Reflection on Kwanzaa 2003 (1)
C Spinner
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Distractions, like slavers, come in many guises ....
Especially the english ones ....
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Black Christmas under threat from the dollar
By David Rennie in Washington
(Filed: 26/12/2003)
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/
By any measure, Dr Maulana Karenga has pulled off a remarkable feat.
In 1966, he invented a seven-day festival of African unity.
Like a latter-day Malcolm X let loose in Santa's workshop, he blended
African harvest festivals with ancient Egyptian traditions and Black
Power theology, then bound the lot together with Swahili rituals.
Today, an estimated 18 million people celebrate Kwanzaa. There are
Kwanzaa postage stamps. This week, President George W Bush will issue
a formal Kwanzaa message to the nation.
Corporate America has caught on. For the duration of the holiday, from
Dec 26 until Jan 1, stores will put on Kwanzaa displays, featuring
African clothes, perhaps, and a kinara - the seven-branched
candlestick at the centre of the festival.
You can buy your kinara from Avon, the catalogue giant. Hallmark sells
Kwanzaa cards and wrapping paper, there are Kwanzaa cookbooks, and -
from Paramount pictures - a "Rugrats" Kwanzaa cartoon.
Yet Dr Karenga - a former firebrand of the Black Power movement, now
chairman of black studies at California State University - is far from
happy.
Dr Karenga has denounced what he dubs "the corporate world's move to
penetrate and dominate the Kwanzaa market".
Not only are big corporations trying to push small black businesses
aside, they are trying to subvert his invention from the inside, he
complains.
"Manipulating the language and symbols of Kwanzaa, they will seek not
only to sell corporation-generated Kwanzaa items, but also to
introduce a full range of corporate products as necessary for the
practice of Kwanzaa," he said recently in a statement issued by the
official Kwanzaa website.
Black people must build a "wall of resistance", and "refuse to
co-operate with the corporate drive to dominate and redefine it and
make it simply another holiday to maximise sales", Dr Karenga said.
Opalanga, the "project weaver", or organiser, of one of the largest
Kwanzaa celebrations, in Denver, said Kwanzaa was a victim of its own
success. Opalanga, who does not use a second name, is "disturbed" by
mass-produced Kwanzaa items. "We have to step up production of our own
artefacts, if we are not to be smashed by Avon, or Hallmark."
Kwanzaa is not intended as a religious alternative to Christmas,
though some black Christians shun it as a "heathen" celebration. To Dr
Karenga, the problem is the secular traditions surrounding Christmas,
which he finds overwhelmingly "European", from Father Christmas to
mistletoe.
Prof Venetria Patton, director of African American Studies at Purdue
University in Indiana, agrees. She grew up in an America where the
children on Christmas cards were all white. To this day, if she takes
her children to a Santa's grotto, they invariably end up sitting on a
white man's knee.
Prof Patton and her family celebrate all seven days of Kwanzaa,
lighting the "Mishumaa Saba", or ritual candles, offering libations to
their ancestors, and exchanging "Zawadi", or educational gifts,
usually books.
The rituals are invented, and Swahili may well not have been the
mother tongue of her ancestors, Prof Patton conceded.
Like almost all black Americans, she has no idea where her ancestors
came from. Slave traders did not keep genealogical records, and often
jumbled different ethnic groups together, so they could not plot
revolts, she noted gently.
Prof Patton is not alarmed by the corporate world's new interest in
Kwanzaa.
"It increases awareness of the holiday. It's like any other
convenience. If you use an Avon Kinara but keep focused on some of the
fundamental principles of Kwanzaa, I don't see a problem," she said.
Prof Patton will be giving her three children books wrapped in Kwanzaa
paper she bought at Wal-Mart, she admitted. "It's convenient. And I
would rather someone was able to have Kwanzaa wrapping paper from
Wal-Mart, than have to use paper covered in little white Santas."
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Comments:
A) Once corporate America sees a $buck and moves in, you cannot
stop it - as long as there are profits to be made. And there are
profits aplenty..
So don't sit there and threaten to do something about it or
else you will be overwhelmed by the steamroller of corporate
America. The best fight under the circumstances is to ensure
that most of the money goes to the blacks. And that is where
the effort should be - how to channel the bulk of the money
and profits which black America spends during the holiday
month to black enterprises.
[How do the Hanuka people do it?]
1) (Racist) Whites are not going to do the marketing for
blacks and black enterprises.
2) And you cannot rely on the black consumers to BUY KWANZAA
because you said so.
MARKETING!!! You must
*raise the awareness
and ALSO
* provide alternative goods and services
- of similar of superior quality and functionality
- that are located conveniently
- that are available in a timely manner
Blacks MUST market themselves.
C) "some black Christians shun it as a "heathen" celebration"
Those who do so with conviction, neither understand the meaning of
the word 'heathen' nor do they understand why Man needs a religion/
myth/ belief/ faith.
Indeed. Similarly, many with similarly undeveloped attitudes
consider Christmas a 'heathen' celebration.
[But then there are those who use the word deliberately
and derogatorily - as used by the missionaries who accompanied the
spanish and english murderers on their campaign of mass, genocidal
slaughter of America's Indians and the Africans.]
>
C) "To this day, if she takes her children to a Santa's grotto, they
invariably end up sitting on a white man's knee."
Many stores that hire Santas during the holiday season, hire whites.
I have an impression that many will explore avenues for changing
that situation come next Christmas. After all, why would we
insist that a Santa identified with the birth of a non-caucasian in
palestine must be a liy-white german or irish?
>
"Like almost all black Americans, she has no idea where her ancestors
came from."
That is because many have not made the effort.
But they came from Africa. And most likely from West Africa.
In fact, we can narrow the search down to the MOST LIKELY
area in West Africa.
With time, diligence and modern methods, these issues will be
resolved - to a social grouping in a particular region in
west africa.
[And it may turn out that an ancestor in Prof Venetria
Patton's lineage hailed from Dahomey of the fearsome female
soldiers.]
In fact it may be stated that the current interest in tracing
one's roots and family tree in USA suggests that millions of
whites do not know their ancestry that well either. So don't lose
yourself in unnecessary self-pity. In fact many whites are a mixture
of many dirty strains.
[So Blair's singularly maniacal cursedness may be a result
of a recessive gene that contained the worst in all of europe.
My!]
"The rituals are invented,"
Where did the rituals performed during Christmas or the Catholic mass
come from? Were they always practiced? If we find that they wee not
practiced in 1,500,000BC (?) and then we find that they were practiced
in 2003AD, should we suspect that they started (or evolved or were
invented) at some point in between?
"Swahili may well not have been the mother tongue of her ancestors"
Neither is English her ancestors' mother tongue. But she
learnt it and uses it. She probably knows some French and
German too - perhaps as a language requirement in college.
Neither is Latin a mother tongue of many Catholics.
Who knows or cares about a manger or some weird, star-gazing silly
men?
Gosh! It may be argued that black christians cannot claim that their
ancestors roamed the deserts of palestine 600 years ago! But they
roamed the plains of black Mother Africa.
So why do they embrace whites' christianity and not blacks' Kwanzaa?
_____ _____ _____ _____ _____the native shall not be denied
Charlie
............... .................. ..........
"Do not allow the shadows to deceive you nor the long
road you have to travel, to discourage you!
"The heroes and heroines, whom Alfred Nzo has joined, like him,
live among us, combatants still for the liberation of all our
people."
Excerpts from
The Statement at the Funeral of Alfred Nzo
Johannesburg, Azania, January 22, 2000
................... .......................... ..