Kwanzaa: Its founder and short history
Friday, December 27, 2024
You know what we don't talk about enough in 2024? Race. I'm sure you've noticed a shortage of controversy, news stories, and intentional focus on things that divide Americans. After all, the Justice Brothers, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton built a life and reputation out of peddling racial strife and division. Sure, they also damaged the gains in unity and peace gradually achieved by the Civil Rights Movement. But hey, never let the greater good get in the way of your own gain, right?
Jesse and Al are getting old, though. The grift must go on for a new generation. Our educational institutions and the media have done their part, but just in case that's not enough, we have a special holiday every year to keep that pot stirring. It may be a secular alternative to Christmas, but its roots go deeper than that. It's called Kwanzaa, and its minuscule number of celebrations is taking place as we speak.
Now, if you are like most people, you have way better things to do with your time, but look up the history and meaning of Kwanzaa. Fortunately for all of you, as I was reminded earlier today by a friend on one of my Facebook statuses, I have way too much time on my hands. Therefore, I have time to look all this crap up, so you don't have to. You're welcome.
Kwanzaa comes from the phrase "matunda ya Kwanza," which means "first fruits"). It is an obscure holiday predicated upon ethnicity. Christmas celebrates a person, Jesus Christ, God incarnate, who came to Earth in the most humble of ways, as a newborn baby with no place to stay, the beginning of his mission that included living a perfect life and dying on the cross as a substitutionary sacrifice for the sins of all mankind. Hanukkah celebrates the re-dedication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem during the second century B.C. On the other hand, Kwanzaa does not celebrate a person but a group of people. That fits in well with the religion of liberalism, which divides and views people into groups rather than seeing them as individuals.
Kwanzaa's festivities focus on Seven Principles:
Racial unity
Self-determination
Collective work and responsibility
Cooperative economics
Purpose
Creativity
Faith
The combined intention of all these is to unite individuals of African heritage.
"As part of the celebration, family members decorate a table with special symbols. They usually begin with an African tablecloth, which they cover with a woven mat and a candleholder with seven candles [that copies the menorah.] These candles represent the Seven Principles and are black, red, and green. The one black candle symbolizes the African people, the three red candles their struggle, and the three green candles their hopes for the future. On each day of Kwanzaa, one candle is lit. Besides these objects, observers also decorate the table with ears of corn [even though Mexican Indians first cultivated corn], a cup (for pouring a libation in honor of ancestors), books on African life, as well as African objects of art. Many families have striven to keep Kwanzaa simple and focused on internal values, apart from the commercialism and hectic activities often accompanying Christmas."
However, despite its focus on the past, Kwanzaa is actually a relatively new holiday invented out of thin air. Its origins only go back to 1966, when Dr. Maulana Karenga (born Ron Everett), an avowed Marxist professor and the head of the Department of Africana Studies at California State University Long Beach, founded it. He was the founder of a violent black supremacist movement called United Slaves (Organization Us).
Five years after founding Kwanzaa, Karenga was convicted of felony assault charges in 1971 after torturing two women. The women, Deborah Jones and Gail Davis, testified that Karenga abused them. He stripped them, beat them with an electrical cord and a karate baton, and placed a hot soldering iron in one of their mouths and against their faces. Additionally, Karenga's former wife, Brenda Lorraine Karenga, testified about other acts of violence against these women. Dr. Karenga served approximately four years of his sentence at the California Men's Colony before parole in 1975.
Contrast the founder of this holiday with the foundations of Hanukkah and Christmas. Kwanzaa is a poor secular replacement for those two holidays. Karenga said Kwanzaa's intention was not to replace Christmas, but he said something different to a Harvard University audience in 1978. "People think it's African, but it's not. I wanted to give black people a holiday of their own, so I came up with Kwanzaa. I said it was African because, you know, black people in this country wouldn't celebrate it if they knew it was American. Also, I put it around Christmas because I knew that's when a lot of people would be partying." Karenga also called Christianity "a white man's holiday based on a white man's religion," even though Christianity's roots are Jewish.
Many schools openly encourage the celebration of Kwanzaa while downplaying or rejecting Christmas because of the mythical separation of church and state. Yet the left has no problem promoting the establishment of religion when it comes to their own. Kwanzaa is just another useful, although silly, tool in that endeavor. Even the Vice President of the United States and presidential loser, Kamala Harris, made a video celebrating Kwanzaa last year.
Now, if you really want to have some fun with Kwanzaa, enjoy this episode of Kwanzaa Jeopardy from 2012.