Posted on 12/26/2014 1:38:40 PM PST by Steelfish
After So Many Black Lives Lost, We Need Kwanzaa More Than Ever This Year Michael W Twitty
We can celebrate unity by standing with people all across the world united in support of the idea that #BlackLivesMatter. We should make the principles of Kwanzaa our own. Photograph: rashidasimmons / flickr via Creative Commons 26 December 2014
Only a small portion of the African American population actually celebrates Kwanzaa: its reception in other parts of the African diaspora has been lukewarm at best, and its success has largely depended on just how devoted celebrants have been to the popularity of black cultural and political movements. But today, amidst violence against us, amidst protests and calls for the black community to “get it together”, I can’t help but think that the cure was sent before the sickness.
We are living in what North Carolina civil rights leader Rev William Barber II calls “the third Reconstruction”: a time when our voting rights are being challenged, the over-policing of communities of color has led to increased incidences of police brutality and a swelling of the prison industrial complex, when policies meant to even the playing fields are being eroded, and the notion of a “post-racial America” (in which all historical handicaps supposedly vanished after the election and re-election of Barack Obama) has been completely demolished. Add to this the many debates over cultural appropriation from food to music – and the prevalence of a double standard in which individual black people are expected to answer for the actions of all black people when white people are not – and it becomes clear:
We need Kwanzaa more than ever.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
What exactly is a “black life”?
I mean, as opposed to a human life.
Kwanzaa is a fabrication of the communist mind. That’s all.
Try Christianity. It got you through slavery and Jim Crow. When you guys abandoned it, that’s when your real troubles began.
Why not go back to Africa, since they miss it so much. There are planes leaving every day. Of course, the free EBT cards and rent and medical care would stop, but think how great it would be if Blacks were in charge of everything. Bliss.
An imaginary holiday conjured up by an ex-con.
Kwanzaa is a made up Holiday which I decline to observe. I don’t go out of may way to put people down who do observe it, as they usually are not approaching me for my opinion.
In this Bay Area, near S.F., one time I make sure I’m not driving late is Cinco de Mayo. Too many bad drivers going about on that night. Barachos y u poco enojado tambien. (Drunk, and a little bit angry too).
eBay actually has a ‘Happy Kwanzaa’ greeting on their home page...the only place I have seen it mentioned all day.
But,but,how can you argue with its logic? You see, the way to reduce the excessive violence and (black on black) murder in majority black neighborhoods is to “underpolice” them. What could possibly be wrong with that logic?
Alright well, Happy Kwanzaa. What is it to me?
Pointless inanities are precisely that; of no use to anyone!! Precisely what of socio-cultural value has been engendered through application of the “philosophy” of Kwanzaa?
To be fair, the Bible was also bastardized to justify slavery.
What are you talking about? Christianity got African-Americans through slavery, Jim Crow and assorted troubles during their hard times. I don’t care if the bible has conflicting opinions on slavery; blacks took the whole of it as their gospel in America and it sustained them for 200 years.
I've brought gifts....
Yeh....the doofus who created it was in my old hometown. They make a big thing of it for the little kids...playing games with their minds....pretty rotten if you ask me.
Wasn’t it some communist from Palo Alto who invented this nonsense?
I’ve seen less buzz about Kwanzaa this year, hopefully it will go away soon.
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