Atheists and skeptics (some of them) have been having fun with the annual “War on Christmas”. I can understand the delight in attacking such a mainstream tradition, but personally I participate in the holiday using the name Christmas. I don’t say “Yule” or some other stand-in verbiage when I’m referring to the traditions that my family has celebrated all my life. I was raised in a secular home. We did not invoke the name of Jesus, and the angel tree-topper represented as real a creature to me as Santa Claus and his magical reindeer. It was a fun time of the year to spend with family, get presents, and eat seasonal foods. Above the average atheist or skeptic, I consider myself anti-Christian. Santa isn’t in the bible. Reindeer aren’t in the bible. Christmas isn’t in the bible. Readers of this blog are probably aware of the pagan roots of the holiday, and that’s nice – but that’s not why I “do” Christmas either. I’m not an ancient pagan. I don’t have kids, and if I did I may possibly consider using a different name for the holiday, so they can carry on the harmless traditions using a non-Christian name. But I don’t, and I’m not fooling myself, so it doesn’t matter what I call it.

Kwanzaa would certainly NOT be the name I used, if I called it something else. Kwanzaa is the invention of a racist, Black Nationalist turned Marxist criminal. Why any president has mentioned it in their addresses is beyond me, why there are commercials mentioning it and products in mainstream stores for it is appalling, that a postal stamp was made for it should be a national disgrace. Kwanzaa was born out of a hatred for America and whites – this is not hyperbole, it’s clear. More than that, the founder Ron Karenga has spent time in jail for torturing two black women in unspeakable ways. Okay, that was hyperbole – one can speak of the ways he did it:

“Deborah Jones, who once was given the 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”

Kwanzaa claims it is not a religious holiday, and Ron Karenga, (aka Maulana Karenga, born Ronald McKinley Everett) has claimed it is a Secular Humanist holiday. I do not disagree entirely. It’s not JUST Secular Humanism, it’s also ethnocentrism/ethnonationalism. These latter two are not part of Secular Humanist philosophy and are easily argued to run counter to the worldview. I can’t see Michael Shermer or Daniel Dennet being amenable to the tenets of Kwanzaa or supportive of it’s founder, but I haven’t read anything by them on the subject (if you know of any comments by prominent Secular Humanists in regard to Kwanzaa – point me to them).

Maybe you’ve seen information on the origins of Kwanzaa before, the 7 principals are found all over the place. Every single one of them is about collectivism in some form or another. It is clear that Kwanzaa, as a non-religious holiday is explicitly about racial collectivism. Now, if you’re a radical black separatist, or a racial separatist of any stripe, you should encourage Kwanzaa. If you are an egoist and meritocrat, Kwanzaa represents a good deal of what is vile in the world.

Christmas, as most celebrate it in America, is barely about collectivism or the divinity of Christ anymore. This is not to say that Christianity isn’t collectivist, it certainly is, but the holiday has largely parted ways with the religion, much like the word xerox becoming independent of the company that owns the name. There are enough secular carols and movies and ornaments that one could have a blowout Hoarders rivaling decorating binge without once evoking the rotting corpse of the chump from Nazarene. Yes, you do mention his name in the word Christmas, and that is unfortunate, but for all the blinking lights, presents, fruitcake (yes, I’m one of the perverted, disturbed ones who love to eat fruitcake), and fat men in red suits, saying a dead gods name every once in a while is no skin off my back. I still say “goddamn” and “Jesus Fucking Christ” when stub my toe or twist my ankle. I assure you, neither one of those epithets has any supernatural meaning to them.

Now one may argue that Kwanzaa is celebrated by blacks in America in the same fashion – parroting the words but essentially using it as an excuse to sing and dance, eat good food, exchange gifts and spend time with family. This may be the case, in many instances, but the key difference in my eyes is that Christmas is a culturally universal holiday for Americans who have been here for any number of generations and does not explicitly entail reciting pledges of black enthonationalism and communism.

Two of Ron Karenga’s peers in his United Slaves group (a rival of the Black Panthers) put together a collection of quotes from Ron Karenga appropriately titled “The Quotable Karenga”.

The introduction by contains the following lines. I have not pulled them out of context, they are direct statements of belief and the context supports the claims.

• There is no such thing as individualism, we’re all Black.
• Values are not abstract. Values are superior to reason.
• Cultural background transcends education.
• If we could get a nigger to see how worthless, unimportant, ignorant and weak he is by himself, then we will have made a contribution.
• I reject individualism for I am of all Black men.
• U(nited)S(laves) organization seeks to create a superior people.
• The fact that we are Black is our ultimate reality.
• Thinking Black is thinking collective minded. You must put the Nation first and yourself last.
• The Seven-fold path of the Blackness is to Think Black, Talk Black, Act Black, Create Black, Buy Black, Vote Black, and Live Black.

Wikipedia states that the first Kwanzaa took place in December of 1967, the same year as the booklet quoted above. I think comparing the “Seven-fold Path” above to the “Seven Principals of Kwanzaa” is fair, as they were both formulated by the same man, at the same time:

* Umoja (Unity) To strive for and to maintain unity in the family, community, nation and race.
* Kujichagulia (Self-Determination) To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves.
* Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility) To build and maintain our community together and make our brothers’ and sisters’ problems our problems and to solve them together.
* Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics) To build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to profit from them together.
* Nia (Purpose) To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.
* Kuumba (Creativity) To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.
* Imani (Faith) To believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.

One article on the sordid history of Kwanzaa quotes Karenga from a 1978 Washington Post article:

“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.”

That Karenga used an East African language (Swahili) for his holiday when African Americans are largely from West Africa is also pointed out in the same article. It makes no sense. As a fabricated holiday that is supposedly celebrated by millions (estimates put it between 1-3 mil.) of blacks in America, it is less structurally sound than the constructed language of Klingon.

In 1967, when “The Quotable Karenga” was published, there was an increasing hostility between black revolutionary groups. The United Slaves had a heated rivalry with the Black Panthers, and where there was money and influence to be had, there was bitter hostility. The Black Studies Center at UCLA was being founded and US was fighting with BP over who would control it. It wasn’t good enough that Blacks had a department, of course, it had to be “OUR Blacks”. They started carrying guns on campus, not to defend themselves from white devils, but to intimidate one another. They were carrying the street violence onto the University Campus, a natural extension of the violent racist collectivism espoused by the Black Power Movement of the time.

This, of course, came to a head when two of Karenga’s United Slaves shot and killed two leaders of the LA Black Panthers (Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter and John Huggins) in a hallway of the Campbell Hall building on January 17, 1969… yes, the one that 30-50 UCLA students recently “occupied” to protest tuition hikes. They proclaimed that the bankrupt state raising tuition was racist. “You see regents, I see racists.” was one rallying cry from the mobs of student protesters. It might be interesting to note that the two US members imprisoned for the murders of rival black “activists” escaped from prison a few years later.

Karenga’s Kwanzaa works on a racist assumption that communalism is an inherently black way of life, but Karenga is hardly to be credited with the widespread promotion of this awful fabrication. That blame lies on the heads of do-gooders – the folks who know what’s better for everyone else, whether you like it or not. That blacks as a group vote for one party 85-95% of the time, it shows a lack of diversity of political opinion, and admittedly doesn’t do much to dispel Karenga’s proposition..

The heavy promotion of Kwanzaa is ultimately a condescending move toward American blacks by liberal white Americans. As a racial minority of 12% of the population, blacks are capable of passing no laws on the national scene without the support of whites. At such a fraction, it is only in pockets of racially gerrymandered voting districts and the rare black majority city such as Baltimore or Detroit that they have a real collective political power.

It is my contention that, at least since the 1960′s, a growing portion of whites (mostly liberals) have been concerned not with encouraging American blacks and minorities in general to further integrate with American culture, but with the belief that blacks have a culture separate to that of whites, and that encouraging our differences will make for a more prosperous black community. Multiculturalism and diversity is stressed above a united community. When there is a failure, such as with the black/white academic gap, it’s attributed to whites inability to understand that blacks have special needs and have a unique experience that we cannot comprehend.

This is the paternalism of the current state of racial relations. It is the media organizations and leftist cultural tastemakers desperate to be “inclusive” and “multicultural” that have promoted a racist and Marxist holiday to a people that are largely uninterested in it. In the misguided belief that black authenticity can only be found in expressions of ethnic exclusivity. They view the Christian religiosity of blacks in the same way as Karenga – as the evidence of oppression by whites, the imposition of a foreign religion through force on a once “noble savage” (see Pinker, “The Blank Slate”). White Americans, they believe, are born with blood on their hands, the new original sin that cannot be washed away is the “legacy of slavery”. Through slavery and “white supremacy” we have destroyed the souls of blacks by replacing their animism with a Middle Eastern religion that has been filtered through the lens of European civilization (that Christianity is equally as “foreign” to Europeans is not part of the equation).

That American blacks are more Christian by self-identification (85% compared to whites at 78%), doesn’t seem to dissuade whites from identifying Kwanzaa as the “black Christmas”, again, pure paternalism.

Those pushing this “more authentic” holiday tradition for blacks are merely pandering to radicals, and is sincere as the promotion of Santaria or Voodoo as  “authenically black”. Though Christianity is the religion of slaves, it has been magically transmogrified by advocates of “social justice” into the religion of the slave-master.

I do not advocate that whites have been an unmitigated force of good in the world, primarily because I do not hold a collectivist view of the world. I do believe that American blacks with ancestry going back generations are not Africans, they are Americans, and sh0uld be treated as such. As a group, they reject Kwanzaa, and many are hostile to it. Again, blacks as a group are more Christian than whites, and pushing Kwanzaa because a few black radicals promote it as “authentically black” makes less sense than promoting Festivus as an “authentic” secular holiday.

The only other reason that the “cultural elites”, political leaders and media talking heads can have in promoting Kwanzaa, besides paternalism, is that they sincerely want to promote black radicalism, Marxism, and separatism. This may indeed be the “real” or “hidden motivation”, but one that can only be speculated upon. I believe that it this is true, in reality it is just for a small portion of whites pushing Kwanzaa. The rest are polishing good-guy badges, making overt gestures of how egalitarian they are. I guess it makes a better show of “inclusiveness” when those you’re including are more different than you are. Advocating Kwanzaa is divisive.

If one is a sincere advocate of racial “diversity”, Kwanzaa is antithetical to it. If you want black Americans to be “included” in American life, you don’t encourage their adopting a set of beliefs that separates them from other Americans. The more black Americans are made to feel and act differently from white Americans, the more tension, violence and antipathy there will be between the two. It was viewing blacks as soulless beasts that cannot feel pain that allowed many to enslave them or defend slavery as if they were merely beasts of the field.

Ultimately, as with my War against Christmas post. I am not advocating a war on Kwanzaa. I’m advocating that it’s ignored, as it should be. If you want to sincerely express your acceptance and compassion for blacks in America, wish them a Merry Christmas – that’s the holiday they celebrate, just like 95% of all Americans, believers or not. If you want to be safe, if you let your fear of offending a tiny minority guide your actions, say “Happy Holidays”. All “Happy Kwanzaa” says is “I see you as different from me, I want to accentuate that, whether you like it or not”.

‘To end, I leave you with a poem by another black power leader, Eldridge Cleaver. It was published in his jail-house memoirs “Soul on Ice” in 1970. I believe it paints a perfect picture of the intellectual milieu that Kwanzaa springs from.

To A White Girl

I love you
Because you’re white,
Not because you’re charming
Or bright.
Your whiteness
Is a silky thread
Snaking through my thoughts
In redhot patterns
Of lust and desire.

I hate you
Because you’re white.
Your white meat
Is nightmare food.
White is
The skin of Evil.
You’re my Moby Dick,
White Witch,
Symbol of the rope and hanging tree,
Of the burning cross.
Loving you thus
And hating you so,
My heart is torn in two.
Crucified.

*I first read this poem in a paperback edition of the book, but found it online to save myself from transcribing it. Curiously the “i” in Dick was replaced with an asterisk, one can only assume the poster didn’t understand that in that context it doesn’t refer to a penis.

** Also, the first line of the next paragraph of “Soul on Ice” begins with the sentence “I became a rapist.” He continues to explain that he practiced by raping black women, only so that he could refine his skills in order to then rape white women as an act of insurrection. “It delighted me that I was defying and trampling on the white man’s law, upon his system of values, and that I was defiling his women…”

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