Maafa

Meaning

Noun

• The history of slavery and anti-black racism and discrimination in the United States; the historical enslavement of Africans and associated atrocities, under the interpretation of these as a genocide against them.

Origin

• From Swahili maafa ("disaster, catastrophe"). Coined in 1994 by Marimba Ani (in Let the Circle Be Unbroken: The Implications of African Spirituality in the Diaspora) on the model of the Hebrew-derived designation Shoah of the Jewish Holocaust.