Kwanzaa's creator tortured black women

I know the celebration officially ended 10 days ago, but the news has kept me busy until now.

Back on Dec. 20 – a full six days before onset of this very spiritual weeklong rite – he sent "warm greetings to all who are celebrating Kwanzaa." It gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling all over – even though I don't personally celebrate this sacred event.

Why did Bush issue a proclamation on Kwanzaa? Well, he explained that this important holiday was established in 1966 as an African-American celebration of "family, community and culture. The seven-day observance, beginning Dec. 26 and ending Jan. 1, serves as a special time to recognize and reaffirm the Nguzo Saba, or Seven Principles, of African culture. These are unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith."

Bush continued: "Kwanzaa provides an opportunity for people of African heritage regardless of their religious background or faith, to come together and to show reverence for their Creator and creation, to commemorate the past, to recommit to high ideals, and to celebrate the good life. These life-affirming traditions take on particular resonance this year, as the United States and the world face new challenges to peace. As individuals, families and communities take part in this celebration of unity and enduring values, I extend best wishes to people throughout the globe for a wonderful and memorable Kwanzaa."

Bush was correct in pointing out that this new high holy day is a very recent invention. There are few holidays we can actually attribute to one man's vision. Kwanzaa is such a holiday – coined by Ron Karenga in 1966.

He is a convicted felon – sentenced five years after inventing Kwanzaa for torturing two black women by whipping them with electrical cords and beating them with a karate baton after stripping them naked. He placed in the mouth of one of the victims a hot soldering iron, also scarring her face with the device. He put one of her big toes in a vise, and detergent and running water in both of their mouths.

But that wasn't the beginning of the bizarre and violent behavior of Karenga, the patron saint of Kwanzaa – not by a long shot.

Just about the time he was dreaming up this new holiday, he was also inventing a new political movement on the campus of UCLA. That movement was called "black cultural nationalism." His group was called United Slaves. And it was defined mainly by violent confrontations with the Black Panthers at UCLA. Two of his followers shot dead two members of the Panthers in 1969.

But no sooner did Karenga get out of prison on the torture charges in 1975 than all was forgotten about his criminal and violent past. He was proclaimed Saint Karenga. Four years later, he was running the Black Studies Department at California State University in Long Beach.

Paul Mulshine, who has done an admirable job of chronicling Karenga's history for FrontPagemag.com, has a theory.

No, he did not become a born-again Christian. He did not renounce violence. He did not even repudiate his past. But he did become a Marxist.

And, while becoming a Christian might have disqualified him for a role in the world of the modern U.S. university, a conversion to Marxism was perceived as a sign of rehabilitation. The one-time psychopath had seen the light.

In conclusion, I hope this little cultural and history lesson helps you see the light – about Kwanzaa. It's being taught to your kids in your government schools. It's become a commercial bonanza in black communities through the United States. And, now, even the president of the United States is praising it as a legitimate holiday.

I read in SCAM by Jesse Lee Peterson that Karenga was also a prof at Cal State Long Beach until he very recently retired. Why am I not surprised by that?

Pres. Bush's description of Kwanzaa sounds just like what all the basic glossy handouts about it say. I didn't know anything except that until I read Scam. I looked for info, too, because I wondered what the heck it actually was.

I teach in a school that's about half black, and many of the teachers are black, and not one of them celebrates Kwanzaa. Our school was decorated in what looked like the entire Wal-Mart Christmas section's contents, or public school Christmas program featured the nativity play, and the kids sang traditional Christmas Carols that had the word "Jesus", but Kwanzaa was not even mentioned once. In fact, I know quite a few black people, and none of them has ever mentioned Kwanzaa to me, except one who snickered as she said it. Either they know more about it than I did, or they celebrate secretly. I wonder if its actual adherants are any more widespread than Klan members.

George W. Bush - Presidential Kwanzaa Message 2003

Discussed in this thread.

Presidential Message: Kwanzaa 2003
19 December 2003
I send greetings to those observing Kwanzaa.
Celebrated by millions across the world, Kwanzaa honors the history and heritage of Africa. This seven-day observance is an opportunity for individuals of African descent to remember the sacrifices of their ancestors and reflect on the Nguzo Saba. Kwanzaas seven social and spiritual principles offer strength and guidance to meet the challenges of each new day.
During this joyous time of year, Americans renew our commitment to hope, understanding, and the great promise of our Nation. In honoring the traditions of Africa, Kwanzaa strengthens the ties that bind individuals in communities across our country and around the world.
Laura joins me in sending our best wishes for a joyous Kwanzaa.
GEORGE W. BUSH

"True meaning of Kwanzaa" obscured by commercialization!
Inventor denounces competitors moving in on his racket.
ROFLOL

Black Christmas under threat from the dollar
By David Rennie in Washington
(Filed: 26/12/2003)

By any measure, Dr Maulana Karenga has pulled off a remarkable feat. In 1966, he invented a seven-day festival of African unity.

Like a latter-day Malcolm X let loose in Santa's workshop, he blended African harvest festivals with ancient Egyptian traditions and Black Power theology, then bound the lot together with a smattering of Swahili rituals.

US Postal Service stamp

It is a wholly invented tradition - yet today, an estimated 18 million people celebrate Kwanzaa. There are Kwanzaa postage stamps. This week, President George W Bush will issue a formal Kwanzaa message to the nation.

Corporate America has caught on. For the duration of the holiday, from Dec 26 until Jan 1, stores will put on Kwanzaa displays, featuring African clothes, perhaps, and a kinara - the seven-branched candlestick at the centre of the festival.

You can buy your kinara from Avon, the catalogue giant. Hallmark sells Kwanzaa cards and wrapping paper, there are Kwanzaa cookbooks, and - from Paramount pictures - a "Rugrats" Kwanzaa cartoon.

Yet Dr Karenga - a former firebrand of the Black Power movement, now chairman of black studies at California State University - is far from happy.

Dr Karenga has denounced what he dubs "the corporate world's move to penetrate and dominate the Kwanzaa market".

Not only are big corporations trying to push small black businesses aside, they are trying to subvert his invention from the inside, he complains.

"Manipulating the language and symbols of Kwanzaa, they will seek not only to sell corporation-generated Kwanzaa items, but also to introduce a full range of corporate products as necessary for the practice of Kwanzaa," he said recently in a statement issued by the official Kwanzaa website.

Black people must build a "wall of resistance", and "refuse to co-operate with the corporate drive to dominate and redefine it and make it simply another holiday to maximise sales", Dr Karenga said.

Opalanga, the "project weaver", or organiser, of one of the largest Kwanzaa celebrations, in Denver, said Kwanzaa was a victim of its own success. Opalanga, who does not use a second name, is "disturbed" by mass-produced Kwanzaa items. "We have to step up production of our own artefacts, if we are not to be smashed by Avon, or Hallmark."

Kwanzaa is not intended as a religious alternative to Christmas, though some black Christians shun it as a "heathen" celebration. To Dr Karenga, the problem is the secular traditions surrounding Christmas, which he finds overwhelmingly "European", from Father Christmas to mistletoe.

Prof Venetria Patton, director of African American Studies at Purdue University in Indiana, agrees. She grew up in an America where the children on Christmas cards were all white. To this day, if she takes her children to a Santa's grotto, they invariably end up sitting on a white man's knee.

Prof Patton and her family celebrate all seven days of Kwanzaa, lighting the "Mishumaa Saba", or ritual candles, offering libations to their ancestors, and exchanging "Ziwadi", or educational gifts, usually books.

The rituals are invented, and Swahili may well not have been the mother tongue of her ancestors, Prof Patton conceded.

Like almost all black Americans, she has no idea where her ancestors came from. Slave traders did not keep genealogical records, and often jumbled different ethnic groups together, so they could not plot revolts, she noted gently.

Prof Patton is not alarmed by the corporate world's new interest in Kwanzaa.

"It increases awareness of the holiday. It's like any other convenience. If you use an Avon Kinara but keep focused on some of the fundamental principles of Kwanzaa, I don't see a problem," she said.

Prof Patton will be giving her three children books wrapped in Kwanzaa paper she bought at Wal-Mart, she admitted. "It's convenient. And I would rather someone was able to have Kwanzaa wrapping paper from Wal-Mart, than have to use paper covered in little white Santas."

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