These days the holiday Ron Karenga founded 44 years ago may have more commercial than cultural significance.
Is Kwanzaa Still Important?
by Mark Anthony Neal | TheLoop21
If you wanted to celebrate Kwanzaa this year, you could purchase one of dozens of books explaining it’s seven principles, purchase a Kinara and Kwanzaa cards from Macy’s, mail those cards with official Kwanzaa postal stamps, watch M. K. Assante Jr.’s film "The Black Candle," and attend any number of Kwanzaa celebrations in your local neighborhood. Even George W. Bush offered an official Kwanzaa message during his presidency. I note these points to highlight how accessible and mainstream Kwanzaa has become, despite the fact that it was founded more than 40 years ago in midst of the Black Power Movement.
Kwanza was founded in 1966 by Ron Karenga (born Ron Everettt) who also founded the Black Cultural Nationalist organization United Slaves or US. In the late 1960s, US was one of the many organizations targeted by the FBI counter-intelligence program COINTELPRO. The violent exchanges by US and the Black Panther Party (also targeted by the FBI) in Los Angeles in the late 1960s was instigated by the FBI to destabilize both organizations. That Karenga is one of the few figures from that era that has survived relatively intact—he is arguably more influential now as an Afrocentric scholar—has often raised questions about the true nature of his role in the ultimate demise of the Black Panther Party.
Kwanzaa was one of the many ritual celebrations that Karenga founded in an effort to counter the influences of White Supremacy and Christianity on African-Americans. Among those rituals were Kwanzisha, which recognized the founding of US, Kuzaliwa, a celebration of Malcolm X’s birthday and Uhuru Day which marked the beginnings of the Watts riots during the summer of 1965.
As USC Historian Scot Brown writes in his book Fighting for US: Maulana Karenga, the US Organization and Black Cultural Nationalism (2005), Kwanzaa “was part of a matrix of rituals, holidays and social praxis that effectively comprised a nationalist counter-culture capable of attracting a diverse body of Black Americans to the organization.
Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21.com
Is Kwanzaa Still Important?
by Mark Anthony Neal | TheLoop21
If you wanted to celebrate Kwanzaa this year, you could purchase one of dozens of books explaining it’s seven principles, purchase a Kinara and Kwanzaa cards from Macy’s, mail those cards with official Kwanzaa postal stamps, watch M. K. Assante Jr.’s film "The Black Candle," and attend any number of Kwanzaa celebrations in your local neighborhood. Even George W. Bush offered an official Kwanzaa message during his presidency. I note these points to highlight how accessible and mainstream Kwanzaa has become, despite the fact that it was founded more than 40 years ago in midst of the Black Power Movement.
Kwanza was founded in 1966 by Ron Karenga (born Ron Everettt) who also founded the Black Cultural Nationalist organization United Slaves or US. In the late 1960s, US was one of the many organizations targeted by the FBI counter-intelligence program COINTELPRO. The violent exchanges by US and the Black Panther Party (also targeted by the FBI) in Los Angeles in the late 1960s was instigated by the FBI to destabilize both organizations. That Karenga is one of the few figures from that era that has survived relatively intact—he is arguably more influential now as an Afrocentric scholar—has often raised questions about the true nature of his role in the ultimate demise of the Black Panther Party.
Kwanzaa was one of the many ritual celebrations that Karenga founded in an effort to counter the influences of White Supremacy and Christianity on African-Americans. Among those rituals were Kwanzisha, which recognized the founding of US, Kuzaliwa, a celebration of Malcolm X’s birthday and Uhuru Day which marked the beginnings of the Watts riots during the summer of 1965.
As USC Historian Scot Brown writes in his book Fighting for US: Maulana Karenga, the US Organization and Black Cultural Nationalism (2005), Kwanzaa “was part of a matrix of rituals, holidays and social praxis that effectively comprised a nationalist counter-culture capable of attracting a diverse body of Black Americans to the organization.
Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21.com
No comments:
Post a Comment