OpinioNet Contributed Commentary

Frederick Meekins
Date:  January 24, 2002

Racial Revelry


Imagine, if you will, for a moment: a holiday established to celebrate White people simply for being White. During this celebration, White people sit around and ponder so-called "White values" and bask in the glorious accomplishments of White European civilization.

Most Americans would think such chicanery had been cooked up by the Ku Klux Klan, and rightfully so. Yet, Kwanzaa is spreading across the United States in the Black community and few dare raise concerns as to the issues of equality such a race-specific holiday poses.

As alluded to in the opening comments, if a Caucasian counterpart to Kwanza existed, it would be deemed patently racist. And if American culture is to live up to the standards of equality, Kwanza must be labeled as such also.

Justification for this assertion is readily available in light of the statements made by a number of the holiday’s supporters in the December 27, 2001 edition of the suburban Maryland Gazette. The individual organizing Kwanza activities at the Hillcrest Heights Community Center fondly told the Gazette, "...black folks always had a togetherness."

When White folks tend to congregate with one another, we are at best chastised as to why we ought expand our ethnic consciousness or at worst face the business end of a lawsuit. Yet there is more wrong with Kwanza than the ritualification of the human tendency to gravitate to others of your own flavor. Its errors begin at the level of ethical philosophy and extend downward towards its methods of cultural socialization.

One Largo, Maryland resident told the Gazette, "We have always had a need to connect to our heritage as Africans living in America." Such blatant anti-Americanism cannot simply be dismissed as the ramblings of a raving street lunatic. This attitude climbs straight to the top of Kwanza’s ladder of leadership.

Dr. Maulana Karenga, the festival’s organizer, told the Gazette, "I created Kwanza ... to reaffirm our rootedness in African culture and the fact that as Africans we come together to reenforce the bonds between us as a world African community. And to celebrate the meaning and beauty of being African in the world..."

Some Germans use to have their own movement through which they sought to unify Germans around the world for the sake of there Germaness. It was known as the Nazi Party.

Don’t dismiss this as a stretched analogy. The sentiments expressed by National Socialism and the vaunted principles of Kwanza already share a startling similarity.

Two of Kwanza’s days center around the concepts of collective responsibility and cooperative economics, two notions embraced by all forms of socialism inimical to free people everywhere. For example, collective responsibility implies one bears guilt for the transgressions of others, allowing lowlifes to get off scott-free since it’s everybody’s fault but their own; cooperative economics essentially means I am entitled to what you’ve got even if I refuse to lift a single finger in pursuit of earning my own livelihood.

Granted, Kwanzaists have not yet cut the same swath of death, destruction, and mayhem as parallel revolutionary movements. But as the quicksand through which the initially unsuspecting are swept into the radical perspective of Black nationalism, this festival is now laying a foundation that could justify the abridgement of generally accepted notions of equality and principles pertaining to the rule of law. The propensity for this is already there.

Dr. Karenga is himself quite a piece of work in this regard. After devising Kwanza, this academic persued more idiosyncratic recreational pursuits. According to WorldNetDaily, Karenga was convicted of torturing two women by stripping them naked, beating them with an electrical chord and a karate baton, and pouring detergent down their throats. Even if the rumors of Jefferson’s affair with Sally Hemmings were true, I am sure the widowed third President treated her with a gentleness lacking in the character of this degenerate heralded by pluralists everywhere.

This tendency among Black nationalists to trod asunder innate liberties and traditional social institutions is evident in the purported African axiom highlighted in the Gazette article, "that all children in the community belong to everyone and that every adult should take responsibility for children [Hillary’s hootenanny that it takes a village]." In other words, your progeny do not belong to you and the authorities able to step in whenever your values and presuppositions run counter to communal writ, the Biblical conception of the family tossed by the wayside in the process.

The purpose of Kwanza, is after all, to erode support for Christian beliefs and principles within the Black community. The Assistant Director of the African American Cultural Center told the Washington Post, "It’s inclusive enough to be celebrated by many faith communities. And it continues to bring people together on the common ground of their Africaness." This means many Black congregations are being sold out to Islam.

Already Louis Farrakhan’s cronies blacklist Black pastors who refuse to play ecclesiastical ball with his wacky Islamic sect. And several years ago, CBN News aired footage of Farrakhan exegeting a number of Biblical passages as to how he himself fulfilled a number of prophecies pertaining to the Messiah.

Anyone who says it’s not Kwanaza’s purpose to undermine Christianity and replace it by enshrining "Blackness" as the highest ideal don’t know what they are talking about. Already a number of Afrocentric agitators have abandoned Christmas in favor of an exclusively Kwanza-based holiday season. These militants claim they prefer the collectivism of this competing celebration so they do not have to endorse capitalism, rather exchanging books instead of traditional Yuletide gifts. Bet you though they won’t be reading enlightening tomes by keen Black thinkers such as Alan Keyes, Walter Williams, Larry Elder, or Thomas Sowell.

The horror and tragedy of September 11th will forever stand as the price for allowing alien philosophies hostile to the United States to trample across our land without question or criticism. Now is the time for each American --- regardless of color --- to decide for themselves whether they will embrace the ideals of Western Judeo-Christian civilization upon which this country is based or those whose sole purpose is to undermine this great nation.

Frederick Meekins


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Copyright © 2002 by Frederick B. Meekins .
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-Published with permission

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