XPost: alt.culture.african.american.business, ucb.politics, soc.culture.african   
   XPost: alt.politics.religion   
   From: dcook@jmb.com   
      
   Kwanzaa, the purported “African” holiday celebrated only in the   
   United States, is the ultimate politically correct holiday. It   
   is little observed, even by our African American community, of   
   course, but those that do celebrate it are wholly unaware that   
   the faux holiday was created by a man with a very troubled past.   
   For Kwanzaa’s creator, Maulana Karenga, has a violent criminal   
   record, is a racist, and even a rapist.   
      
   Each year, with the onset of Christmas, we are treated to   
   another gauzy, fluff piece about how great Kwanzaa is by yet   
   another PC spewing columnist. This year, among many others, we   
   find aggrandizement such as that in The Telegraph from Macon,   
   Georgia with, “Annual Kwanzaa celebrations highlight arts,   
   community and history,” and the Dallas Morning News with its   
   titled,”Look forward to Kwanzaa celebrations with storytelling,   
   music and more.” We even find such helpful sites as   
   TeacherPlanet.com’s, “Kwanzaa Resources for Teachers.” Yes, the   
   world is filled with celebratory lionization of Kwanzaa.   
      
   Several years ago, the Houston Chronicle got in the act with a   
   piece by Leslie Casimir titled “Learning about Kwanzaa from the   
   holiday’s creator.” This one, though, was a bit off the usual   
   track of the how-great-is-Kwanzaa theme because this particular   
   piece celebrated the inventor of the faux holiday, Maulana   
   Karenga, himself. So, instead of merely celebrating the   
   manufactured holiday, Casimir amazingly made a hero of the   
   rapist, race monger and violent thug who created it! To Casimir,   
   Kwanzaa creator “Maulana Karenga” was a hero.   
      
   To further the story about how wonderful Karenga was, Casimir   
   also found a gullible parent who, with kid in tow, went to see   
   the great man at a local community center.   
      
   Thomasine Johnson needed to get the record straight about   
   Kwanzaa, a cultural holiday steeped in African traditions that   
   celebrates family, ethnic pride and community.   
      
   With her 11-year-old grandson in tow, the Missouri City interior   
   designer on Saturday brought her video camera to S.H.A.P.E.   
   community center to hear from Father Kwanzaa “Maulana Karenga”   
   in the flesh.”   
      
   But just like the manufactured holiday he invented out of whole   
   cloth, this “Maulana Karenga” is also a false front created out   
   of fluff and nonsense. As it happens his real name is not   
   “Maulana Karenga,” but is instead Ronald McKinley Everett, AKA   
   Maulana Ron Karenga, AKA Maulana Karenga. We’ll soon see that   
   subterfuge, reinvention and smoke-and-mirrors are Karenga’s   
   stock in trade.   
      
   In her piece, Casimir gave us her version of the history of this   
   “holiday.” And the artifice has but a short history, at that.   
      
   Created in 1966 by Karenga, a professor of black studies at   
   California State University at Long Beach, Kwanzaa was born out   
   of the black freedom movement of the 1960s, when the Watts riots   
   rocked Los Angeles. It starts the day after Christmas and ends   
   on the first day of the new year.   
      
   Interestingly, Casimir employed the euphemism “black freedom   
   movement” to describe the ideology of the group that Ronald   
   McKinley Everett “Karenga” belonged to when he created Kwanzaa.   
   In the 60s, Karenga was in an organization called US (as in “us”   
   — blacks — against “them” — whites). US was a black power   
   militant group that he founded, one that frequently clashed in   
   violence with police and even other black power groups. Members   
   of his group even killed two Black Panthers in 1969.   
      
   Yes, kindly professor Maulana Karenga, the murder-touting,   
   segregationist, racist. What a role model for the kiddies he is,   
   eh?   
      
   Casimir seemed not to understand why people would doubt this   
   man, though.   
      
   Still, many people don’t know much about Kwanzaa or the elusive   
   Karenga, who shuns giving interviews to the mainstream press.   
      
   Well, it’s not surprising that he doesn’t want to give too many   
   interviews what with his record as a violent felon and sexual   
   criminal. And Karenga has a long criminal record. In 1971, for   
   instance, Everett served time in jail for assault. By then   
   Everett had changed his name to Maulana Ron Karenga and began to   
   affect a pseudo African costume and act the part of a native   
   African — even though he had been born in the USA.   
      
   It wasn’t mere assault Karenga was convicted of, either. It was   
   the sexual assault and even torture that he perpetrated against   
   some of his own female followers. At the time, The L.A. Times   
   reported that he placed a hot soldering iron in one woman’s   
   mouth and used a vise to crush another’s toe, of all things.   
      
   As writer Lynn Woolley wrote of Professor Karenga:   
      
   And so this is Kwanzaa. The militant past of the creator is now   
   ignored in favor of the so-called seven principles of Nguza   
   Saba, principles such as unity, family and self-determination   
   that could have come from Bill Bennett’s Book of Virtues. The   
   word “Kwanzaa” is Swahili, meaning something like “fresh fruits   
   of harvest.”   
      
   No one remembers the part about “re-Africanization” or the   
   sevenfold path of blackness that Dr. Karenga once espoused.   
   Hardly anyone remembers the shootings, the beatings, the   
   tortures and the prison terms that were once the center of his   
   life. It’s just not PC to bring that sort of stuff up now that   
   Kwanzaa is commercialized and making big bucks.   
      
   But, Casimir offers us Karenga’s prattle anyway, treating it as   
   the advice of a sage:   
      
   “As part of the black freedom movement, we were using this to   
   return to our history and culture,” Karenga said.   
      
   He spoke to a crowd of about 100 people ” young and old ” at the   
   Third Ward community center, headed by Deloyd Parker, an avid   
   promoter of Kwanzaa’s Afrocentric traditions and beliefs.   
      
   “We have to wake up that history, we have to remember ourselves   
   in a more expansive way,” Karenga said. “To liberate ourselves   
   as ghetto dwellers.”   
      
   In a day when the black middle class numbers in the millions and   
   when more whites than blacks voted for a black man for   
   president, for “Karenga” to claim that blacks are still   
   relegated to the “ghettos” smacks of race baiting and trying to   
   “keep hope alive” so that he can continue to cause hatred   
   between whites and blacks. And each year the Old Media is all   
   too happy to assist him in his faux “holiday” endeavor.   
      
   Happy Kwanzaa, indeed!   
      
   But maybe not everyone is fooled by a faux holiday created by a   
   criminal? Last year, for instance, Kalamazoo, Michigan decided   
   to dispense with its public Kwanzaa celebration. In fact, few   
   cities worry over much about this holiday these days, though   
   some still do.   
      
   Even some African Americans are not fooled into accepting   
   Kwanzaa. As Jenice Armstrong from Philadelphia wrote in 2010,   
   the “truth is that Kwanzaa has never caught on with the majority   
   of black Americans.”   
      
   Of course if it wasn’t for an Old Media establishment that has   
   given Karenga’s criminality a wholesale whitewashing, this faux   
   holiday could never have gained as little traction it has. Put   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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