To revisit the issue of intent already touched on: If an institution is deliberately maintained and expanded by discernible agents, though all are aware of the hecatombs of casualties it is inflicting on a definable human group, then why should this not qualify as genocide?
'Great Disaster' in English was introduced by Marimba Ani's 1988 book Let the Circle Be Unbroken: The Implications of African Spirituality in the Diaspora.
[22] Other arguments in favor of Maafa rather than African Holocaust emphasize that the denial of the validity of the African people's humanity is an unparalleled centuries-long phenomenon: "The Maafa is a continual, constant, complete, and total system of human negation and nullification"-[7] The historian Sylviane Diouf posits that terms like "Atlantic slave trade" are deeply problematic because they serve as euphemisms for intense violence and mass murder.
[23] With trade as the primary focus, the broader tragedy becomes consigned to a secondary point as mere "collateral damage" of a commercial venture.
However, others feel that avoidance of the term "trade" is an apologetic act on behalf of capitalism, absolving capitalist structures of involvement in human catastrophe.