The story of Christmas cannot be
told in a government run school. Teachers, acting as paid agents of the
government, must avoid even the appearance of endorsing any religion. This
constitutional restriction does not apply to pseudo-religions, however, so the
dedicated adherents of even the most extreme pseudo-religion are free to gain a
foothold in any government school.
Take the pseudo-religion called Marxism for example. From the moment of its
inception Marxism has not wanted for prophets and self-anointed infallible
leaders. Its adherents believe that their doctrine is true and unerring, a
genuine key to history. The official History of the Communist Party
proclaims: “The power of
Marxist-Leninist theory lies in the fact that it enables the Party to find the
right orientation in any situation, to understand the inner connection of
current events, to foresee their course, and to perceive not only how and in
what direction they are developing in the present but how and in what direction
they are bound to develop in the future.” These words were written in
1945. After almost six decades of continual blundering such pretentions to
infallibility, insight and historical clairvoyance sound merely comical to most
Americans. And yet, even today, there are those who would creep up to the bier
and attempt to breathe life into Marxism’s desiccated spiritless corpse. Many of
these hopeful Utopians spend their busiest years teaching in America’s
educational system.
Take, for example, the self-named Professor Maulana Karenga. 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. (For more on
Sharpton see The Tawana Brawley Hoax).
What makes Kwanzaa so pathetic is its total lack of authenticity. The name of
Kwanzaa and of each of its principles are all Swahili, a language not spoken by
anyone brought to America in the days of the slave trade. The culture of East
African Swahili speakers is profoundly alien to the cultures of West Africa.
The Kwanzaa ceremonies have no African counterparts; they are complete
inventions. They don’t even make sense on their own terms. For the day of
“muhindi”, ears of corn are set aside for each child in the family, but corn is
not indigenous to Africa. Corn was first cultivated by Mexican Indians; it was
brought to Africa by white folks. The day of muhindi looks more like a Mayan
shindig than anything African. And where else on this planet does anyone
celebrate a harvest ritual in December? This incongruity springs
from Karenga’s desire to make Kwanzaa the black anti-Christmas.
That’s why Kwanzaa goes from December 26th to January first, instead of sometime
in October.
The Marxist creator of Kwanzaa couldn’t resist naming one of the Kwanzaa
feasts “ujima” (collective work and responsibility), which the African tyrant
Julius Nyrere cited as he tore tens of thousands of Tanzanians from their homes
and compelled them to labor on collective farms. No European invention has
caused more mischief in Africa than Marxism; it is a proven formula for
backwardness. It won’t do American blacks any more good than it did the
Tanzanians.
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.
When Karenga declared that he was a convert to Marxism, those who knew him
took it as a sign that he had mellowed. His violent past and muddled thinking
were, apparently, job enhancements in the California university system. Karenga
is now a professor at California State University in Long Beach.
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.
Equally insidious is the fact that the true history of Kwanzaa and its
depraved creator is rapidly vanishing into an Orwellian black hole. Using the
same method that Joseph Stalin reduced to a laboratory science, the keepers of
America’s newspaper data bases have simply made all unpleasant references to Ron
Karenga vanish into the ether. There is not even a whisper about torturefests,
blazing campus gun battles, Marxist ideology or the brutal beatings of Karenga’s
critics. All of this would have been lost forever were it not for the diligent
research of Paul Mulshine, a conservative columnist for the Newark Star
Ledger. It took Mulshine two days of hunting to ferret out the truth in the
microfilmed pages of the Los Angeles Times. As far as America’s liberal
“journalists” are concerned Karenga is a sage culture hero who is above
reproach.
As Christmas approaches the pseudo-religious and historically rootless
rituals of Kwanzaa are freely celebrated in countless government school
classrooms. Karenga’s blacks-only anti-Christmas is now an established
taxpayer-supported seasonal school event. The legacy of a racially divisive
violent degenerate is kept alive with tax money taken from you by coersive
government power. Any mention of the Prince of Peace in the same environment is
a crime. Ours is truly a weird republic.
Thomas Clough
Copyright 2001