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What Kwanzaa means to black Americans
On December 26, millions across the African community in the world will begin the week-long Kwanzaa celebrations. There will be daily ceremonies with food, decorations and other cultural objects, such as the kinara, which holds seven candles. In many Kwanzaa ceremonies, there is also African percussion and dancing. It is a time for community self-assertion – when famous black heroes and heroines, as well as deceased family members – are celebrated. As a scholar who wrote about racially motivated violence against blacks, ran black cultural centers on university campuses and sponsored numerous Kwanzaa celebrations, I understand the importance of this holiday. For the African American community, Kwanzaa is not just any “black holiday. ”It is an acknowledgment that black history is worth knowing. History of KwanzaaMaulana Karenga, a noted black American activist and scholar created Kwanzaa in 1966. Its name is derived from the phrase “matunda ya kwanza” which means “first fruits” in Swahili, the most widely spoken African language. However, Kwanzaa, the holiday, did not exist in Africa. Each day of Kwanzaa is dedicated to the celebration of the seven basic values of African culture or the “Nguzo Saba” which in Swahili means the seven principles. Translated: unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economy (building black businesses), purpose, creativity and faith. A candle is lit each day to celebrate each of these principles. On the last day, a black candle is lit and gifts are shared. Today, Kwanzaa is quite popular. It is widely celebrated on university campuses, the United States Post Office issues Kwanzaa stamps, there is at least one municipal park named after him and there are special Kwanzaa commemorative cards. The meaning of Kwanzaa for the black community Kwanzaa was created by Karenga from the turbulent times of the 1960s in Los Angeles, after Watts’ disturbances in 1965, when a young African American was stopped on suspicion of drunk driving, resulting in a outbreak of violence. Later, Karenga founded an organization called Us – that is, black people – that promoted black culture. The organization’s goal was to provide a platform that would help rebuild the Watts neighborhood through a strong organization rooted in African culture. Karenga called his creation an act of cultural discovery, which simply meant that he wished to provide African Americans with greater knowledge of their African heritage and past. Rooted in the struggles and conquests of civil rights and black power movements of the 1950s and 1960s, it was a way of defining a unique black American identity. As Keith A. Mayes, a scholar of African American history, notes in his book,> “For black power activists, Kwanzaa was as important as the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Kwanzaa was their response to what they understood as omnipresence of white cultural practices that oppressed them as completely as Jim Crow’s laws. ”Reversing the definitions of whites Today, the holiday has come to occupy a central role, not only in the United States, but also in the global African diaspora. A 2008 documentary, “The Black Candle” that filmed Kwanzaa’s observances in the United States and Europe, shows children not only in the United States, but in distant places like France, reciting the principles of Nguzo Saba. It brings the black community together not based on their religious faith, but on a shared cultural heritage. Explaining the importance of the holiday to African Americans today, writer Amiri Baraka said during an interview in the documentary,> “We saw Kwanzaa as part of the struggle to overthrow whites’ definitions for our lives.” In fact, from the early years of the holiday, to this day, Kwanzaa has provided many black families with tools to educate their children about their African heritage. Current activism and Kwanzaa This spirit of activism and pride in the African heritage is evident in Kwanzaa celebrations on the college campus – one of which I participated recently. (This was done a few days earlier so that vacationing students could participate.) The speaker, a veteran of the Nashville civil rights movement, spoke about Kwanzaa as a time of memory and celebration. Using an African dashiki, he guided those present – black and white and from other ethnicities – into Kwanzaa songs and recitations. On a table decorated with kente fabric, traditional African fabric, was a kinara, which contains seven holes, to correspond to the Seven Principles of Kwanzaa. There were three red candles on the left side of the kinara and three green candles on the right side of the kinara. The center candle was black. The colors of the candles represent the red, black and green of the African Liberation flag. The auditorium was packed. Those present, young and old, black and white, held hands and chanted slogans celebrating black heroes and heroines, as diverse as civil rights icons Rosa Parks and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Jamaican musician Bob Marley . It was a cultural observance that recognized solidarity with the struggles of the past and with each other. Like black power movements, like today’s Black Lives Matter movement, it is an affirmation of “black humanity”, its “contributions to this society” and “resilience in the face of deadly oppression”. Karenga wanted to “reaffirm the ties between us” (blacks) and to counter the damage of the “slavery holocaust”. Kwanzaa celebrations are a moment of awareness and reflection. This article is republished from The Conversation, a news site without for-profit dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts Read more: * Christmas is a special time in motherhood But not everything is ornaments and pies * An archaeological dig in Israel provides clues as to how the banquet became an important ritual * The real thing Hanukkah’s meaning is about Jewish survival Frank Dobson does not work for, consult, own shares or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article and has not disclosed relevant affiliations beyond his academic appointment.