The Kwanzaa Scam

Kwanzaa, the purported “African” holiday celebrated only in the United States, is the ultimate politically correct holiday. It is little observed, even by our own African American community, of course, but those that do celebrate it are wholly unaware that this faux holiday was created by a man with a very troubled past. For Kwanzaa’s creator, Maulana Karenga, has a violent, racist criminal record, and is even a rapist who was convicted of torturing his victims.

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. In one article last year the world was treated to 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.” And this year we got the happy talk from Michigan with Celebrate Kwanzaa with the community. Yes, the world is filled with celebratory lionization of Kwanzaa.

But about a half dozen 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 different than the usual 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?

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The Kwanzaa Scam: A Fake Holiday Created by a Racist, Rapist and Torturer « Publius Forum