Wednesday, December 1, 2010

I have my doubts about Kwanzaa.

I really have a hard time respecting it because it strikes me as segregationist.

The upcoming season is full of religious holidays, including Christmas, Hanukkah and Ramdan. These are reliigious holidays that seem to bring people together. All three of the three religions of Abraham have holidays about this time of year and even though Islam seems to be pretty beaten up in this country because of a handful of fundamentalist idiots, let's give the benefit of the doubt here and give the religion credit for upholding decency.

All three of these religions have members of all races. There are Christians, Jews and Musllims of every race and color. Malcolm X discovered that there were blue-eyed, blond haired white Muslims when he made his pilgrimage to Mecca. In fact, when he returned and began spreading the word he saw it wound up costing him his life.

All three religions have a tendency to try and bring people together. People of all races are encouraged to join in on whatever festivities and rites go on during this season by all of the religions of Abraham.

Kwanzaa doesn't strike me as being that way.

It goes back to about 1966 with Black nationalist roots and is a race based celebration and to me that seems pretty self segregating and is against all of what I raised quarters for as a kid. I was doing this to fight the segregationist policies that were in out country at the time. I was fighting for basic civil rights of a race.

My hopes at the time were that the part of the race that was being denied their civil rights at the time would grow to become another national source of good self sufficient members of American culture. I guess for the most part the dream has come far. There are a whole lot of Blacks out there that wake up, go to work and produce to make the country a better place to live. They attend schools, get jobs, raise families and go about the business of being good Americans.

Yet there are a group of the Black race that want to revert back to the segregationist policies with the spin that now they have their rights and they still want to stay somewhat seperate.


Over the ears I have been invited to celebrate with a lot of religions, but you can bet your duff I probably won't be invite to celebrate Kwanzaa because of my race.This doesn't make sense to me and I am certainly not going to celebrate a holiday that plays race into it and segregates a group from another along racial lines.

Got a problem with that?

Remember where I am keeping my mistletoe this Christmas season.

You got it, it's clipped to my shirt tail.

Then again, I might just be wrong. If that is truly the case, than acept my apology. Sometimes I am wrong, but I doubt I am about this.


my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

3 comments:

  1. Well Mr. Pic, I am a college student of Norwegian decent (read: blonde hair, blue eyed whitwe guy) attending school in North Dakota. There is not a lot of ethnic diversity in this part of the country but I have made some good friendships with some of the few black students. Most of
    them know nothing of Kwanzaa. They seem to perceive it as a hokey, made-up holiday.

    The fact that it's a "african american only" holiday doesn't stop me from celebrating however. Every year I host a kwanzaa party that is well attended. I make my famous pulled pork sandwiches and serve them with the finest of malt liquors. My black friends are the most enthusiastic attendees,they really enjoy making a mockery of a made up holiday that some misguided individuals attempt to take very seriously. Getting people of different backgrounds together to enjoy some BBQ and a few adult beverages and laugh and have a good time completely undermines the separatist nature of the actual holiday. Rather then celebrate how different we are and try to make us more different, I enjoy bringing people together. Everyone loves pulled pork and beer.

    You should try hosting your own kwanzaa party, I imagine it would be a smashing success

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  2. I know a lot of black folk and none of them celebrate kwanzaa.

    If it can be used as an excuse to eat fried chicken and collards with my darkie friends, count me in.

    MC4H

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  3. Pretty sure Ramadan allready took place. A good whle ago too.

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