The Phoniness of "Kwanzaa"
Devon
'60s, he awarded himself the title 'maulana,' Swahili for 'master teacher."
by Paul Mulshine
FrontPagemag.com
December 24, 1999
ON DECEMBER 24, 1971, the New York Times ran one of the first of many
articles
on a new holiday designed to foster unity among African Americans. The
holiday,
called Kwanzaa, was applauded by a certain sixteen-year-old minister who
explained that the feast would perform the valuable service of
"de-whitizing"
Christmas. The minister was a nobody at the time but he would later go on to
become perhaps the premier race-baiter of the twentieth century. His name
was
Al Sharpton and he would later spawn the Tawana Brawley hoax and then incite
anti-Jewish tensions in a 1995 incident that ended with the arson deaths of
seven people.
Great minds think alike. The inventor of the holiday was one of the few
black
"leaders" in America even worse than Sharpton. But there was no mention in
the
Times article of this man or of the fact that at that very moment he was
sitting in a California prison. And there was no mention of the curious fact
that this purported benefactor of the black people had founded an
organization
that in its short history tortured and murdered blacks in ways of which the
Ku
Klux Klan could only fantasize.
It was in newspaper articles like that, repeated in papers all over the
country, that the tradition of Kwanzaa began. It is a tradition not out of
Africa but out of Orwell. Both history and language have been bent to serve
a
political goal. When that New York Times article appeared, Ron Karenga's
crimes
were still recent events. If the reporter had bothered to do any research
into
the background of the Kwanzaa founder, he might have learned about Karenga's
trial earlier that year on charges of torturing two women who were members
of
US (United Slaves), a black nationalist cult he had founded.
A May 14, 1971, article in the Los Angeles Times described the testimony of
one
of them: "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 US, also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths,
she
said."
Back then, it was relatively easy to get information on the trial. Now it's
almost impossible. It took me two days' work to find articles about it. The
Los
Angeles Times seems to have been the only major newspaper that reported it
and
the stories were buried deep in the paper, which now is available only on
microfilm. And the microfilm index doesn't start until 1972, so it is almost
impossible to find the three small articles that cover Karenga's trial and
conviction on charges of torture. That is fortunate for Karenga. The trial
showed him to be not just brutal, but deranged. He and three members of his
cult had tortured the women in an attempt to find some nonexistent
"crystals"
of poison. Karenga thought his enemies were out to get him.
And in another lucky break for Karenga, the trial transcript no longer
exists.
I filed a request for it with the Superior Court of Los Angeles. After a
search, the court clerk could find no record of the trial. So the exact
words
of the black woman who had a hot soldering iron pressed against her face by
the
man who founded Kwanzaa are now lost to history. The only document the court
clerk did find was particularly revealing, however. It was a transcript of
Karenga's sentencing hearing on Sept. 17, 1971.
A key issue was whether Karenga was sane. Judge Arthur L. Alarcon read from
a
psychiatrist's report: "Since his admission here he has been isolated and
has
been exhibiting bizarre behavior, such as staring at the wall, talking to
imaginary persons, claiming that he was attacked by dive-bombers and that
his
attorney was in the next cell. ? During part of the interview he would look
around as if reacting to hallucination and when the examiner walked away for
a
moment he began a conversation with a blanket located on his bed, stating
that
there was someone there and implying indirectly that the 'someone' was a
woman
imprisoned with him for some offense. This man now presents a picture which
can
be considered both paranoid and schizophrenic with hallucinations and
elusions,
inappropriate affect, disorganization, and impaired contact with the
environment."
The founder of Kwanzaa paranoid? It seems so. But as the old saying goes,
just
because you're paranoid it doesn't mean that someone isn't out to get you.
ACCORDING TO COURT DOCUMENTS, Karenga's real name is Ron N. Everett. In the
'60s, he awarded himself the title "maulana," Swahili for "master teacher."
He
was born on a poultry farm in Maryland, the fourteenth child of a Baptist
minister. He came to California in the late 1950s to attend Los Angeles
Community College. He moved on to UCLA, where he got a Master's degree in
political science and African Studies. By the mid-1960s, he had established
himself as a leading "cultural nationalist." That is a term that had some
meaning in the '60s, mainly as a way of distinguishing Karenga's followers
from
the Black Panthers, who were conventional Marxists.
Another way of distinguishing might be to think of Karenga's gang as the
Crips
and the Panthers as the bloods. Despite all their rhetoric about white
people,
they reserved their most vicious violence for each other. In 1969, the two
groups squared off over the question of who would control the new
Afro-American
Studies Center at UCLA. According to a Los Angeles Times article, Karenga
and
his adherents backed one candidate, the Panthers another. Both groups took
to
carrying guns on campus, a situation that, remarkably, did not seem to
bother
the university administration. The Black Student Union, however, set up a
coalition to try and bring peace between the Panthers and the group headed
by
the man whom the Times labeled "Ron Ndabezitha Everett-Karenga."
On Jan. 17, 1969, about 150 students gathered in a lunchroom to discuss the
situation. Two Panthers?admitted to UCLA like many of the black students as
part of a federal program that put high-school dropouts into the
school?apparently spent a good part of the meeting in verbal attacks against
Karenga. This did not sit well with Karenga's followers, many of whom had
adopted the look of their leader, pseudo-African clothing and a shaved head.
In modern gang parlance, you might say Karenga was "dissed" by John Jerome
Huggins, 23, and Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter, 26. After the meeting, the two
Panthers were met in the hallway by two brothers who were members of US,
George
P. and Larry Joseph Stiner. The Stiners pulled pistols and shot the two
Panthers dead. One of the Stiners took a bullet in the shoulder, apparently
from a Panther's gun.
There were other beatings and shooting in Los Angeles involving US, but by
then
the tradition of African nationalism had already taken hold?among whites.
That
tradition calls for any white person, whether a journalist, a college
official,
or a politician, to ignore the obvious flaws of the concept that blacks
should
have a separate culture. "The students here have handled themselves in an
absolutely impeccable manner," UCLA chancellor Charles E. Young told the
L.A.
Times. "They have been concerned. They haven't argued who the director
should
be; they have been saying what kind of person he should be." Young made
those
remarks after the shooting. And the university went ahead with its
Afro-American Studies Program. Karenga, meanwhile, continued to build and
strengthen US, a unique group that seems to have combined the elements of a
street gang with those of a California cult. The members performed assaults
and
robberies but they also strictly followed the rules laid down in The
Quotable
Karenga, a book that la
id out "The Path of Blackness." "The sevenfold path of blackness is think
black, talk black, act black, create black, buy black, vote black, and live
black," the book states.
In retrospect, it may be fortunate that the cult fell apart over the torture
charges. Left to his own devices, Karenga might have orchestrated the type
of
mass suicide later pioneered by the People's Temple and copied by the
Heaven's
Gate cult. Instead, he apparently fell into deep paranoia shortly after the
killings at UCLA. He began fearing that his followers were trying to have
him
killed. On May 9, 1970 he initiated the torture session that led to his
imprisonment. Karenga himself will not comment on that incident and the
victims
cannot be located, so the sole remaining account is in the brief passage
from
the L.A. Times describing tortures inflicted by Karenga and his fellow
defendants, Louis Smith and Luz Maria Tamayo:
"The victims said they were living at Karenga's home when Karenga accused
them
of trying to kill him by placing 'crystals' in his food and water and in
various areas of his house. When they denied it, allegedly they were beaten
with an electrical cord and a hot soldering iron was put in Miss Davis'
mouth
and against her face. Police were told that one of Miss Jones' toes was
placed
in a small vise which then allegedly was tightened by one of the defendants.
The following day Karenga allegedly told the women that 'Vietnamese torture
is
nothing compared to what I know.' Miss Tamayo reportedly put detergent in
their
mouths, Smith turned a water hose full force on their faces, and Karenga,
holding a gun, threatened to shoot both of them."
Karenga was convicted of two counts of felonious assault and one count of
false
imprisonment. He was sentenced on Sept. 17, 1971, to serve one to ten years
in
prison. A brief account of the sentencing ran in several newspapers the
following day. That was apparently the last newspaper article to mention
Karenga's unfortunate habit of doing unspeakable things to black people.
After
that, the only coverage came from the hundreds of news accounts that depict
him
as the wonderful man who invented Kwanzaa.
LOOK AT ANY MAP OF THE WORLD and you will see that Ghana and Kenya are on
opposite sides of the continent. This brings up an obvious question about
Kwanzaa: Why did Karenga use Swahili words for his fictional African feast?
American blacks are primarily descended from people who came from Ghana and
other parts of West Africa. Kenya and Tanzania?where Swahili is spoken?are
several thousand miles away, about as far from Ghana as Los Angeles is from
New
York. Yet in celebrating Kwanzaa, African-Americans are supposed to employ a
vocabulary of such Swahili words as "kujichagulia" and "kuumba." This makes
about as much sense as having Irish-Americans celebrate St. Patrick's Day by
speaking Polish. One possible explanation is that Karenga was simply
ignorant
of African geography and history when he came up with Kwanzaa in 1966. That
might explain why he would schedule a harvest festival near the solstice, a
season when few fruits or vegetables are harvested anywhere. But a better
explanation is that he simply has c
ontempt for black people.
That does not seem a farfetched hypothesis. Despite all his rhetoric about
white racism, I could find no record that he or his followers ever raised a
hand in anger against a white person. In fact, Karenga had an excellent
relationship with Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty in the '60s and also met with
then-Governor Ronald Reagan and other white politicians. But he and his gang
were hell on blacks. And Karenga certainly seems to have had a low opinion
of
his fellow African-Americans. "People think it's African, but it's not," he
said about his holiday in an interview quoted in the Washington Post. "I
came
up with Kwanzaa because black people in this country 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 would be partying." "Bloods" is a '60s
California
slang term for black people.
That Post article appeared in 1978. Like other news articles from that era,
it
makes no mention of Karenga's criminal past, which seems to have been
forgotten
the minute he got out of prison in 1975. Profiting from the absence of
memory,
he remade himself as Maulana Ron Karenga, went into academics, and by 1979
he
was running the Black Studies Department at California State University in
Long
Beach.
This raises a question: Karenga had just ten years earlier proven himself
capable of employing guns and bullets in his efforts to control hiring in
the
Black Studies Department at UCLA. So how did this ex-con, fresh out jail,
get
the job at Long Beach? Did he just send a résumé and wait by the phone? The
officials at Long Beach State don't like that type of question. I called the
university and got a spokeswoman by the name of Toni Barone. She listened to
my
questions and put me on hold. Christmas music was playing, a nice touch
under
the circumstances. She told me to fax her my questions. I sent a list of
questions that included the matter of whether Karenga had employed threats
to
get his job. I also asked just what sort of crimes would preclude a person
from
serving on the faculty there in Long Beach. And whether the university takes
any security measures to ensure that Karenga doesn't shoot any students.
Barone
faxed me back a reply stating that the university is pleased with Karenga's
performance and has
no record of the procedures that led to his hiring. She ignored the question
about how they protect students.
Actually, there is clear evidence that Karenga has reformed. In 1975, he
dropped his cultural nationalist views and converted to Marxism. For anyone
else, this would have been seen as an endorsement of radicalism, but for
Karenga it was considered a sign that he had moderated his outlook. The
ultimate irony is that now that Karenga is a Marxist, the capitalists have
taken over his holiday. The seven principles of Kwanzaa include "collective
work" and "cooperative economics," but Kwanzaa is turning out to be as
commercial as Christmas, generating millions in greeting-card sales alone.
The
purists are whining. "It's clear that a number of major corporations have
started to take notice and try to profit from Kwanzaa," said a San Francisco
State black studies professor named "Oba T'Shaka" in one news account.
"That's
not good, with money comes corruption." No, he's wrong. With money comes
kitsch. The L.A. Times reported a group was planning an "African Village
Faire," the pseudo-archaic spelling of "faire" nicely
combining kitsch Africana with kitsch Americana.
With money also comes forgetfulness. As those warm Kwanzaa feelings are
generated in a spirit of holiday cheer, those who celebrate this holiday do
so
in blissful ignorance of the sordid violence, paranoia, and mayhem that
helped
generate its birth some three decades ago in a section of America that has
vanished down the memory hole.
Stan Rothwell
Devon <dwi...@intertech.net> wrote in message
news:s6nrmck...@corp.supernews.com...
> "ACCORDING TO COURT DOCUMENTS, Karenga's real name is Ron N. Everett. In
the
> '60s, he awarded himself the title 'maulana,' Swahili for 'master
teacher."
Pardon me, but if you were to check the
translation, I think it comes closer to
"BS artist"... ;O)