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Kwanzaa Quandary
Tucson Weekly ^
| 10 Jan 2002
| Tom Danehy
Posted on 01/10/2002 6:52:10 AM PST by white trash redneck
Kwanzaa Quandary
Why would anyone celebrate such a bogus holiday?By Tom Danehy
Could somebody please tell me exactly when it was that we went from striving to be culturally aware and sensitive to accepting just about any load of crapola that comes down the pike? I'm betting that it was some time after 1966, when a college professor made up a holiday and, because he's black, no one in the past 35 years has had the nerve to say that it's the festival version of The Emperor's New Clothes. There's no there, there.
I'm talking about, of course, Kwanzaa, that glorious weeklong festival celebrated by tens of people around the country and given more fawning media attention than the entire cast of Friends. It's not that it's a bad holiday, per se; it's just that it seems ... well, forced.
According to the official Kwanzaa Web site (named, oddly enough, www.officialkwanzaawebsite.org), the festival was just made up by a guy named Maulana Karenga. I looked Kwanzaa up on Encarta and there was this glowing entry on the festival, but then I noticed that the passage had been written by Karenga himself. He claims that the festival is based on an African harvest celebration known as matunda ya kwanza, which is Swahili for "first fruits."
Here's where problems start to pop up. First off, I've never understood why the Afrocentric movement in the U.S. focuses on Swahili. It's a nice language and even the name sounds cool, but Swahili is spoken by people in the eastern and central parts of Africa. If learning an African language is an attempt to maintain a link to the distant ancestors who were brought to America against their will under the bonds of slavery, then people should speak one of the more indigenous Bantu tongues, like Fulfulde or Mande, from which comes the term "Mandingo."
My friend Bill Washington suggested that it might be that Swahili is the most common language in all of Africa and therefore more appropriate. But actually, far and away the most common language in Africa is English. Heck, more people speak the local type of Arabic in Egypt than speak Swahili in all the rest of the continent. It's entirely possible that more people in Africa speak French than Swahili.
Trying to make Swahili seem relevant to black Americans is like some of those pretentious Spanish teachers in Tucson who teach kids to speak Castilian because it has some built-in snob value over the more common (and infinitely more useful) Mexican dialect. However, if you want to teach kids Swahili, knock yourself out. Just be sure to tell them that if they ever go to Western Africa and speak Swahili while trying to do that Alex Haley, roots-finding thing, people are going to look at them like they've got snot on their shirt.
Another odd thing I found: The kwanza is the official monetary unit of Angola, where, of course, the official language is Portuguese (which also has nothing to do with Swahili).
I also wondered about this whole harvest thing. While much of Africa lies in the tropics, there really isn't a whole lot of harvesting going on around Christmas. The general perception is that Africa is in the southern hemisphere, but the reality is that nearly two-thirds of the continent lies north of the equator. In fact, the extreme southern tip of Africa, the Cape of Good Hope, is on about the same latitude line as Buenos Aires, Argentina, which, in turn is more than 1,000 miles north of the southern tip of South America.
About the only part of Africa that lies south of the equator and along the Atlantic Ocean (and therefore has the reversed seasons) is the stretch that includes the aforementioned Angola, Namibia and South Africa, a region that has virtually nothing to do with United States history. Plus, the native African languages in that area include the Bantu dialects of Zulu, Umbundu and Xhosa, and those delightful Khoisan (click!) languages. Again, no Swahili.
Then there is the name "Kwanzaa" itself. The Swahili word ends with one "a," but Karenga added another one simply because seven kids showed up for his first celebration. Does that mean that if the Johnson triplets had decided to stop by that day, the celebration would be known as "Kwanzaaaaa?"
I'm sure Karenga's intentions were noble, but you have to figure that if a holiday hasn't caught on in a third of a century, it doesn't have much of a future. Mostly, I can't imagine black kids sitting around and saying, "I can't wait for this dumb Christmas stuff to be over so we can get into Kwanzaa."
Still, I don't want to be so presumptuous as to speak for African-Americans, so over the past week, I asked every black person I saw if they celebrated Kwanzaa. Of the 34 people I asked, 32 said no, one asked what Kwanzaa was, and one said, "It's none of your business, White Devil!" I'll take that last one as a yes.
My friend Bill probably summed it up best. "On Columbus Day, people don't celebrate Italy. They celebrate Italian-Americans. And people use St. Patrick's Day either as an excuse to get drunk or as a day to recognize Irish-Americans. I think African-Americans are far more likely to want to celebrate Martin Luther King Day than to participate in Kwanzaa.
"Martin Luther King is infinitely more relevant to our lives than an African harvest festival. No offense."
Two Sundays ago, in the middle of Kwanzaa, I asked seven of my black friends down at the gym if they were celebrating the festival. As it turns out, none of the seven participates in Kwanzaa, all seven say they try to do something to honor Dr. King, and three of them say they also go out on the first Monday in October to celebrate the anniversary of the time O.J. Simpson beat the justice system by killing a white woman and getting away with it.
Now, there's something that might catch on.
TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS:
In case you were wondering...
;o]
And a Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Joyful Ramadan, and Bountiful Kwanzaa to you all!
By the way, this is the same Tom Danehy who wrote that scurrilous article about home schooling that I posted a couple of weeks ago. Maybe he's trying to redeem himself.
To: white trash redneck
LOL
2
posted on
01/10/2002 7:02:05 AM PST
by
aomagrat
To: white trash redneck
Which holiday celebration has more participants do you suppose: Festivus or Kwanzaa?
3
posted on
01/10/2002 7:43:25 AM PST
by
SubSailor
To: white trash redneck
Kwanzaa Quandary What's the problem?
As long as history records the details of this scam, it will forever be seen as the fraud that it is. Just like the comic book "Yhe African Roots of Civilization". Some people need to associate themselves with civilization even if fraud and fiction becomes necessary.
Like the current Middle East claiming even a remote similarity to the golden age of Islam...
"The promotion of "self-esteem" in our schools has been so successful that people feel free to spout off about all sorts of things -- and see no reason why their opinions should not be taken as seriously as the views of people who actually know what they are talking about." - Thomas Sowell.
To: white trash redneck
Out-bloody-standing! I'm one of those black folks who regards Kwanzaaaaa as an absurdity. It's fun to see somebody else saying so.
5
posted on
01/10/2002 7:52:46 AM PST
by
ArcLight
To: SubSailor
I love the ritual Airing of Grievances the best.
Comment #7 Removed by Moderator
Comment #8 Removed by Moderator
To: white trash redneck
I bend thankin that a gud name fer a new hoilydey wud bee "Oily Possum Week". The frst week in Octubar when the vermints is fat and sweet taters is hrvsted.
To: All
Yet another divisive product from those who incessantly preach against it. Jesus said the worst sin is hypocrisy. With these clowns and their agenda, that's not hard to believe, JC!!!
10
posted on
01/10/2002 8:19:48 AM PST
by
Malcolm
To: white trash redneck
11
posted on
01/11/2002 12:35:51 AM PST
by
Spiff
12
posted on
01/11/2002 12:36:20 AM PST
by
Spiff
To: Malcolm
My daughter came home from her Catholic school yesterday with a catechism magazine--think scholastic magazine--featuring a "gospel activity" which encouraged the seventh graders to "greet 2002 by celebrating your life and work" by observing Kwanzaa. It then proceeded with a seven day calendar detailing all of the "collective" glories of Kwanzaa. I have a phone call into the principal's office, I called the editor of the magazine and sent him many of Spiffs links. This outrageous false pseudo-history and multiculturalism must be stopped and confronted by individuals everywhere who care to, and know how to, arm themselves with the facts. Disgusting! V's wife.
13
posted on
01/11/2002 11:25:25 AM PST
by
ventana
To: ventana
Thank you for using my links in the way you describe. What you did is exactly the purpose of my research and my links. The information provided in these links should also be used to respond to every pro-Kwanzaa article you ever read in a newspaper or magazine. Just pick you favorite stuff and send it to the editor. That's what I do.
14
posted on
01/11/2002 2:33:28 PM PST
by
Spiff
To: Spiff
I am the one to thank you Spiff. And I do, indeed!!! I called the principal (am I spelling that right?) and I took a great deal of time to explain the myth that is Kwanzaa. I reasoned that one: in a Catholic bible study activity intended as a religious lesson we ought to study Catholicism for heavens sake, and two: we ought not be promoting black seperatism anywhere, especially not in school nor to our children. Carlotta Morrow does a great job of explaining the importance of unity as opposed to seperatism.
Good work; this is why FreeRepublic is such a great place and such an important place because it gives us information we might not have known about or known how to have gotten and because we can network across the country in an activist way thanks to people like you. Great people help us stand on their shoulders to move important idease along. And of course if Jim Robinson hadn't provided the biggest pair of shoulders in the first place, where would we all be? Cheers! V's wife.
15
posted on
01/12/2002 4:36:27 AM PST
by
ventana
To: patlaw_guy
Ah yes the airing of grievances...Here on Free Republic everyday is Festivus!!! :)
16
posted on
01/12/2002 5:02:57 AM PST
by
xp38
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