Kwanzaa is FAKE

[azaelia]

The Kwanzaa Hoax
William J. Bennetta
"Anywhere we are, Us is."

That looks like a line from an Amos 'N Andy show. One can easily imagine that it served as the motto of the Mystic Knights of the Sea, and that it was recited by such characters as The Kingfish, Andy Brown and Algonquin J. Calhoun.

In fact, however, the line that I have quoted is the motto of a real organization -- a real organization that was originally named United Slaves but now calls itself The Organization Us (or simply Us or US). It was created some 40 years ago, in Southern California, by a black racist who had begun life as Ron N. Everett but later had assumed the name Maulana Karenga.

Karenga -- known chiefly as the inventor of Kwanzaa, a fake "African" holiday that he contrived in 1966 -- has enjoyed a truly colorful career. He was a prominent black nationalist during the 1960s, when his organization was involved in various violent operations. He was sent to prison in 1971, after he and some of his pals tortured two women with a soldering iron and a vise, among other things. He emerged from prison in 1974, and a few years later -- in a maneuver that even The Kingfish might have found difficult -- he got himself installed as the chairman of the Department of Black Studies at California State University at Long Beach. CSULB wasn't the only American university that got the racial willies during the 1970s and set up a tin-pot black-studies department, but CSULB (as far as I know) was the only one that hired a chairman who was a violent felon.

Karenga is still working at CSULB and is still running The Organization Us, and he and Us are still promoting his proprietary holiday, Kwanzaa. Prentice Hall is promoting it too, so The American Nation displays a picture of "an American family's celebration of Kwanzaa" -- but The American Nation doesn't tell anything about Karenga, about his rules for carrying out a "celebration of Kwanzaa," or about his make-believe Africanism. Let me supply some of the information that Prentice Hall has hidden:

Kwanzaa is supposed to be celebrated from 26 December through 1 January: It competes with Christmas and Chanukah while incorporating some echoes of both, e.g., gift-giving and a ceremony built around a seven-holed candle-holder that recalls Judaism's seven-branched menorah.

Karenga has concocted some bits of lore, lingo, and mumbo-jumbo that are intended to make Kwanzaa look like something out of Africa instead of something from Los Angeles County, but his efforts have been feeble. If you scan The Official Kwanzaa Web Site [see note 1, below], you'll read that the origins of Kwanzaa lie in "the first harvest celebrations of Africa," which allegedly "are recorded in African history as far back as ancient Egypt and Nubia" -- but there is no explanation of why any ancient Egyptians or Nubians might have held harvest festivals around the time of the winter solstice, and there is no identification of the crops that they harvested. Karenga's formula for celebrating Kwanzaa requires the use of two ears of maize -- but maize is a New World plant, and it wasn't known at all in ancient Africa.

True believers can purchase ears of maize and other Kwanzaa equipment (e.g., candles and seven-holed candle-holders and straw mats) from the University of Sankore Press, a company in Los Angeles. This outfit evidently is controlled by Us and serves as Us's marketing unit. It isn't a university press, and its name is a mockery. The so-called University of Sankore was an aggregation of Islamic schools that flourished at Timbuktu in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. No University of Sankore exists today.

In Karenga's Kwanzaa-lingo, ears of maize are called by the Swahili name "muhindi." In fact, all the objects that Karenga has worked into Kwanzaa have names taken from Swahili, which The Official Kwanzaa Web site describes as "a Pan-African language" and "the most widely spoken African language." The labeling of Swahili as a "Pan-African" language is rubbish. Swahili -- a Bantu tongue that includes many words absorbed from Arabic, from Persian and from certain Indian languages -- is spoken by some 50 million people (i.e., about 7% of Africa's population). Most of those Swahili-speakers are concentrated in eastern Africa, in a region that includes Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and a strip of Zaire. The language which is used most widely in Africa is Arabic; and indeed, Swahili was originally written in Arabic script [note 2].

Kwanzaa is a hoax -- a hoax built around fake history and pseudohistorical delusions. By attempting to dignify and promote Kwanzaa in The American Nation, Prentice Hall has joined in a flim-flam.

Notes

1. The Official Kwanzaa Web site is maintained by Us. [return to text]

2. A Roman-based alphabet has been used for writing Swahili since the mid-1800s. See the UCLA Language Materials Project's "Swahili Profile" at [url="http://www.lmp.ucla.edu/profiles/profs04.htm"]http://www.lmp.ucla.edu/profiles/profs04.htm[/url] on the Web. [return to text]

[Lil Red]

thanks for the info!

[azaelia]

bump

[cooltuba]

I always thought it was fishy have a "harvest celebration" in the dead of winter. Good times.

Tim

[homeschoolmom]

Yep. I have always disliked how much attention this "holiday" gets... I don't know any African-American families who celebrate it...

(But Gordon and Susan on Sesame Street do...)

[Carnanc]

thanks, this is interesting

[Philippe]

I LOVE KWANZAA!!!

[Maddalena]

[quote name='Philippe' date='Dec 25 2004, 01:15 AM'] I LOVE KWANZAA!!! [/quote]

[Pio Nono]

JMJ
12/25 - The Nativity of Our Lord

Happy Hannakwanzmas!

[track2004]

Kwanzaa is fake and our celebration of Christmas is largely pagan. And I had never heard Kwanzaa was a harvest celebration, but more a celebration of a culture that slave owners took away from an entire people. Just my .02...

[Guest Eremite]

From political pundit Ann Coulter:

"Kwanzaa itself is a lunatic blend of schmaltzy '60s rhetoric, black racism and Marxism. Indeed, the seven "principles" of Kwanzaa praise collectivism in every possible arena of life -- economics, work, personality, even litter removal. ("Kuumba: Everyone should strive to improve the community and make it more beautiful.") It takes a village to raise a police snitch.

"When Karenga was asked to distinguish Kawaida, the philosophy underlying Kwanzaa, from "classical Marxism," he essentially explained that under Kawaida, we also hate whites. While taking the "best of" -- I'm not making this up -- "early Chinese and Cuban socialism," Kawaida practitioners believe one's racial identity "determines life conditions, life chances and self-understanding." There's an inclusive philosophy for you.

"Coincidentally, the seven principles of Kwanzaa are the very same seven principles of the Symbionese Liberation Army, another charming invention of the Least-Great Generation. In 1974, Patricia Hearst, kidnap victim-cum-SLA revolutionary, posed next to the banner of her alleged captors, a seven-headed cobra. Each snake head stood for one of the SLA's revolutionary principles: Umojo, Kujichagulia, Ujima, Ujamaa, Nia, Kuumba and Imani -- precisely the seven "principles" of Kwanzaa...

"Kwanzaa was the result of a '60s psychosis grafted onto black community. Liberals have become so mesmerized by multicultural nonsense that they have forgotten the real history of Kwanzaa and United Slaves -- the violence, the Marxism, the insanity. Most absurdly, for leftists anyway, is that they have forgotten the FBI's tacit encouragement of this murderous black nationalist cult founded by the father of Kwanzaa.

"Now the "holiday" concocted by an FBI dupe is honored in a presidential proclamation calling it a "holiday that promotes mutual understanding." A movement that started approximately 2,000 years before Kwanzaa leaps well beyond merely "promot(ing) mutual understanding" to say we are all equal before God. It is so inclusive, people get mad at it. That movement is also celebrated this week. But the Christian leaders at the forefront of the abolitionist and civil rights movements have been washed down the memory hole."

[url="http://www.anncoulter.org/columns/2002/122402p.htm"]http://www.anncoulter.org/columns/2002/122402p.htm[/url]

[azaelia]

^ Ann Coulter rocks my skull

[Ash Wednesday]

I don't know anybody that celebrates Kwanzaa. Who does?



(Except Sesame Street critters?)

[rachael]

[azaelia]

[quote name='Ash Wednesday' date='Dec 25 2004, 04:24 PM'] (Except Sesame Street critters?) [/quote]
Sesame Street is so PC

[geetarplayer]

I have several black friends, and none of them celebrate Kwanzaa to my knowledge.

-Mark

[Lounge Daddy]

ya - i dont even know anyone who even know what kwanzaa is

[Dreamweaver]

Bump, this is an interesting post. Kwaanza is a made up holiday to appease to the liberal world. I don't know anyone who celebrates Kwaanza, but I don't know too many black people either.

[hyperdulia again]

"Kwanzaa is fake and our celebration of Christmas is largely pagan. And I had never heard Kwanzaa was a harvest celebration, but more a celebration of a culture that slave owners took away from an entire people. Just my .02..."

I agree.

Ann Coulter is a foul-mouthed, hatefilled, little troll of a woman and since this is the second time in as many days I've seen someone on this site quote her (as if she has relevance, the ability to formulate an opinion like an adult, etc.) to prove something I must speak. This woman AND Michael Moore are both divisive blowhards.

Edited December 26, 2004 by hyperdulia again

[Pio Nono]

JMJ
12/26 - The Holy Family (St. Stephen the Protomartyr)

"Have a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hannukah, a Kwazy Kwanzaa, a Tip-Top Tet, and a Solemn and Respective Ramadan!"

-Krusty the Klown