Maafa

Wikipedia describes the Maafa as follows:

Maafa (also known as the African Holocaust or Holocaust of Enslavement) is a word derived from the Swahili term for disaster, terrible occurrence or great tragedy.[1][2] The term refers to the 500 years of suffering of Africans and the African diaspora, through slavery, imperialism, colonialism, invasion, oppression, dehumanization and exploitation.[2][3] The term also refers to the social and academic policies that were used to invalidate or appropriate the contributions of African peoples to humanity as a whole,[2] and the residual effects of this persecution, as manifest in contemporary society.[4]

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.[5] When studied as African history, the paradigm emphasizes the legacy of the African Holocaust on African peoples globally. The emphasis in the historical narrative is on African agents, in opposition to what is perceived to be the conventional Eurocentric voice; for this reason Maafa is an aspect of Pan-Africanism.

Usage of the term Maafa to describe this period of persecution was popularized by Professor Marimba Ani's 1994 book Let the Circle Be Unbroken: The Implications of African Spirituality in the Diaspora.



Readings:

The Black Holocaust For Beginners, by S.E. Anderson
Let The Circle Be Unbroken, by Marimba Ani
Powell, Eve Troutt, and John O. Hunwick, ed. The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam (Princeton Series on the Middle East)
van Sertima, Ivan. ed. The Journal of African Civilization.
Rodney, Walter. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press. 1974.
World's Great Men Of Color. Vols. I and II, edited by John Henrik Clarke. New York: Collier-MacMillan, 1972.
The Negro Impact on Western Civilization. New York: Philosophical Library. 1970.
Quarles, Benjamin. The Negro and the Making of the Americas.
The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam by John Hunwick