Vanity: Does ANYBODY actually celebrate Kwanzaa?

[Junior_G]

Politically correct lefties like to mention Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa all in the same breath, implying that they are equally legitimate holiday celebrations enjoyed by different groups. Christmas and Hanukkah both have rich histories to back them up, and millions of people celebrate these holidays worldwide; but does anybody actually celebrate Kwanzaa? Liberals are absolutely in love with the concept of Kwanzaa as the Black Americans' alternative to Christmas; but do any Black Americans actually celebrate it?
Kwanzaa is a holiday that was invented by a left-wing activist college professor in 1966 as a holiday for Black Americans to celebrate African culture and practice the tenets of socialism. How many black families were actually willing to abandon their Christmas traditions in favor of this new holiday, made up willy-nilly by a radical campus nutjob? If anybody on this forum has ever actually met somebody that celebrates this holiday, I'd love to hear about it. I have a sneaking suspicion that next to nobody celebrates it.
If you'll recall, some number of years ago a Texaco executive was canned after being recorded making a disparaging comment about Kwanzaa. Today, to make a joke about Kwanzaa is considered no better than delivering a racial slur; but shouldn't bogus socialist holidays----as a general rule----be soundly ridiculed? I'm curious what people's thoughts are on this one...particularly black contributors to this forum. Liberals act like all black people celebrate Kwanzaa, but all the black people I know celebrate Christmas.

[Junior_G]

Wow. The glasses really do it for me.

[Stewart_B]

LOL !!

[kcvl]

This article appeared in The Textbook Letter for September-October 2000.

It accompanied a review of The American Nation, a high-school textbook,issued by Prentice Hall, that purportedly deals with American history.


The Kwanzaa Hoax
William J. Bennetta

"Anywhere we are, Us is."

That looks like a line from an Amos 'N Andy show. One can easily imagine that it served as the motto of the Mystic Knights of the Sea, and that it was recited by such characters as The Kingfish, Andy Brown and Algonquin J. Calhoun.

In fact, however, the line that I have quoted is the motto of a real organization -- a real organization that was originally named United Slaves but now calls itself The Organization Us (or simply Us or US). It was created some 40 years ago, in Southern California, by a black racist who had begun life as Ron N. Everett but later had assumed the name Maulana Karenga.

Karenga -- known chiefly as the inventor of Kwanzaa, a fake "African" holiday that he contrived in 1966 -- has enjoyed a truly colorful career. He was a prominent black nationalist during the 1960s, when his organization was involved in various violent operations. He was sent to prison in 1971, after he and some of his pals tortured two women with a soldering iron and a vise, among other things. He emerged from prison in 1974, and a few years later -- in a maneuver that even The Kingfish might have found difficult -- he got himself installed as the chairman of the Department of Black Studies at California State University at Long Beach. CSULB wasn't the only American university that got the racial willies during the 1970s and set up a tin-pot black-studies department, but CSULB (as far as I know) was the only one that hired a chairman who was a violent felon.

Karenga is still working at CSULB and is still running The Organization Us, and he and Us are still promoting his proprietary holiday, Kwanzaa. Prentice Hall is promoting it too, so The American Nation displays a picture of "an American family's celebration of Kwanzaa" -- but The American Nation doesn't tell anything about Karenga, about his rules for carrying out a "celebration of Kwanzaa," or about his make-believe Africanism. Let me supply some of the information that Prentice Hall has hidden:

Kwanzaa is supposed to be celebrated from 26 December through 1 January: It competes with Christmas and Chanukah while incorporating some echoes of both, e.g., gift-giving and a ceremony built around a seven-holed candle-holder that recalls Judaism's seven-branched menorah.

Karenga has concocted some bits of lore, lingo, and mumbo-jumbo that are intended to make Kwanzaa look like something out of Africa instead of something from Los Angeles County, but his efforts have been feeble. If you scan The Official Kwanzaa Web Site [see note 1, below], you'll read that the origins of Kwanzaa lie in "the first harvest celebrations of Africa," which allegedly "are recorded in African history as far back as ancient Egypt and Nubia" -- but there is no explanation of why any ancient Egyptians or Nubians might have held harvest festivals around the time of the winter solstice, and there is no identification of the crops that they harvested. Karenga's formula for celebrating Kwanzaa requires the use of two ears of maize -- but maize is a New World plant, and it wasn't known at all in ancient Africa.

True believers can purchase ears of maize and other Kwanzaa equipment (e.g., candles and seven-holed candle-holders and straw mats) from the University of Sankore Press, a company in Los Angeles. This outfit evidently is controlled by Us and serves as Us's marketing unit. It isn't a university press, and its name is a mockery. The so-called University of Sankore was an aggregation of Islamic schools that flourished at Timbuktu in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. No University of Sankore exists today.

In Karenga's Kwanzaa-lingo, ears of maize are called by the Swahili name "muhindi." In fact, all the objects that Karenga has worked into Kwanzaa have names taken from Swahili, which The Official Kwanzaa Web site describes as "a Pan-African language" and "the most widely spoken African language." The labeling of Swahili as a "Pan-African" language is rubbish. Swahili -- a Bantu tongue that includes many words absorbed from Arabic, from Persian and from certain Indian languages -- is spoken by some 50 million people (i.e., about 7% of Africa's population). Most of those Swahili-speakers are concentrated in eastern Africa, in a region that includes Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and a strip of Zaire. The language which is used most widely in Africa is Arabic; and indeed, Swahili was originally written in Arabic script [note 2].

Kwanzaa is a hoax -- a hoax built around fake history and pseudohistorical delusions. By attempting to dignify and promote Kwanzaa in The American Nation, Prentice Hall has joined in a flim-flam.

Notes


The Official Kwanzaa Web site is maintained by Us. [return to text]

A Roman-based alphabet has been used for writing Swahili since the mid-1800s. See the UCLA Language Materials Project's "Swahili Profile" at http://www.lmp.ucla.edu/profiles/profs04.htm on the Web. [return to text]

---

William J. Bennetta is a professional editor, a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, the president of The Textbook League, and the editor of The Textbook Letter. He writes often about the propagation of quackery, false "science" and false "history" in schoolbooks.

[kcvl]

Buddy Holly?

[RLK]

Everett.

--------------

Everett is right. I did an article on it but it's been so long ago I couldn't recall it.

[PoorMuttly]

Kwanzaans ?

[XBob]

42 - "If it were not for the Greeting Card industry, Kwanzoomyzoomy would have disappeared rapidly."


About 2 years ago I ran into a guy at the post office mailing Kwanza cards. This is the only incident I have ever run across.

[Junior_G]

The Bennetta article is the best one I've seen. Thanks.

[dawn53]

Here's a t-shirt that is politically correct. It wishes everyone a Happy Ramahanukwansmas!

http://www.mercuryradioarts.com/site/product?pid=10020#

[Swordmaker]

Kwanzaans

"I don't think we're in Kwanzaas any more, Toto."

[FReepaholic]

>>..."People think it's African, but it's not. I came up with Kwanzaa because Black people wouldn't celebrate it if they knew it was American....<<

So, should people who celebrate Kwanzaa be called Black Separatists?

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

Here's something worth celebrating;

The Feast Of Alvis. Guns, liquor, and revenge.
http://pod-six.net/sealab21.html

[Miss Marple]

I am promoting MY holiday, which is based on the Danish heritage of my father. I am calling it "The Nine Nights of the Nordic Lights."

It requires eating lots of pastries, open-face sandwiches, and beer. On the ninth night, there is a huge bonfire in which we will burn Kwanza cards.

[Pinetop]

I know people who have Kwanzaa parties, not many. It seems to be a pretty low-key thing with good intentions. It just has never really caught on, because it is not a commercial, consumer-driven kind of thing.

Let's remember Mother's Day, Father's Day, Thanksgiving, etc., are all rather recent creations celebrating family values, so Kwanza's not that different--it just is trying to focus on black family unity--not a bad thing. But, Christmas is off the chain for blacks and whites.

[Cuttnhorse]

When I first went to Africa I thought the whole continent spoke swahili. As you mentioned, it is primarily spoken in Tanzania and Kenya and in parts of countries that border them.

[shezza]

We have quite a few black families on our street, and not a one of them celebrates Kwanzaa (to my knowledge). However, they all have Christmas lights and decor adorning their homes at this very moment. The only time I have ever heard any of the children of these families mention Kwanzaa celebrations is regarding parties or crafts made at publik skrewl. (Your tax dollars at work)

[Cuttnhorse]

I am promoting MY holiday, which is based on the Danish heritage of my father. I am calling it "The Nine Nights of the Nordic Lights."

LOL!! I'm not Danish, but that sounds like my kind of celebration.

[Jim Noble]

Christmas and Hanukkah both have rich histories to back them up, and millions of people celebrate these holidays worldwide

But, if truth be known, Hanukkah derives most of its importance from its proximity to Christmas and became a big deal only to rapidly assimilating American Jews in the 1950s.

"Kwanzaa" is of course a complete fraud, and no, nobody celebrates it except public employees.

[PBRSTREETGANG]

"I don't think we're in Kwanzaas any more, Toto."

Shouldn't that be "Twoto"?