XPost: alt.culture.african.american.business, ucb.politics, soc.culture.african   
   XPost: alt.politics.religion   
   From: dcook@jmb.com   
      
   It's that time of year again. You know what time I mean - the   
   time when the media promote that fake holiday created by a   
   crazed california felon who wanted to create racial discord.   
   That's right - Kwanzaa.   
      
   Do a news search and you'll find hundreds of articles about   
   wonderful Kwanzaa celebrations held all over America. Good luck   
   finding a single one that mentions the sorry fact that the   
   holiday's creator was imprisoned for torturing a couple of   
   African-American women.   
      
   You'll have to go here to my original article on Kwanzaa to find   
   that. The article originally ran in FrontPage Magazine back in   
   1998. It's easily found on the Internet by any journalist   
   willing to do the tiniest bit of research into Kwanzaa. I like   
   to run it this time every year as a corrective to all of the   
   dreadful journalism that occurs in every report of Kwanzaa.   
   If the media told the truth about Kwanzaa in these articles,   
   then every right-thinking American would realize it's a fraud.   
   Instead we get the same silly endorsement of this "African"   
   feast that has nothing to do with Africa and everything to do   
   with California in the 1960s.   
      
   If you don't have the time to read that long expose then you can   
   read the column I wrote on the subject back in 1998. Here it is   
   in full:   
      
   One of my alert readers called me the other day to inform me   
   that the public schools in New Jersey aren't allowed to   
   celebrate Christmas but are celebrating Kwanzaa.   
   This is intriguing. Christmas celebrates the legacy of Christ   
   who, by all accounts, was a nonviolent man who believed that   
   people of all types could learn to live in peace. Kwanzaa   
   celebrates the legacy of an extremely violent man from   
   California who has dedicated his life to spreading dissension   
   among the races.   
      
   More on that later. First let's deal with the question of why   
   schools can propagate a belief in Kwanzaa but not Christmas or   
   Chanukah. For an answer, I called Ed Martone of the American   
   Civil Liberties Union.   
      
   ''Kwanzaa isn't a religious holiday," said Martone. "It's a   
   cultural holiday. It doesn't have the same restrictions as   
   Chanukah or Christmas."   
      
   I'll grant that there is a certain logic to the view. After all,   
   once the government gets involved in religion, the potential   
   conflicts among Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims and   
   atheists are so complex that perhaps we are better off avoiding   
   them altogether.   
      
   But by that same logic, the public schools should not be pushing   
   certain cultural practices. And the schools especially shouldn't   
   be endorsing cultural practices created by a character with the   
   beliefs and the background of Ron Karenga.   
      
   It is not easy to get a hold of the facts about the background   
   of the creator of Kwanzaa. In fact, it is nearly impossible. The   
   history of the founder of Kwanzaa has disappeared into an   
   Orwellian time warp. If you look up the name "Ron Karenga" on   
   any of the many newspaper data bases that are available these   
   days, you will read a glowing account of a deep-thinking   
   philosopher who comes across as a sort of jolly Father Christmas   
   for African-Americans.   
      
   You won't find any reference to murder or torture. Yet murder   
   was a specialty of US, the paramilitary organization that   
   Karenga ran in Los Angeles in the late 1960s.   
      
   As for torture, Karenga took that more personally. The accounts   
   of his personal role in a particularly sadistic episode of   
   brutality have been largely lost to history. The episode seems   
   to exist only on a few microfilmed pages of the Los Angeles   
   Times. It took two days of research and phone calls to track   
   them down. Here is an excerpt from an article headlined "Woman   
   describes two days of torture" on the May 1971 trial of Karenga   
   for torturing two dissident members of his group:   
      
   ''Deborah Jones, who once was given the Swahili 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."   
      
   Karenga was convicted and served more than three years in a   
   state prison.   
      
   This was not an isolated incident. In 1967, Karenga was accused   
   of having his thugs beat up a student who asked him an   
   impertinent question at a college forum. In 1969, US got   
   involved in a struggle with the Black Panthers for control of   
   the black studies program at UCLA. All involved carried guns on   
   campus. The US guys were quicker on the draw; they killed two   
   Panthers in a shootout at the student center.   
      
   It would be nice to say that after Karenga got out of jail in   
   1975 he repented, saw the error of his ways and invented Kwanzaa   
   as a means of atoning for his past. Nice, but untrue. Karenga   
   has never atoned for his thuggery, probably because no one ever   
   asked him to. And his sole concession to repentance was his 1975   
   conversion to Marxism. For him, this was considered to be a sign   
   that he had moderated his views.   
      
   Karenga invented Kwanzaa at the height of his gang days, in   
   1966. And he made it up not to bring peace among the races but   
   to divide them. That's why he placed this alleged "harvest   
   festival" in competition with Christmas, which he derided   
   because of its ties to the hated capitalist system.   
      
   It may be true that Kwanzaa has evolved into a ceremony that has   
   importance to a great number of well-intentioned people, people   
   who have no knowledge of its creator's questionable history. But   
   Karenga himself continues to champion the holiday as an example   
   of what he terms "cultural nationalism." This is the view that   
   black people are a separate "nation" within a hostile country.   
   During a visit to Newark in 1987, Karenga defined America as "an   
   insane, socially decaying society." "We need a value system and   
   a support system . . . because the world is organized against   
   your Africanism," he told Newark residents.   
      
   Karenga remains a leading spokesman for the multicultural   
   movement, a movement based on the idea that Americans should   
   emphasize their differences rather than their similarities. The   
   idea of Kwanzaa fits firmly within multiculturalism. And however   
   you feel about multiculturalism, you must admit that it is a   
   political movement and therefore one that should not be   
   supported with tax dollars.   
      
   As for Karenga himself, he should be given all the respect due a   
   convicted torturer. Call me an old fuddy-duddy, but I believe   
   that once a man inserts a hot soldering iron into a woman's   
   mouth, he should be excluded from public discourse for eternity.   
   I may be wrong, however. Certainly, the people in California   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)