FYI: The TRUTH about Kwanzaa
 

Jewish World Review Dec. 31, 1999/22 Teves, 5760
Tony Snow


The TRUTH about Kwanzaa

http://www.jewishworldreview.com --

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.


Tony Snow Archives

©1999, Creators Syndicate

Tony, on his radio show today, told listeners to spread this srticle in any way possible.

Hoosier you've revealed yourself to be the racist tool that I always suspected...

Nicely done... using Tony Snow from our friends FOXNews seems to be okay - just too bad the asshole is also a contributer on Stormfront.org and it's supported site: Martinlutherking.org

Glad to see he hooked another with this jackass article :rolleyes:

Rob hon, he did this long ago...

I don't really understand. Why would you use culture from one part of the continent when most present day blacks in the US are decended from another part?

If you're not celebrating the holiday then why are you concerned? The point of posting this article was? :rolleyes:

I was just going to say "dude, where have you been the past couple years?"

Why does the area where people are from matter so much? I don't think that anyone has done a family history on every single Black person to find out where their ancestors were from, so making a claim that Black Americans have no ties to East Africa is misleading.

hoosier, you have confirmed my belief that despite the best efforts of so many people, there are people like you who perpetuate hatred and racism.

Because it might not really be YOUR heritage. In any case, if you really want to celebrate African culture, then the holiday should not only be Swahili based, but also include other languages. It's like celebrating Asian culture, but only using terms derived from Mandarin.

The challenge for most Black Americans is that we really don't know WHERE we come from because of the history of slavery, so most Blacks connect to anything remotely African. I don't know Karenga or his goals in creating Kwanzza, but the need for connection is great in all cultures. Some time ago there was a thread on GC call "what are you" or something like that, asking people to tell they cultural/racial makeup. Most of the African Americans on this site stayed out, becuase we could not say things like "My grandparents came over from Ireland or England or even Kenya or Senegal" Saying "All I know is that my great grandmother was a slave on the Strickland plantation in GA" does not have the same impact. So, you can call Kwanzza flawed because it is not tied specifically to a culture that most AA can identify with, or you can recognize the need for connection.

Ditto. I'm confused.:confused:

Why do you even care? Do YOU celebrate it?

If not then :confused: :rolleyes:

Re: FYI: The TRUTH about Kwanzaa
 

Even if you agree with this reallly outrageous statement -- who cares?

The date of Christ's birth is unknown -- but someone decided to celebrate it on December 25th.

The day coming up this weekend is one of at least three "New Years" I can think of with hardly any thought at all.

Easter is a day, celebrated on a different date every year, that huge numbers of people around the world might call a chump holiday because they don't believe in Jesus.

Simply because I, having been raised in a Christian home, celebrate those days, doesn't mean that everything is exactly correct from a historical perspective. I can't trace my family tree to anywhere close to Jerusalem or Bethlehem. Does that mean I'm stupid for celebrating Christmas, Easter and this particular New Year which is built around Christ's birth?

So, why shouldn't those who so choose celebrate Kwanzaa? To not choose to celebrate a holiday does not necessarily make one a racist (I don't like to bandy that word around lightly which is often done) -- to belittle ones who do celebrate whatever heritage they choose, may be racist, though.

Generally, I believe that the tenants upon which this country were founded should clash harshly with the article quoted above because one of those tenants is freedom to believe in and celebrate all different and diverse (only slightly redundant, I think) cultures and beliefs. It is a direct attack. Why write it and why quote it?

Is Kwanzaa somehow threatening? Not to most of us.

I understand this, and please forgive my ignorance, but it is my understanding that this is not a holiday/celebration that is practiced in Africa.

I do not want to come across as offensive, but wouldn't it make more sense for African Americans who wanted to feel connected to an African culture to celebrate an already exisiting holiday?

edited for spelling

I'm not Irish but if I wanted to celebrate St. Stephen's Day would that be a problem?

I'm not understanding why what someone else celebrates is a big deal. Who am I (or ANYONE else) to tell someone what and how to celebrate?

Question though, what holiday would you propose? Do you see how that could again lead to "why do you celebrate this holiday and not that holiday"?