Opinion - You may be familiar with CRT, Cultural Marxism, and Systemic Racism, but do you know how Kwanzaa came to be? Until seeing some meme’s on the internet, I never thought twice about the holiday which I originally believed had come from the continent of Africa and was celebrated by African people. Recently, the Vice President of the United States tweeted that she remembered growing up celebrating Kwanzaa with her family. This made me even more interested in learning about the holiday.
What exactly is Kwanzaa, who invented it, and did anyone in Africa actually celebrate it?
In 1966, Dr. Maulana Karenga, invented Kwanzaa to celebrate black culture. According to an article by the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Maulana was also accused of beating black women with chords, batons, and hot irons - while they were naked. Dr. Karenga served a few years in prison and then completed a doctorate program and began to teach.
What’s even more interesting is in 1976 the New York Times reported that the FBI was involved in stirring up a sort of gang war between the Black Panthers and United Slaves (a black extremist group). Why is this relevant? Dr. Maulana Karenga happened to be the founder of the United Slaves, likely worked with the FBI, and is also responsible for inventing Kwanzaa.
According to its founder in an article published by the Los Angeles Times, Kwanzaa was created to uplift and define the black community. It has 7 important pillars that are observed; “Unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith. Each principle correlated to a specific day and symbol”. But what is cooperative economics, and collective work and responsibility? It sounds vaguely communist.
The idea of collective work and responsibility is something that has been debated and written about in philosophical circles like that of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. One major concern of this tenant, as brought up in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy is how responsibility would be distributed and who would determine what is morally acceptable or unacceptable; the collective or the individual? One could assume “Mob Rule” would take over rather quickly in that sort of scenario.
Cooperative Economics: Based on a thorough dissertation written by A. M. Ranavare at Utah State University, in 1964 (before Kwanzaa was even invented) about the role of cooperative societies in the economic development of India; it can be concluded that cooperative economics has many ideological traits in common with socialism. Take for example the cooperative ownership of everything, this means that nothing would be privately owned because everything has to be controlled by the workers and people around. This sounds like something right out of a Marxist playbook! While traditional cooperatives are not a new concept and can play an important role in certain industries when a handful of business owners or private citizens form them, turning an entire country into a large cooperative economy would be the end of privatization. This could turn into the beginning of a social welfare state or where everyone has an equal stake regardless of their contribution. Bizarre right?
Blackpast.org states that the Holiday was created to “reaffirm African roots in African culture” and defines cooperative economics as a way to have black owned stores, businesses, shops, and more to exclusively support black people. It’s almost like the holiday supports having a separate society just for black people, but it would also have to be a cooperative one.
The more you dig into the roots of Kwanzaa and the founder of it, the worse it gets.
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