English Explanatory Dictionary

Maafa

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. 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.

Word forms

Maafa

Etymology

Etymology tree Arabic آفَة (ʔāfa)bor. Swahili afa Swahili maafabor. English Maafa 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.

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