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The TRUTH about Kwanzaa
Jewish World Review ^ | Dec. 31, 1999 | Tony Snow

Posted on 12/24/2001 6:54:10 PM PST by CrossCheck

BLACKS IN AMERICA have suffered an endless series of insults and degradations, the latest of which goes by the name of Kwanzaa.

Ron Karenga (aka Dr. Maulana Ron Karenga) invented the seven-day feast (Dec. 26-Jan. 1) in 1966, branding it a black alternative to Christmas. The idea was to celebrate the end of what he considered the Christmas-season exploitation of African Americans.

According to the official Kwanzaa Web site -- as opposed, say, to the Hallmark Cards Kwanzaa site -- the celebration was designed to foster "conditions that would enhance the revolutionary social change for the masses of Black Americans" and provide a "reassessment, reclaiming, recommitment, remembrance, retrieval, resumption, resurrection and rejuvenation of those principles (Way of Life) utilized by Black Americans' ancestors."

Karenga postulated seven principles: unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith, each of which gets its day during Kwanzaa week. He and his votaries also crafted a flag of black nationalism and a pledge: "We pledge allegiance to the red, black, and green, our flag, the symbol of our eternal struggle, and to the land we must obtain; one nation of black people, with one G-d of us all, totally united in the struggle, for black love, black freedom, and black self-determination."

Now, the point: There is no part of Kwanzaa that is not fraudulent. Begin with the name. The celebration comes from the Swahili term "matunda yakwanza," or "first fruit," and the festival's trappings have Swahili names -- such as "ujima" for "collective work and responsibility" or "muhindi," which are ears of corn celebrants set aside for each child in a family.

Unfortunately, Swahili has little relevance for American blacks. Most slaves were ripped from the shores of West Africa. Swahili is an East African tongue.

To put that in perspective, the cultural gap between Senegal and Kenya is as dramatic as the chasm that separates, say, London and Tehran. Imagine singing "G-d Save the Queen" in Farsi, and you grasp the enormity of the gaffe.

Worse, Kwanzaa ceremonies have no discernible African roots. No culture on earth celebrates a harvesting ritual in December, for instance, and the implicit pledges about human dignity don't necessarily jibe with such still-common practices as female circumcision and polygamy. The inventors of Kwanzaa weren't promoting a return to roots; they were shilling for Marxism. They even appropriated the term "ujima," which Julius Nyrere cited when he uprooted tens of thousands of Tanzanians and shipped them forcibly to collective farms, where they proved more adept at cultivating misery than banishing hunger.

Even the rituals using corn don't fit. Corn isn't indigenous to Africa. Mexican Indians developed it, and the crop was carried worldwide by white colonialists.

The fact is, there is no Ur-African culture. The continent remains stubbornly tribal. Hutus and Tutsis still slaughter one another for sport.

Go to Kenya, where I taught briefly as a young man, and you'll see endless hostility between Kikuyu, Luo, Luhya and Masai. Even South African politics these days have more to do with tribal animosities than ideological differences.

Moreover, chaos too often prevails over order. Warlords hold sway in Somalia, Eritrea, Liberia and Zaire. Genocidal maniacs have wiped out millions in Rwanda, Uganda and Ethiopia. The once-shining hopes for Kenya have vanished.

Detroit native Keith Richburg writes in his extraordinary book, "Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa," that "this strange place defies even the staunchest of optimists; it drains you of hope ..."

Richburg, who served for three years as the African bureau chief for The Washington Post, offers a challenge for the likes of Karenga: "Talk to me about Africa and my black roots and my kinship with my African brothers and I'll throw it back in your face, and then I'll rub your nose in the images of rotting flesh."

His book concludes: "I have been here, and I have seen -- and frankly, I want no part of it. .... By an accident of birth, I am a black man born in America, and everything I am today -- my culture and my attitudes, my sensibilities, loves and desires -- derives from that one simple and irrefutable fact."

Nobody ever ennobled a people with a lie or restored stolen dignity through fraud. Kwanzaa is the ultimate chump holiday -- Jim Crow with a false and festive wardrobe. It praises practices -- "cooperative economics, and collective work and responsibility" -- that have succeeded nowhere on earth and would mire American blacks in endless backwardness.

Our treatment of Kwanzaa provides a revealing sign of how far we have yet to travel on the road to reconciliation. The white establishment has thrown in with it, not just to cash in on the business, but to patronize black activists and shut them up.

This year, President Clinton signed his fourth Kwanzaa proclamation. He crooned: "The symbols and ceremony of Kwanzaa, evoking the rich history and heritage of African Americans, remind us that our nation draws much of its strength from our diversity."

But our strength, as Richburg points out, comes from real principles: tolerance, brotherhood, hard work, personal responsibility, equality before the law. If Americans really cared about racial healing, they would focus on those ideas -- and not on a made-up rite that mistakes segregationism for spirituality and fiction for history.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: karenga; kwanza; kwanzaa; ronkarenga
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For your Christmas Eve reading pleasure, here is an oldie but goodie detailing what a fraudulent "celebration" Kwanzaa really is.
1 posted on 12/24/2001 6:54:10 PM PST by CrossCheck
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To: CrossCheck
Have A Merry hairy Christmas
2 posted on 12/24/2001 6:57:39 PM PST by Joe Hadenuf
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To: CrossCheck
If Jesus and Santa were black, there would be no Kwanzaa.
3 posted on 12/24/2001 7:01:48 PM PST by RedBloodedAmerican
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To: CrossCheck
" our eternal struggle, and to the land we must obtain; "

Africa ain't enough?

4 posted on 12/24/2001 7:08:54 PM PST by bayourod
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To: CrossCheck
The white establishment has thrown in with it, not just to cash in on the business, but to patronize black activists and shut them up.

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

And that's a bit of it. And I'm not in the mood to grovel in a respect I don't have before falsely fabricated history that could only be believed by fools or proselytized by demogogues. To accept this crap uncritically, demotes me, as a white person, to be forced into the position of being a ludicrous court jestor for the amusement of black radicalism. I don't dance or degrade myself for other people's amusement.

5 posted on 12/24/2001 7:11:52 PM PST by RLK
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To: CrossCheck
The thing is about establishing the "separateness" of a group of people, and the idea is to demand consideration and "respect" for people who want coddling and don't want to conform. It is a cultural "ebonics" gambit - "Hey, we decide what's right for us, and what we decide is right for us is, by definition, as good as anything else." It's sad that the thing gets any support at all - but then, it's sad that a buffoon like Sharpton gets any support at all. It says much about the supporters.
6 posted on 12/24/2001 7:16:49 PM PST by 185JHP
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To: CrossCheck
Interesting. Also, please check out and feel free to add comments on a very heart-warming and poignant Christmas tale with a moral at: Saving The Christ-Child"
7 posted on 12/24/2001 7:20:18 PM PST by Dr. Good Will Hunting
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Comment #8 Removed by Moderator

To: CrossCheck
self-determination, collective work and responsibility

Notice how neatly this fits in with the liberal agenda. You can be self determinate. For only so long as you remain a good little communist worker bee. Also notice that there was NOWHERE mentioned personal responsibility because it doesn't fit the agenda.

9 posted on 12/24/2001 7:29:06 PM PST by Blood of Tyrants
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To: Blood of Tyrants
Also notice that there was NOWHERE mentioned personal responsibility because it doesn't fit the agenda.

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

What? Are you crazy? The only thing needed is to impose a fraudulent national holiday and take the number of overly compliant fools that kiss your behind in observance to it as an index increasing of your self-esteem.

10 posted on 12/24/2001 7:41:15 PM PST by RLK
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To: CrossCheck
If anyone thinks that they need a Kwanzaa, let them have it, and it is really not worth mentioning.
11 posted on 12/24/2001 7:48:08 PM PST by tessalu
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To: tessalu
Blacks will always belive that "Kwanzaa" is about their "freedom." And they will always believe that it was the Democratic Party that brought them their freedom. No amount of truth will sell in the black community. Blacks simply think in terms of self-interest, whether accurate or not. The 5 percent of blacks who are conservatives are to be admired, for they face the hostility of their own race, which sees them as "Uncle Toms." Even Clarence Thomas is seen by most blacks as a deceitful "Uncle Tom" supposedly controlled by the "white power structure," as many blacks so regard the Republican Party.
12 posted on 12/24/2001 7:52:45 PM PST by Theodore R.
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To: ProudGOP
ping
13 posted on 12/24/2001 7:53:09 PM PST by MissMoneyPenny
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To: CrossCheck
By the way, people should actually read Keith Richburg's, Out of America. Great book.
14 posted on 12/24/2001 7:54:39 PM PST by Question_Assumptions
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To: CrossCheck
I have seen this posted several times before but have not got around to reading it until tonight - thanks for the post!
15 posted on 12/24/2001 8:52:13 PM PST by chance33_98
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To: CrossCheck
Why would they need another Holiday? They already had Christmas. It's not just for white Christians it's for all Christians.
16 posted on 12/24/2001 9:17:12 PM PST by 57 Corvette
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To: CrossCheck
I once worked with a Nigerian who asked "Tell me, what is this kwaanza? We have never heard of this in Nigeria."
17 posted on 12/24/2001 9:40:30 PM PST by sheik yerbouty
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To: Question_Assumptions
Online NewsHour: Out Of America -- Keith Richburg -- March 5 ...
... In his recent book, Out of America, Washington Post reporter Keith Richburg talks
about the negative view of Africa that he developed in his three-and-a-half ...

18 posted on 12/25/2001 1:33:09 AM PST by backhoe
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To: CrossCheck
Bump

Isn't it funny, the news media and Many Americans won't say the word CHERISTMAS, or the term MERRY CHRISTMAS, they would rather use the term Happy Holidays; however, when it's time to use the word Kwanzaa, there is no problem saying that word. I wonder.

WHat is the American Negro or Democrat doing for Africa? Nothing!

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a38fd67434b56.htm

19 posted on 12/25/2001 11:49:27 AM PST by Coleus
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To: CrossCheck
Now folks what would we do without the wonderful black radicals. I would be laughing my butt off if it wasn't so sickening. These black radicals hate Jews, Christians, you name it. They try and con people into giving them reparations, even though no American owns a slave or has owned a slave. But to the Kwanzaa sickos...

MERRY CHRISTMAS

20 posted on 12/25/2001 11:54:45 AM PST by Dengar01
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