holocaust For Beginners'', Writers & Readers, 1995.
* Ani, Marimba, ''Let The Circle Be Unbroken: The Implications of African Spirituality in the Diaspora''. New York: Nkonimfo Publications, 1988 (orig. 1980).
* [[Ivan van Sertima|van Sertima, Ivan]], ed. ''The Journal of African Civilization''.
* [[Walter Rodney|Rodney, Walter]]. ''How Europe Underdeveloped Africa'', Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1974.
* ''World's Great Men Of Color.'' Vols. I and II, ed. [[John Henrik Clarke]], New York: Collier-MacMillan, 1972.
* ''The Negro Impact on Western Civilization.'' New York: Philosophical Library, 1970.
* [[Benjamin Quarles|Quarles, Benjamin]]. ''The Negro in the Making of America'', 1964.
* DeGruy, Dr. Joy, ''Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome'', 2005.

==See also==

* [[African Renaissance]]
* [[Pan-Africanism]]
* [[Afrocentrism]]
* [[Ham (son of Noah)|Curse of Ham]]
* [[Maafa 21]]

==References==
{{Reflist|2}}

==External links==
* [http://www.africanholocaust.net/html_ah/holocaustspecial.htm African Holocaust Society]

{{Pan-Africanism}}

[[Category:Democides]]
[[Category:Labor]]
[[Category:Slavery]]
[[Category:European colonisation in Africa]]
[[Category:History of Africa|Africa]]
[[Category:Pan-Africanism| ]]
[[Category:African slave trade]]

[[ca:Maafa]]
[[es:Maafa]]
[[vi:Maafa]]

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Maafa