The Maafa Legacy

We are the Inheritors

Maafa (i.e African Holocaust of Enslavement) is derived from a Kiswahili word meaning disaster, terrible occurrence or great tragedy.

The term collectively refers to the 500 years of suffering (including present times) of people of African heritage through slavery, imperialism, colonialism, invasions, oppression, and exploitation.

The process of bringing African slaves to the Western Hemisphere is known as the “The Middle Passage” - one leg of a triangle that forced transportation of captured African people from Africa to the New World as part of the Atlantic slave trade.

The Legacy of the Middle Passage and its definition as a Maafa grew from a tradition of human mistreatment and suffering, from an ongoing experience of life lived branded and locked in chains, from a a state of absolute terror in every moment of everyday, and from the ongoing experience of victimization by heartless exploitation.

Today, the inheritors of the Legacy are all the people in the nations that were involved in the exploitation of African captives exported as slaves. This historical period affected us all. The most devastating impact continues to be on the direct descendants of the slaves.

However, to understand this Maafa legacy we must understand its impact not only on specific segments of society but also on our complete social structure.

Major geographic areas that were directly involved and therefore might exhibit the strongest after effects are: North America, South America, West Africa, Caribbean Basin, Portugal, Holland, Spain, France, and England.

An online history of American slavery can be found at this link.

Within these large geographic areas and/or national boundaries are specific inheritor communities of the Maafa, in which it will be instructive to trace the continuing ripple effect of the transatlantic slave trade e.g. Portuguese speaking Brazilians of color recruited as guest workers in the formerly all white Portuguese fishing community of Martha's Vineyard.

The long-term effects of the Maafa are easily demonstrated for the descendents of the enslaved African captives. Similarly, it is not too difficult to trace "white" wealth to various aspects of transatlantic slavery.

Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, it is our contention that there are yet undocumented “subtle” effects that have roots in centuries of denigration and exploitation of Africa. These effects are implicated in the social, economic and moral structure of the Western World.

Had it not been for the need to rationalize the Maafa, many of the most egregious human abuses of the last four centuries might have not occurred? For example, one can not but wonder would the Nazi regime have found it so easy to rationalize the genocide of European Jews had the populace not been accustomed to the notion of inferior and superior races? Is our predatory corporate capitalism partially rooted in ruthless exploitation of African labor?

Most current writings, addressing the slave trade and its after effects, understandably focus on the continuing profound injury of the slave descendants. While we applaud this continuing documentation, there is a need to go beyond this ultimately simplistic duality of oppressed and oppressor.

First and foremost, this division easily leads to accusation, self-righteousness and defensiveness. Second, we further believe that there is a pervasive cultural blindness regarding the moral adjustments made to justify this division. Third, we believe as these adjustments are made quite apparent, it will become more evident what we must do to heal all of us from these perpetuated distortions that long ago outlived there short sighted usefulness.

The route of the Maafa, are all areas where the inheritors live. Known as the Middle Passage, it is the trail of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade.

To heal the national psyche

• We must look at all of us as descendants of the transatlantic slave trade;

How it Looks to Blacks

Monday, Apr. 06, 1970 - Time Magazine

If whites have prejudices about blacks, blacks also have many fixed notions about whites. This much is clear from that part of the special TIME-Harris poll that examines stereotypes blacks have about the white society.

More than four out of five blacks polled think that whites consider Negroes inferior. Two-thirds of the blacks believe whites to be scared that blacks are better people than they are. Nearly the same number—63%—feel that whites today regret having abolished black slavery.

Other black beliefs: whites give blacks a break only when forced to (77% agreed with that proposition); white men secretly want black women (74%); whites have a mean and selfish streak in them (65%); whites are physically weaker than blacks (55%); whites are less honest than blacks (50%); white people need to have somebody like blacks to lord it over (49%); whites are more apt to catch diseases (44%).

February 2, 2007

Segregation by law ended in the U.S. in the 1960s, but de facto segregation persists. Black and Hispanic children live in different neighborhoods than do white and Asian children, according to the report. For the largest 100 metro areas with more than 5,000 black children in the U.S., 72 percent of black children and 56 percent of Hispanic children would need to move to a different neighborhood to be fully integrated with white children.

Schools experience de facto segregation as well. Although less than half (48 percent) of primary school students in the largest metropolitan areas are white, the average white student attends a school where most fellow students are also white. Similarly, although just a fifth of primary school students in the largest metropolitan areas are black, in 40 percent of the areas studied, the average black student attends a school that has a mostly black population. Of all groups, Asian students tend to be the most integrated and to attend schools that most closely mirror the composition of students in the metropolitan areas where they live.

• We must look at the crimes against humanity.

Only by confronting the obvious as well as the subtle effects of this past can we identify what needs to be done in the present so we might go on to a brighter future. We believe that our very survival may be implicated in honestly confronting what we are carrying forward.

We cannot afford the luxury of addressing matters in terms of victims and victimizers. Such a characterization perpetuates the conflict; aggression begetting counter-aggression. Can we look at the issues without pointing the finger of blame? Can we solve our specie’s threatening problems without asking for retribution?

The reparation debate is not about bad white people having done bad things to good people of color. It is about repairing what is damaged. It is perhaps useful to take a page from our African brothers and sisters tribal traditions. In one tradition, when a wrong occurred, it is seen as something that had unbalanced the community and action is taken by tribal elders to bring the community back into balance. Punishment is not even considered; community health is the concern. Our world community is out of balance and our elders need help to bring it back into balance.

Aboru, Aboye, Abosise