We owe a debt of gratitude to the founder of Kwanzaa, Ron Everett, AKA Ron Karenga.
As we all know, "The Holidays" are now upon us, and that can mean only one thing: Kwanzaa is finally here! But I know that some of us take Kwanzaa for granted, so I thought this would be the perfect time of year to reflect on the true meaning and spirit of the holiday.
It was an amazing time in history almost 43 years ago when on December 26, 1966, the first Kwanzaa celebration was begun. For this we owe a debt of gratitude to the founder of Kwanzaa, Ron Everett, AKA Ron Karenga.
Ron Karenga, now Dr. Ron "Maulana" (meaning "master teacher" in Swahili and Arabic) Karenga, is a proud African-American, Marxist activist, and Black Nationalist. On the founding of Kwanzaa, he had this to say: "People think it's African, but it's not. I came up with Kwanzaa because black people 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 Bloods were partying." Fabricating a holiday is accomplishment enough, but Maulana Karenga is a man of many talents, and his accomplishments are many more than just that.
From his humble beginnings on a farm in Maryland, Ron Karenga moved to California to attend Los Angeles City College in the late 1950's, and was accepted to UCLA, by way of a federal program for students who had dropped out of high school, where he received his Master's in Political Science and Africana studies. In the early 1960's, Karenga met Malcolm X and embraced Black Nationalism. In 1965, he selflessly put aside his doctoral studies to join the Black Power movement, and founded his own Black Nationalist organization, the United Slaves Organization, the same year. It was during this time that he realized he deserved a title for his diligent efforts, and so, by the power invested in him, he awarded himself the title "Maulana."
By 1969, the United Slaves had become influential in the Black Power movement, and there was a schism between the United Slaves and the Black Panthers on campus at UCLA over who should head the new Afro-American Studies Center. So a conference was held by the black students to resolve the situation, during which even more friction arose between the two groups. In the spirit of its founder, the United Slaves was not an organization to sit on its hands, so two of their members shot and killed two Black Panthers members immediately following the conference. Under the wise guidance of UCLA Chancellor Charles E. Young, the obvious conclusion was reached that the incident was isolated and unrelated to either the conference or the ongoing feud between the two groups.
For the next two years Maulana Karenga worked diligently for his cause until he was accused of assaulting and imprisoning two female United Slaves members in 1971. According to their court testimony, the women were whipped, beaten, stripped of their clothing, burned with a soldering iron, and had detergent and water hoses placed in their mouths by the Maulana and two others. Karenga was convicted and sent to prison where he occupied himself with Marxist writings and philosophy, becoming quite taken with them. Ironically, much of the tension between the United Slaves and Black Panthers stemmed from the fact that the Black Panthers desired a total Marxist reformation of America, whereas the United Slaves was in favor of black separatism and isolationism instead.
But if two lives must be lost for the advancement of enlightenment, that is thankfully a sacrifice that Maulana Karenga was willing to make. Upon his release, he re-established the United Slaves to reflect his newfound Marxist ideology. A year later, the Maulana received his first Doctorate, awarded by United States International University for his 170-page dissertation, Afro-American Nationalism: Social Strategy and Struggle for Community. Then in 1977, he formulated a set of seven principles known as Kawaida – Swahili for "tradition and reason." They are as follows:
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Umoja (unity)
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Kujichagulia (self-determination)
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Ujima (collective work and responsibility)
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Ujamaa (cooperative economics)
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Nia (purpose)
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Kuumba (creativity)
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Imani (faith)
Despite the holiday having been established over a decade earlier, the Maulana decided retroactively that each of the seven days of Kwanzaa would be representative of one of the Kawaida. Maulana Karenga is visionary in his application of these principles. In order to unite the whole of the black race in Umoja it is necessary to shoot, torture, imprison and maim those who don't agree with the Maulana politically – and even some that do.
Kujichagulia is embodied in Maulana's tenacity in crushing his opposition and fighting for the racial separation of blacks. Ujima can be seen in the Maulana's willingness to work with other radical racist organizations, like the Black Panthers. Ujamaa is shown in his unselfish redistribution of his own wealth among the black community. Nia is demonstrated by his calling to lead the black nation to separation from other races, united under Marxism and pursing the Kawaida. Kuumba is demonstrated in the Maulana's ability to invent new holidays and impressive self-appointed titles. And finally, Imani is exemplified in Maulana's belief in secular/humanist Marxism.
It is this vision and overwhelming intellect that swept Maulana Karenga into his position as chairman of black studies at California State University, Long Beach in 1989, and garnered him his second Doctorate from USC in 1994 for his work, Maat, the moral ideal in ancient Egypt: A study in classical African ethics. Though the Maulana left his post at California State in 2002 and is gaining in years, I know his spirit will live on through his books, Kwanzaa: Origin, Concepts, Practice and Introduction to Black Studies and through the Kawaida every year as we celebrate Kwanzaa. It is a proud, proud holiday indeed. Happy Kwanzaa!
See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Karenga
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwanzaa
http://www.undergroundnotes.com/kwanzaa.htm
http://www.dartreview.com/issues/1.15.01/kwanzaa.html
http://www.nathanielturner.com/karenga2.htm
Re: “In order to unite the whole of the black race in Umoja it is necessary to shoot, torture, imprison and maim those who don’t agree with the Maulana politically – and even some that do.”
Sounds vaguely familiar to a despot who lived 1,400 years ago.
We could take the statement and make it generic: “In order to unite the whole of the [fill in race] in [fill in ideology], it is necessary to shoot, torture, imprison and maim those who don’t agree with the [fill in leader's title] politically – and even some that do.”
Is it just me, or does Kwanzaa seem to come earlier and earlier each year?
This year, I believe my triumph over this synthetic holiday is nearly complete. The only mentions of Kwanzaa I’ve seen are humorous ones. Most important, for the first time in eight years, President George Bush appears not to have issued “Kwanzaa greetings” to honor this phony non-Christian holiday that is younger than I am.
It is a fact that Kwanzaa was invented in 1966 by a black radical FBI stooge, Ron Karenga, aka Dr. Maulana Karenga. Karenga was a founder of United Slaves, a violent nationalist rival to the Black Panthers and a dupe of the FBI.
In what was probably ultimately a foolish gamble, during the madness of the ’60s the FBI encouraged the most extreme black nationalist organizations in order to discredit and split the left. The more preposterous the organization, the better. Using that criterion, Karenga’s United Slaves was perfect. In the annals of the American ’60s, Karenga was the Father Gapon, stooge of the czarist police.
Despite modern perceptions that blend all the black activists of the ’60s, the Black Panthers did not hate whites. They did not seek armed revolution. Those were the precepts of Karenga’s United Slaves. United Slaves were proto-fascists, walking around in dashikis, gunning down Black Panthers and adopting invented “African” names. (That was a big help to the black community: How many boys named “Jamal” currently sit on death row?)
Whether Karenga was a willing dupe, or just a dupe, remains unclear. Curiously, in a 1995 interview with Ethnic NewsWatch, Karenga matter-of-factly explained that the forces out to get O.J. Simpson for the “framed” murder of two whites included: “the FBI, the CIA, the State Department, Interpol, the Chicago Police Department” and so on. Karenga should know about FBI infiltration. (He further noted that the evidence against O.J. “was not strong enough to prohibit or eliminate unreasonable doubt” — an interesting standard of proof.)
In the category of the-gentleman-doth-protest-too-much, back in the ’70s, Karenga was quick to criticize rumors that black radicals were government-supported. When Nigerian newspapers claimed that some American black radicals were CIA operatives, Karenga publicly denounced the idea, saying, “Africans must stop generalizing about the loyalties and motives of Afro-Americans, including the widespread suspicion of black Americans being CIA agents.”
Now we know that the FBI fueled the bloody rivalry between the Panthers and United Slaves. In one barbarous outburst, Karenga’s United Slaves shot to death Black Panthers Al “Bunchy” Carter and Deputy Minister John Huggins on the UCLA campus. Karenga himself served time, a useful stepping-stone for his current position as a black studies professor at California State University at Long Beach.
(Sing to “Jingle Bells”)
Kwanzaa bells, dashikis sell
Whitey has to pay;
Burning, shooting, oh what fun
On this made-up holiday!
Kwanzaa itself is a nutty 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 early Chinese and Cuban socialism” — which one assumes would exclude the forced abortions, imprisonment of homosexuals and forced labor — 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 Worst 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: Umoja, Kujichagulia, Ujima, Ujamaa, Nia, Kuumba and Imani — the exact same seven “principles” of Kwanzaa.
Kwanzaa was the result of a ’60s psychosis grafted onto the black community. Liberals have become so mesmerized by multicultural nonsense that they have forgotten the real history of Kwanzaa and Karenga’s 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.
This is a holiday for white liberals — the kind of holiday Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn probably celebrate. Meanwhile, most blacks celebrate Christmas.
Kwanzaa liberates no one; Christianity liberates everyone, proclaiming that we are all equal before God. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). Not surprisingly, it was practitioners of that faith who were at the forefront of the abolitionist and civil rights movements.
Next year this time, we’ll find out if our new “Halfrican” president is really black or just another white liberal. If he’s black enough to say the “brothers should pull up their pants,” surely Obama can just say no to Kwanzaa.
DavidB:
Re: “Karenga himself served time, a useful stepping-stone for his current position as a black studies professor at California State University at Long Beach.”
LOL!
I don’t know when the above article was written, but as a minor point of correction, “Dr. Maulana Ron Everett Karenga” is no longer employed at Cal State Long Beach – he left his position there in 2002. He is currently the director of the “Kawaida Institute for Pan African Studies” – a position equally as prestigious and equally as fabricated as his more formal title of “Maulana”.
Too bad you cannot find a more effective way to share this with a larger audience. Even if you could, most people would probabaly be afraid to challenge the integrity of the “holiday’ for fear that they would be slammed as racists. One suggestion – try to replace Wikipedia as a source. Not exactly the most credible one out there, and Kwanzaa defenders will use that to dismiss your article.
The links at the bottom of the article aren’t references or sources. That’s why there’s no in-text citations of them. The piece is a bit short and intended to be satirical, so I provided the links in case anyone wished to read more detailed information about the holiday and its founder. Fortunately, this information is not buried and is far from difficult to find and verify (including court documents). Anyone who looks, regardless of their ideological or political outlook, cannot escape the facts surrounding the invention of the “holiday”. It’s something everyone could know, should know, but doesn’t know and won’t know.
Kwanzaa is the Festivus of my generation.
That tells you all you need to know about the state of the body politic. When you believe in nothing (or have not been taught anything of real value), anything is believable.
Phil,
At least we could have some fun with a national Festivus celebration. I’d love to be at the White House for the airing of grievances and feats of strength!
Phil:
Festivus [which I had not heard of until now] sounds like a variation of Bill Maher’s claim that anyone can invent a religion, as he claimed to have done on his show once, and hence all religions are shams.
I think the more appropriate claim is that “anyone can invent a religion … just look at the people who believe in the religion of Man-Made Global Warming.”
There will always be idiots who accept idiocy as a matter of faith (again, look at the adherents to the religion of Anthropogenic Global Warming). The question is, as I have posed in previous essays of mine, what is the proper role of religion vs. the proper role of science? If you try to prove religious tenants via science, you will fail and look foolish as surely as you do by elevating scientific dogma to a faith-based belief that man is the predominant reason for global warming which, by the way, isn’t even occurring.
Religion isn’t the common thread. Human idiocy is.
Festivus was a fabricated holiday on the sitcom Seinfeld (which I watch religiously, if you’ll excuse the pun), conceived by the father of one of the main characters as an alternative to the commercial and religious aspects of Christmas. The principal difference between Festivus and Kwanzaa is that Festivus was fictional and intended to be humorous. Kwanzaa is equally fictional and would be humorous (if unintentionally) if it weren’t for the fact that everyone actually takes it seriously!
Great! No news kwanzaa is an imbecile celebration, invented by some dimwit in the 60′s. How about that other holiday that celebrates the birth of the zombie-to-be? Is that less stupid than kwanzaa? I want my Yule back to Odin! Out with all syncretic false religion usurpers!
willtell:
“… kwanzaa is an imbecile celebration, invented by some dimwit in the 60′s.”
What’s really disturbing is that he was given a doctorate and appointed not only to a professorship but a department chairmanship to boot. This is just one more example of what I call Newton’s Third Law of Social Studies, i.e., that for every opinion there is an equal but opposite opinion, and that has gotten us to the point of granting rights to error in institutions that are supposed to be dedicated to the pursuit of truth. Or to quote Bill Donohue, “Higher education does not exist so that all ideas can be exchanged freely – that can be done in a bar. Its purpose is the pursuit of truth. … Speech which unarguably does not facilitate the pursuit of truth, or which is by all rational measures demonstrably false, should not be given a platform at any institution of higher education.”
But, in its pursuit not of truth but the spirit of “tolerance”, “inclusion”, “multiculturalism”, and “non-judgementalism”, the academy has decided that even the most outlandish Lefty idea must be given its platform [nay, people must be force-fed] no matter what, lest the fate of all mankind be lost forever.
willtell,
Call me a fundamentalist, but a holiday recognizing the birth of a religious figure whose teaching has influenced Western civilization so dramatically that we use his birth as the basis for our modern calendar does indeed seem a little bit less stupid than a holiday fabricated by a self-important, violent, venomous racist with a criminal record to glorify his conception of the 7 pillars of Marxism. Holidays as trivial as Columbus Day, or Martin Luther King Jr. Day, or President’s Day are a lot less stupid – at least they honor people who actually accomplished something during their lifetimes. Say what you want about the old zombie, but at least Jesus didn’t invent Christmas during his lifetime as a means self-aggrandizement and to spread his message of racial isolationism.
Patrick, I didn’t call you a fundamentalist, and I don’t see anything wrong if you are one, as long as you do not judge other people according to what they (don’t) believe. Now xmas is just an old kwanzaa, that stole the celebrations of the older Yule. Things do not turn true just because they are old. BTW you may attribute western civilization to xianity, but others might attribute that the west developed in spite of it …
willtell,
Obviously I was being sarcastic. And if you read carefully, I did not attribute Western civilization to Christianity – I said that Jesus’ teachings have had such an influence on Western civilization that we mark our calendar by his birth (though the influence of Christian ideology and moral philosophy is glaringly obvious in the values and mores even of secular Western society, but that’s tangential to the point I was actually making). That alone, at least to me, seems like a more legitimate reason for a holiday than a fabricated re-statement of Marxism by a racial separatist of no accomplishment and questionable character. Had Jesus been sent to prison for violating his female followers, based his entire teaching on the racial separation of Jews from gentiles, conferred upon himself a made-up Hebrew honorific, and then introduced the holiday of Christmas in order to propagate his race-obsessed philosophy and to displace the secular Solstice or Yuletide celebrations, then I could maybe see the comparison, but otherwise the correlation seems weak.
To say that “Christmas is just an old Kwanzaa” is a gross oversimplification. For that matter, the comparison of Kwanzaa to Christmas is irrelevant. I drew no such comparison, and the legitimacy or lack thereof for Kwanzaa as a “holiday” isn’t relative to the legitimacy or lack thereof for Christmas or Easter or Arbor Day or any other holiday. Regardless of your hostility to religion, or phobia of spelling out the word “Christ”, or the truth of a holiday of religious remembrance (I don’t understand how a holiday celebrating a historical figure can be “true” or “false” with or without the passage of time, but that’s not really important), the roots of the Kwanzaa holiday are steeped in the ugliness of racism and the Marxist ideology of a violent, dangerous relic of 1960′s radicalism. If you’re comfortable with that, well, as I said, Happy Kwanzaa!
Patrick, what I mean is that the west would still be the west no matter what religion it adopted. I dare to say the xianity got more from western culture than the other way around. For example, if Charles Martel did not stop the muslims of getting into Europe, then islam would be european, and sufficiently altered to embrace our humanist values, such as private property, freedom of thought and pursue of happiness.
Haha, Ironically enough, the way in which I meant that Christianity has so heavily influenced modern Western society is by imbuing it with an altruistic moral code that has so easily allowed it to transition to collectivism, socialism and democratic totalitarianism – values that embody the antithesis of private property, liberty and economic capitalism. And given the modern state of the empires that embraced Islam, I have severe doubts about how well it would have been secularized in Europe under the same or similar circumstances as Christianity. But as I said, that’s neither here nor there. This article was about the history of the founding of Kwanzaa, not the relative value of Christianity to Western civilization or the legitimacy of the Christmas holiday. Whether you recognize Christmas or not, Kwanzaa’s nature is repugnant and the only reason it is given any legitimacy is because of ignorance of the history of the holiday by the general public and the religious institutional dedication to political correctness in America.
Patrick, kwanzaa is a foolish hol, so as xmas was. The difference is that the passing of time has made xmas institutional. I wonder when did your probable ancestors abandon their celtic gods to embrace a religion, so arrogant, that claims to have presented the universal messiah? I would rather do the kiddush hashem than converting to old-kwanzaa, or xianity, as you call it.
I don’t want to just keep having the same discussion with you. I think my last few comments already addressed why I think the comparison of the two holidays is weak and a discussion of comparative religion irrelevant to the the topic.
Patrick, since you can’t sustain your point of view any longer, knowing that xmass is just a man invented hol, as kwanzaa also is, which served to a political purpose in the past steeped in the ugliness of anti-semitism and anti-paganism I will take your final argument that, as a xian believer you don’t feel at ease to question the pillars of your faith. I think that Ron Karenga would have behaved as you do, if one were to discuss the seven pillars of kwanzaa with him. Happy new year!
Quite the contrary, I’ve just grown tired of answering the same argument since you have done nothing but restate your original contention 3 or 4 different times and continually divert the discussion to irrelevant tangential issues that have nothing to do with anything I’ve said or the original text I wrote. You’re arguing against a strawman so there’s not much reason for me to stick around and referee.
All holidays are “man invented”. I don’t know where you got the idea that I or anyone else believed otherwise. Who made the invention and the reasons for the invention are what make Kwanzaa unique as a “holiday”, for the many reasons already discussed. Save your juvenile attempts at antagonism for an IRC channel raid or something where it would be appropriate. I’ve got my own grown-up issues with Christian philosophy and ideology, so it doesn’t impress me much.
By the way, it’s a little early for Happy New Year, isn’t it? Knowing how offended you are by Christianity, I trust you don’t celebrate the New Year holiday based on the calendar of Pope Gregory XIII. Julian New Year is the 14th.
Xmass is a man invented hol which served to a political purpose in the past steeped in the ugliness of anti-semitism and anti-paganism. Sounds like kwanzaa, not?
PS. I am offended by xianity, both historically and familiarly. Lots of people chose death with honor, to not kneel to the crucified-idol-god.
No you!
Farewell “maulana Mulligan”, enjoy your xkwanmasszaa! (Don’t run, just walk out with a firm step, that everybody shall understand your leaving.)
Arrivederci “Prince Will”. Feel free to let yourself out when you sober up enough to find the door.