XPost: alt.politics.usa.republican, alt.politics.conservative, t   
   lk.politics.guns   
   XPost: can.politics   
   From: dcook@jmb.com   
      
   William J. Bennetta   
      
   "Anywhere we are, Us is."   
      
   That looks like a line from an Amos 'N Andy show. One can easily   
   imagine that it served as the motto of the Mystic Knights of the   
   Sea, and that it was recited by such characters as The Kingfish,   
   Andy Brown and Algonquin J. Calhoun.   
      
   In fact, however, the line that I have quoted is the motto of a   
   real organization -- a real organization that was originally   
   named United Slaves but now calls itself The Organization Us (or   
   simply Us or US). It was created some 40 years ago, in Southern   
   California, by a black racist who had begun life as Ron N.   
   Everett but later had assumed the name Maulana Karenga.   
      
   Karenga -- known chiefly as the inventor of Kwanzaa, a fake   
   "African" holiday that he contrived in 1966 -- has enjoyed a   
   truly colorful career. He was a prominent black nationalist   
   during the 1960s, when his organization was involved in various   
   violent operations. He was sent to prison in 1971, after he and   
   some of his pals tortured two women with a soldering iron and a   
   vise, among other things.   
      
   He emerged from prison in 1974, and a few years later -- in a   
   maneuver that even The Kingfish might have found difficult -- he   
   got himself installed as the chairman of the Department of Black   
   Studies at California State University at Long Beach. CSULB   
   wasn't the only American university that got the racial willies   
   during the 1970s and set up a tin-pot black-studies department,   
   but CSULB (as far as I know) was the only one that hired a   
   chairman who was a violent felon.   
      
   Karenga is still working at CSULB and is still running The   
   Organization Us, and he and Us are still promoting his   
   proprietary holiday, Kwanzaa. Prentice Hall is promoting it too,   
   so The American Nation displays a picture of "an American   
   family's celebration of Kwanzaa" -- but The American Nation   
   doesn't tell anything about Karenga, about his rules for   
   carrying out a "celebration of Kwanzaa," or about his make-   
   believe Africanism. Let me supply some of the information that   
   Prentice Hall has hidden:   
      
   Kwanzaa is supposed to be celebrated from 26 December through 1   
   January: It competes with Christmas and Chanukah while   
   incorporating some echoes of both, e.g., gift-giving and a   
   ceremony built around a seven-holed candle-holder that recalls   
   Judaism's seven-branched menorah.   
      
   Karenga has concocted some bits of lore, lingo, and mumbo-jumbo   
   that are intended to make Kwanzaa look like something out of   
   Africa instead of something from Los Angeles County, but his   
   efforts have been feeble. If you scan The Official Kwanzaa Web   
   Site [see note 1, below], you'll read that the origins of   
   Kwanzaa lie in "the first harvest celebrations of Africa," which   
   allegedly "are recorded in African history as far back as   
   ancient Egypt and Nubia" -- but there is no explanation of why   
   any ancient Egyptians or Nubians might have held harvest   
   festivals around the time of the winter solstice, and there is   
   no identification of the crops that they harvested. Karenga's   
   formula for celebrating Kwanzaa requires the use of two ears of   
   maize -- but maize is a New World plant, and it wasn't known at   
   all in ancient Africa.   
      
   True believers can purchase ears of maize and other Kwanzaa   
   equipment (e.g., candles and seven-holed candle-holders and   
   straw mats) from the University of Sankore Press, a company in   
   Los Angeles. This outfit evidently is controlled by Us and   
   serves as Us's marketing unit. It isn't a university press, and   
   its name is a mockery. The so-called University of Sankore was   
   an aggregation of Islamic schools that flourished at Timbuktu in   
   the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. No University of Sankore   
   exists today.   
      
   In Karenga's Kwanzaa-lingo, ears of maize are called by the   
   Swahili name "muhindi." In fact, all the objects that Karenga   
   has worked into Kwanzaa have names taken from Swahili, which The   
   Official Kwanzaa Web site describes as "a Pan-African language"   
   and "the most widely spoken African language." The labeling of   
   Swahili as a "Pan-African" language is rubbish. Swahili -- a   
   Bantu tongue that includes many words absorbed from Arabic, from   
   Persian and from certain Indian languages -- is spoken by some   
   50 million people (i.e., about 7% of Africa's population). Most   
   of those Swahili-speakers are concentrated in eastern Africa, in   
   a region that includes Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and a strip of   
   Zaire. The language which is used most widely in Africa is   
   Arabic; and indeed, Swahili was originally written in Arabic   
   script [note 2].   
      
   Kwanzaa is a hoax -- a hoax built around fake history and   
   pseudohistorical delusions. By attempting to dignify and promote   
   Kwanzaa in The American Nation, Prentice Hall has joined in a   
   flim-flam.   
      
   Notes   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)