Spanning from Dec. 26 to the first of January is Kwanzaa, the
invented African American holiday celebrated solely by white liberals and clueless public school teachers. Overblown by leftist claiming the holiday has immense cultural significance, a
survey by the National Retail Foundation discovered only 1.6 percent of Americans celebrate Kwanzaa.
The “holiday”
was created in 1966 by Ron Karenga, who renamed himself Maulana. Karenga, the founder of the
United Slaves, a violent rival organization to the Black Panthers, created the holiday for black Americans and derived the name “Kwanzaa” from the Swahili phrase “matunda y kwanza,” meaning “first fruits of the harvest.” That’s about the extent of the deep African roots the
official Kwanzaa website claims.
The history of the holiday and Karenga has been seamlessly suppressed by leftists who find the facts inconvenient. Since few know its origins, the current definitions of the celebration are usually nonsensical and made up, much like the holiday itself.
The
Guardian asserts Kwanzaa is simply an “opportunity [for black people] to celebrate themselves and their history rather than indulge in the customary traditions of a white Christmas.” The
Los Angeles Times says it is “a way to honor African heritage and bring Black families and communities together.”
FrontPage Magazine’s
Paul Mulshine writes that “the history of the founder of Kwanzaa has disappeared into an Orwellian time warp.” Indeed,
CNN informs readers that Kwanzaa’s violent, racist founder was “a black nationalist and professor of Pan-African studies at California State University at Long Beach,” omitting his criminal and misogynistic past.
Kwanzaa, the “African feast,” really
has “nothing to do with Africa and everything to do with California in the 1960s,” writes Mulshine. He contends it was made up to divide Americans, not unite them.
Mulshine explains that the paramilitary organization Karenga ran in Los Angeles in the late 1960s was involved in murder and torture: “In 1967, Karenga was accused of having his thugs beat up a student who asked him an impertinent question at a college forum. In 1969, [United Slaves] got involved in a struggle with the Black Panthers for control of the black studies program at UCLA. All involved carried guns on campus. The US guys were quicker on the draw; they killed two Panthers in a shootout at the student center.”
Karenga himself is a convicted torturer. Here is an
excerpt from an article about the May 1971 trial of Karenga for torturing two members of his group:
‘Deborah Jones, who once was given the Swahili title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electrical cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis’ mouth and placed against Miss Davis’ face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vise. Karenga, head of [United Slaves], also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths, she said.
Karenga served only four to five years in a state prison.
Karenga is currently a black studies
professor at California State University, Long Beach where the administration is apparently untroubled by the fact that this radical racist is also a convicted torturer of women. Despite the troubling past of Kwanzaa’s founder, leftists continue to shove this fake holiday down America’s throat every Christmas.
Woke liberals preach that Christmas in the classroom is
intolerant and isolates students who don’t celebrate it. Yet Kwanzaa is permitted because the left argue it is a “cultural” holiday. Tons of
teacher aids on the web provide elementary instructors with Kwanzaa coloring prints, songs, games, and crafts. But Kwanzaa isn’t actually a cultural holiday. It is best described as a political product of the 1960s, which
should qualify it as inappropriate to impose on young and impressionable students.
The seven pillars of Kwanzaa (unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith), said College Fix editor Jennifer Kabbany, “reads like a communist manifesto.”
Patrick S. Poole also noted that the pillars’ claimed “cooperative economics” is an obvious Marxist reference. Poole noted the principle of “collective work and responsibility” is “why Masai and Zulu tribesmen still live in grass huts, wear animal skins and must walk everywhere.”
“It is a good thing that today we do not have to grow our food, build our houses and tend to our own lands,” wrote Poole. “Division of labor and specialization has fueled the prosperity and progress in the West that all Africans envy. And yet it is the express denial of these important economic tools that Kwanzaa lauds.”
“Karenga said [Kwanzaa] practitioners believe one’s racial identity ‘determines life conditions, life chances and self-understanding,’”
wrote Ann Coulter.
Incoming Vice President Kamala Harris recently shared a “Happy Kwanzaa” video in which she says her favorite Kwanzaa pillar is self-determination, or “kujichagulia.” Harris says kujichagulia means “be, be and do. Be the person you want to be and do the things you want to do and do the things that need to be done” — whatever that means.
This holiday season, spend your time celebrating real holidays like Christmas or Hanukkah, not a fake holiday invented by a Marxist, racist, violent criminal.
Evita Duffy is a senior contributor to The Federalist, co-founder of the Chicago Thinker, and a senior at the University of Chicago. Follow her on Twitter at @evitaduffy_1
thefederalist.com
