Kwanzaa, as a holiday, doesn’t bother me much, one way of the other. My leftist friends on The Liberal Avenger website started a thread, Why do Michelle and Jesse Malkin hate Kwanzaa?, as though even if they do, it’s a big issue. When I mentioned to LA that the lovely Mrs Malkin’s post, which he initially cited, simply referred to others, and that “annoyed with Kwanzaa” doesn’t mean “I hate Kwanzaa,” he proceeded to cite another article by Mrs Malkin which he claimed does prove she “hates” the holiday.
On the other hand LaShawn Barber, who doesn’t celebrate Kwanzaa, really doesn’t like having people assume that she does simply because she’s black.
Mary Katharine Ham wrote My Rocky Relationship With Kwanzaa on the Hugh Hewitt website, in which she detailed an article she had been assigned to write for some unnamed local newspaper. It was apparently supposed to be a typical fluff piece, because Miss Ham wrote twenty column inches, the first ten of the fluff variety, and the second concerning the rather unsavory nature of Maulana Ron Karenga, the man who “invented” Kwanzaa in the ancient time of 1966. Her second ten inches were edited out, because, she was told, “you just can’t write stuff like that. Just because…you just can’t.”
Now, I’m not trying to be the grinch who stole Kwanzaa here, but I think it’s a sin that the rather radical, Marxist, black nationalist origins of the holiday are ignored every year– ignored with the power of a thousand suns.
It is a shame that everyone acts as if Karenga’s violent crimes are immaterial, despite the fact that he was convicted and sentenced for them several years after he invented Kwanzaa. It’s not as if he reformed, then became the father of Kwanzaa.
My question is: does it really matter?
I remember back during the mid 1990s, when Louis Farrakhan organized the Million Man March. Mr. Farrakhan is, in my not so humble opinion, a thoroughly repugnant person, an anti-Semite of the first rank, a poverty pimp and a panderer. But when he organized the Million Man March, his themes were that black men (specifically men, not the generic “men” that includes women) had to take responsibility for their own actions, had to step up to the plate as fathers and providers, and stop begetting illegitimate children for whom they had no intention of caring.
That, to me, was a good message, an excellent message, one that could only do good things for the black community. There were, however, tons of conservatives who couldn’t overlook Mr. Farrakhan’s scummy nature and see the good in the message; to them, it was irretrievably tainted due to its association with Mr. Farrakhan.
Now the same thing is happening with Kwanzaa. From what I have read about Dr. Karenga, he sounds like a racist and a thug. But does that mean I ought to dislike Kwanzaa because of that?
Kwanzaa purports to celebrate the Nguzo Saba, or Seven Principles. While they have somewhat of a collectivist (and Dr. Karenga is a Marxist) overtone, they pretty much call for self-reliance and hard work on the part of the black community. Some have claimed they are anti-Christian (Dr. Karenga is most assuredly not a Christian); I simply see them as wholly secular. And some have called them racist, because the first principle says that blacks should “strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation and race.”
But when I look at the devastation that blacks have wrought amongst themselves in the inner city areas of Philadelphia, I can’t help but think that if they adhered to the principles of Kwanzaa, and had listened to the message of the Million Man March, they’d have a much stronger, much healthier and much wealthier community.
Is Dr. Karenga someone I’d like and admire? Nope, sure isn’t. Is Mr. Farrakhan pretty much of a thorough scumbag? Yup, sure is! But does that mean that everything they have touched is tainted? No way; being wrong on a lot of things doesn’t mean that people are wrong on everything.
I think that my fellow conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot on this one. We ought not to trash something that, even if it is a “made up” holiday, even if its creator isn’t the finest example of a human being we could find, would mostly satisfy conservative principles if it were actually adhered to by the black community.
“…does it really matter?”
Yes, Pollyanna, it matters. When thugs and race hustlers like Farrakhan and Karenga gain notoriety in respectable circles for even good activities, it only increases their stature, and ultimately provides cover for their other, more nefarious, shenanigans. Both men are despicable racists.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
I disagree: your position says, in effect, that nothing good can come from someone if he is mostly bad. To be honest about someone’s flaws, you have to concede his positives, few as they may be.
I dont celebrate Kwanzaa either and it’s mostly because of Karenga. But you’re right just because somebody does a lot of bad things, doesn’t make every single thing they do wrong.
What bothers me the most about people who do celebrate Kwanzaa is their lack of knowledge of its roots, Karenga and the fact that most of them just jump on the Kwanzaa bandwagon because liberals made it into the “Black Christmas”.
Now hold on here. I’m the one who gets to say what my position is, and I say that even if bad people occasionally do something good, it doesn’t change the fact they are bad people.
Recall that stubborn Italian despot in WW2 who made the trains run on time. Which was a good thing, but he was and still is considered a bad guy. But, generally speaking, I too want to give credit where it’s earned. So, if a bad guy does a good thing, fine, and I’ll leave it at that.
However, I don’t accept that Kwanzaa is a good thing, it’s bogus. Something simple minded folks can do to persuade themselves they’re getting in touch with their ethnicity. It’s Karenga’s effort to get jolly old Saint Nick all decked out in a Holiday Afro. Kwanzaa puts money in Karenga’s pocket while it makes Black folks look silly.
“How many observe Christ’s birth-day! How few, his
precepts! ”
– Benjamin Franklin (Poor Richards Almanack, 1743)
I don’t dispute the fact that doing something good every once in a while makes a bad person something other than a bad person; Dr Karenga is bad news. But that doesn’t mean that Kwanzaa has to be defined as bad because its “creator” is a bum.
Was Dr Karenza trying to create a “black Christmas.” We’ve seen that happen with the elevation of Hannukah, a relatively minor Jewish holiday, simply because it falls close to Christmas, so that Jews don’t feel “left out” during the general holiday season; if Dr Karenga picked this time to get a bump off of Christmas, that was smart marketing.
Of course, Christmas falls when it does because Constantine needed help in transforming a pagan empire into a Christian one, and by selecting an already celebrated holiday (the Saturnalia/Winter Solstice holiday) it became an easier conversion; we don’t have any real information as to the exact birthday of our Lord, and, in effect, it really doesn’t matter that we don’t.
The Kwanzaa holiday is a made up one, no doubt about that. And Dr Karenga is an unlovely person (at best). But that doesn’t make Kwanzaa a bad thing.
After all, how much better would our inner cities be (and I’m thinking of Philadelphia, and its slightly better than one murder a day rate) if blacks really did take Kwanzaa and its principles seriously?
Hell, I’ll pipe down and join the happy talk chorus if Karenga would take the principles of Kwanzaa seriously.
remember….members of the mafia used to do ‘good deeds’ for the communities as well. Do we ‘ignore’ there scummy nature?….NO!!!…people like this do these things not because they care about the people, but because they are trying to build up there own stature with the people so they can achieve there own selfish objectives.