Imagine, however, their delight if Bush did NOT recognize Kwanzaa. Most ignoramuses out there think Kwanzaa is the black Christmas. They'd be only too happy to label W. a racist for neglecting "their" holiday. So that makes it all right? As long as you're doing something racist for political reasons it is just dandy.
If you do stuff because you want avoid the wrath of the ignoramuses, then you allow yourself to be controlled by ignoramuses. If you're the President of the United States, you then let the nation be guided by ignoramuses.
Karenga and two others tortured two women
Karenga was sentenced to one to ten years in prison on counts of felonious assault and false imprisonment The charges stemmed from a May 9, 1970 incident in which Karenga and two others tortured two women who Karenga believed had tried to kill him by placing "crystals" in his food and water.
The founder of Kwanzaa, Ron Everett, a.k.a. Maulana Ron Karenga, stood at the forefront of the black power movement in the 1960s. Karenga distinguished himself as a "cultural nationalist" as opposed to a traditional Marxist. In 1965 Karenga founded the United Slaves Organization (US), a group that would rival the Black Panthers on the UCLA campus. The US was more radical than the Panthers, setting off quarrels between the two.
The biggest dispute between the US and the Panthers centered around the leadership of the new Afro-American Studies department at UCLA; both groups backed a different candidate. On January 17, 1969, 150 students gathered to discuss the situation. Panthers John Jerome Huggins and Alprentice Carter used the meeting to verbally attack Karenga, much to the dismay of his followers. Two US members, George and Larry Stiner, confronted Huggins and Carter in a hallway after the meeting and shot and killed them.
A May 11, 1969 letter in The Black Panther officially denounced Karenga. Wilbur Grattan, the Minister of State and Foreign Affairs of the "Republic of New Africa," wrote to Bobby Seale: "Speaking in the position of Minister of State and Foreign Affairs for RNA, I have always felt that Ron Karenga represented a great deal less than the best interests of the Black Liberation struggle against domestic colonialism, white racism, and world-wide imperialism."
This, however, did not faze Karenga, who continued to build and strengthen the US. Members of the US followed the "Path of Blackness" detailed in The Quotable Karenga, authored by Karenga himself. "The sevenfold path of blackness is think black, talk black, act black, create black, buy black, vote black, and live black," the book states.
The US would not last too much longer. On September 17, 1971, Karenga was sentenced to one to ten years in prison on counts of felonious assault and false imprisonment. The charges stemmed from a May 9, 1970 incident in which Karenga and two others tortured two women who Karenga believed had tried to kill him by placing "crystals" in his food and water.
http://www.dartreview.com/issues/1.15.01/karenga.gif
