Houston Chron Honors Kwanzaa Creator, A Rapist and Torturer

Newsbusters.org ^ | 12/12/07 | Warner Todd Huston

[Mobile Vulgus]

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 newspaper columnist. This year, among many others, the Houston Chronicle gets in the act with a piece by Leslie Casimir titled "Learning about Kwanzaa from the holiday's creator." This one, though, is a bit off the usual track of the how-great-Kwanzaa-is theme because this particular piece celebrates the inventor of the faux holiday, Maulana Karenga, himself. So, we've gone from merely celebrating this manufactured holiday to making a hero of the rapist, race monger and a violent thug who created it! Amazing.

Casimir is all a glow about how wonderful Maulana Karenga is and her column follows a gullible parent who, with kid in toe, went to see the 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.

It turns out, though, that his real name is not "Maulana Karenga," but Ronald McKinley Everett, AKA Maulana Ron Karenga. We'll soon see that subterfuge, reinvention and smoke is "Karenga's" stock in trade, it seems.

Casimir gives us her version of the history of this "holiday," and a short history it is indeed.

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.

I love how Casimir employs the euphemism "black freedom movement" for the group that Ronald McKinley Everett "Karenga" was in when he created Kwanzaa. In the 60s, "Karenga" was in an organization called US (as in "us"--blacks--against "them" --whites), a black power militant group that he founded, that frequently clashed in violence with police and even other black power groups. Members of his group even killed two Black Panthers in 1969.

Sounds like they really cared about "freedom," eh?

Yes, kindly professor Maulana Karenga. What a great guy.

Casimir seems 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 disgusting record as a violent felon and sexual criminal and all. Karenga, as it happens, has a long criminal record, indeed. In 1971 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.

It wasn't mere assault he was convicted of, either. It was sexual assault and torture perpetrated against some of his female followers. The L.A. Times then reported that he placed a hot soldering iron in one woman's mouth and used a vise to crush another's toe.

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 gives us his prattle anyway, treating it as the advice of the sages:

"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 are interested in voting for a black man for president, for "Karenga" to claim that blacks are still relegated to the "ghettos" smacks of his race baiting and trying to "keep hope alive" that he can cause hatred between whites and blacks.

And the Houston Chronicle seems all too happy to assist him in that "holiday" endeavor.

Happy Kwanzaa, indeed!

See more at Newsbusters.org

[Mobile Vulgus]

Why is it that Dems only want to celebrate criminals?

[AU72]

It's that time of year again.

Makes me want to get my Festivus Pole early.

[JRios1968]

[KarlInOhio]

I’ve got my electric cord, vice and soldering iron all ready for my Kwanzaa celebration.

[logic]

Why is it that Dems only want to celebrate criminals?

I do hope that was a rhetorical question!!!

Please do not ask me to venture inside the mind of a liberal!!!!!

I just ate!!!

I value my (relative) sanity!!!

How many more excuses do I need???

[Minuteman23]

They don’t even celebrate Kwanzaa is Sourth Africa. It’s just an invention to create a diversion from the celebration of Christmas. I actually hear it mentioned less and less each year. Must infuriate the creators and their followers.

[RedRightReturn]

Don’t forget Draino, Ronnie likes the Draino....

[Westlander]

The month before a weeks worth of ‘celebration’ started in my parts last month. Then we have the actual week. Following that then comes a month of Kwanzaa remembered. And to top it off comes preparing for the next Kwanzaa, which lasts another month.

3 months of MSM garbage.

[Bob]

...in an organization called US (as in "us"--blacks--against "them" --whites),...

That's not quite correct on the meaning of "US". It's the abbreviation for the group United Slaves which was founded by Karenga.

Alluding to the black nationalist United Slaves and Maulana Karenga, Black Panther Fred Hampton said, "[P]olitical power does not flow from the sleeve of a dashiki; political power flows from the barrel of a gun." ("Political power flows from the barrel of a gun" is an early quote by Mao Tse-Tung.)

Infoshop wiki article

[Fiji Hill]

Interestingly, Kwanzaa terminology is from Swahili, a language spoken in East Africa—a region from which few African Americans can claim ancestry.

[NCC-1701]

"...celebrating this manufactured holiday to making a hero of the rapist, race monger and a violent thug who created it! Amazing..."


The same can be said about mohhamed, except mohamhead didn't create any holidays.

[ontap]

Ah Yes! Festivus for the rest of us! Warms the cockles of my heart.

[Fiji Hill]

Alluding to the black nationalist United Slaves and Maulana Karenga, Black Panther Fred Hampton said, "[P]olitical power does not flow from the sleeve of a dashiki; political power flows from the barrel of a gun." ("Political power flows from the barrel of a gun" is an early quote by Mao Tse-Tung.)

They certainly practiced what they preached. In 1969, a group of Panthers and United Slaves got into a brawl at UCLA, which escalated into a shoot-out that left two Panthers dead. More information on that incident can be found here.

[Westlander]

http://www.weirdrepublic.com/episode27.jpg

http://www.weirdrepublic.com/episode27.htm

[mkjessup]

The month before a weeks worth of ‘celebration’ started in my parts last month.

That sounds serious. Have you been to a doctor? ;)

[Bogtrotter52]

“Why is it that Dems only want to celebrate criminals?”

Try finding a republican politician who will NOT pay tribute to this made up holiday either on their own or when pushed to do so.

[BnBlFlag]

The Houston Chronicle is a chain owned Leftist Rag that is operated by Homosexual oriented individuals who have ran a once good Conservative newspaper into the ground.
When the Chronocle was locally owned, it was fine. Being the only paper in the Country’s 4th largest city it should be booming but their circulation has been declining nicely for quite some time.

[LiteKeeper]

And why is it the Dems continue to promote a Fraud!

[EveningStar]

Has this article been pulled from the NewsBusters site? I can’t find it there.

[-=SoylentSquirrel=-]