Renaming the Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Humans
1619 was so evil, it needs it own word. “Maafa” means “Great Disaster” in Swahili. Some African Studies scholars think we should be using it.
In 1988, Marimba Ani wrote Let the Circle Be Unbroken: The Implications of African Spirituality in the Diaspora. The book introduced the idea of using a special Swahili word to describe the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans.
“Maafa” means “The Great Disaster, terrible occurrence, tragedy”.
Many African and African-American scholars and historians, such as Marimba Ani and Sylviane Diouf, consider the term “transatlantic slave trade” deeply racist and dehumanizing. Referring to the forcible enslavement and mass genocide of African peoples as a “trade”- that is reducing it to a mere commercial enterprise- is rejected by these authorities, and with good reason.
They have an excellent point: Words matter.
Should we really have euphemisms for such atrocities? And if we are to have such euphemisms, certainly they should be more like our other euphemisms for crimes against humanity: Genocide, ethnic cleansing, mass murder, human trafficking.
Every word of “transatlantic slave trade” is a problem. Describing the commercial route is burying the moral atrocity; referring to the sufferers of…
