The day after Christmas, many black Americans celebrate Kwanzaa. At look at Kwanzaa's roots show how wrong it is for blacks to take part in this fraud of a celebration.
Take, for example, the self-named Professor Maulana Karenga, who authored Kwanzaa. Way back in 1966, when he was known as plain ol' Ron Karenga, this self-proclaimed radical black separatist had the distinction of creating history's most pathetic holiday: Kwanzaa. It was pure Karenga, a seven-day celebration of crypto-Marxist values with racist overtones. According to the official Kwanzaa website the celebration was designed to nurture "conditions that would enhance the revolutionary social change for the masses of Black Americans." Each day of Kwanzaa emphasizes a principle such as "unity" or "collective work" or "cooperative economics." Karenga branded Kwanzaa a black alternative to Christmas. In fact, it is the black anti-Christmas. In 1977, the then sixteen-year-old minister Al Sharpton declared that the Kwanzaa feast would perform the much needed service of "de-whitizing" Christmas.
The Kwanzaa ceremonies, with their suggestion of some ancient Ur-African culture, is simply fraudulent. Africa has remained stubbornly tribal right into the Twenty-First Century, complete with warlords, chattel slavery and sweeping genocides. Bill Clinton, who turned a blind eye to the genocide of the Tutsi people of Rawanda, signed at least four Kwanzaa proclamations and jabbered cynically about "The symbols and ceremony of Kwanzaa, evoking the rich history and heritage of African-Americans..." as a way of patronizing black activists. The folks at Hallmark gave the whole silly kit of bogus rituals a cosmetic legitimacy, complete with sappy sentiments. Those white people who tend to fret overmuch about political correctness do their best to keep a straight face whenever Kwanzaa is mentioned. The avatars of PC are, of course, the media chatterboxes.
Every time December rolls around the newspapers include glowing articles about Kwanzaa. The designer of the Kwanzaa festival is invariably referred to in reverential terms. He is called "Doctor Karenga" or "Professor Karenga" or "the renouned Professor Maulana Karenga". The timid folk who scribble articles for such rags as the New York Times or the Washington Post know that it is bad for business to provoke their core demographic by referring to Mr Karenga with more descriptive terms, such as vicious, sadistic, repulsive, depraved and hateful. Two days before the beginning of Kwanzaa in 1971, the New York Times ran an article about the new black-unity holiday but didn't mention Ron Karenga even once, which is curious because at that very moment Ron Karenga was a guest of the California prison system. The Times didn't mention that Ron had been convicted of the crime of torturing two black women. The Times was silent about Ron's role as founder of a black nationalist cult that indulged in gunplay and homocide.
In the late 1960s Ron Karenga was the commander of a black nationalist paramilitary group that called itself United Slaves (US). In 1969 Karenga's gang clashed with the Black Panthers over control of a black studies program at UCLA. Everyone was packing heat. When the gunsmoke cleared two Panthers lay dead at the student center. In May of 1971 Karenga stood trial for torturing two dissident members of his cult. Both Deborah Jones and Gail Davis described how Karenga had demanded that they strip naked. The naked women were then whipped with electrical cords and beaten with a karate baton. Detergent and a gushing hoses were forced into their mouths. Ms Jones had one of her toes clamped in a vise. Karenga's goon squad forced a hot electrical soldering iron in to Ms Davis' mouth as a form of revolutionary discipline. The torturefest went on for two long days. Karenga was convicted and served more than three years in a California State prison. The New York Times did not see any of these lurid and insightful facts as part of "all the news that's fit to print", even though it was all new news in 1971.
Ron Karenga's legacy is the ultimate chump holiday, one that defines black people as an alien nation. At the very heart of Kwanzaa lies the Cult of Color which fashions a revered fetish from the accident of race. Kwanzaa is nostalgia for a yesterday that never existed. Worse yet, it's an invitation to embrace a failed system of economics that has impoverished everyone who has been stupid enough to attempt it.
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