The Kwanzaa Absurdity Will Be Dwarfed by Juneteenth

Eight of the 10 blacks who actually celebrate Kwanzaa.

1,401 words

Public officials still pretend Kwanzaa is a real holiday. It’s taught to schoolchildren as one of the holidays of the “holiday” season, even though nobody knows anyone who actually celebrates it. It’s a day we’re all forced to pretend that being black is a religion, just like Christianity and Judaism.

Prominent personalities love to tweet out their appreciation for the fake holiday. Some of the worst examples this year came from Vice President Kamala Harris, the College Republicans’ official feed, and NASCAR.

Harris insisted that her family celebrated Kwanzaa while she was growing up and that her “elders” shared their Kwanzaa stories over the holiday meal:

My favorite principle is the second: Kujichagulia (self-determination). This principle is about having the power to design your own life and determine your own future. It’s a deeply American principle. From our family to yours, happy Kwanzaa.

— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) December 27, 2021

The idea of Harris’ elders sharing stories of black empowerment at the Kwanzaa dinner is a bit strange. For one, Harris wasn’t raised by a black family, she was raised as a teenager by her Indian family in Canada. Her black father is Jamaican and he isn’t fond of his daughter pretending to be a typical African-American. Since both sides were immigrants, there were no elders to share their Kwanzaa experiences — and Kwanzaa was certainly not a real thing to any person not involved in Black Nationalism in the 1960s and ‘70s. It was only created by a radical of dubious ethics, Maulana Karenga, in 1966, so it’s highly unlikely that any Indian or Jamaican grandpa had much interest in it at the time. But we’re all supposed to believe this lie and pretend that an Indian family in Canada celebrated a Black Nationalist holiday in the 1970s. It’s not like anyone is gonna fact check this, anyway.

Harris can’t help but lie in all her public statements. This time, it’s one where she plays a role that’s definitely not suited for her. She is essentially an Indian woman who passed as black and managed to rise to the highest echelons of power thanks to her being the lone black woman the Democrats could trust with power. If she were authentic, she would talk more about her Indian heritage and stop pretending to enjoy Tupac. But Indians are not yet as big of a power bloc as blacks are in America, so she tries her best to pretend she’s black, and that involves her making up Kwanzaa stories from her childhood.

It still makes more sense for Kamala to pretend she cares about Kwanzaa than it does for the College Republicans and NASCAR to do the same. Both entities cater to overwhelmingly white audiences. Even the few blacks who may be involved in them are unlikely to celebrate the Black Nationalist holiday. Yet, both groups tweeted about Kwanzaa like it was another Christmas.

The College Republicans, which organizes tens of thousands of young conservatives on university campuses, tweeted this:

Wishing you a happy and prosperous Kwanza! pic.twitter.com/PaANsF7Itg

— College Republicans (@CRNC) December 26, 2021

The GOP usually gets less than 10% of the black vote in elections. (The College Republicans also forgot an A in “Kwanzaa.”) The post was rightfully mocked by most conservatives. One of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s last posts during her final week on Twitter eviscerated it, calling Kwanzaa a fake holiday made up by a lunatic. (Fact check: true. Kwanzaa was invented by a deranged Black Nationalist who was jailed for a slew of crimes in the 1970s.)

NASCAR’s tweet was even worse than the College Republicans’:

On the final day of Kwanzaa, we recognize the importance of its principles & symbolism of the black, red & green candles signifying the people, struggle & hope for the future.

We apologize for not accurately depicting this in a prior post & send warm wishes to all who celebrate. pic.twitter.com/Ect8gsFDGv

— NASCAR (@NASCAR) January 1, 2022

You can buy Greg Johnson’s It’s Okay to Be White here.

It pretends that its overwhelmingly white and conservative audience is observing the seven days of Kwanzaa and apologizes for getting some random factoid wrong that no one even paid any attention to. Who does NASCAR’s tweet even appeal to? There are hardly any blacks who watch stock car racing in the first place.

What all these tweets say is that America’s primary institutions are just going through the motions. If they’re told they have to pretend to celebrate a Black Nationalist meme holiday, they celebrate it. It’s just what modern-day branding requires. Nobody bothers to investigate whether this message is needed or not.

It’s likely that only a half-million Americans celebrate Kwanzaa, out of an estimated 42 million blacks in the US. Its style and “traditions” are out of step with modern black identity. It rips off Hanukkah to promote Black Nationalist principles that blacks don’t care about, and celebrates self-determination when blacks just want handouts and a superior moral status to whites. Kwanzaa adorns itself with Pan-African colors and themes, while blacks have largely moved beyond the symbolism of the old-style Black Nationalism. A simple Black Lives Matter flag now suffices.

Juneteenth will likely supplant Kwanzaa as the black holiday par excellence in this country, as it better conveys American blacks’ current priorities: encouraging white guilt and racial resentment instead of racial independence. The single principle of grievance is easier to understand than Kwanzaa’s seven mumbo-jumbo principles.

Kwanzaa is undoubtedly a funny holiday, however. Imagine the most autistic White Nationalist building a whites-only holiday around Yule that incorporated the cringiest aspects of the movement, and then the government declared it a real holiday. That’s Kwanzaa.

Just look at the seven principles:

Umoja

Umoja means unity in Swahili. Karenga defines this on his Kwanzaa website as: “To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation and race.”

Kujichagulia

Or self-determination. This principle refers to defining, naming, creating, and speaking for oneself.

Ujima

Translated as “collective work and responsibility,” ujima refers to uplifting your community.” To build and maintain our community together and make our brother’s and sister’s problems our problems and to solve them together,” Karenga writes.

Ujamaa

Cooperative economics. Similar to ujima, this principle refers to uplifting your community economically. “To build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to profit from them together,” he writes.

Nia

Nia means purpose. Karenga expands on this principle by writing, “To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.”

Kuumba

Meaning “creativity,” Karenga defines this principle as “To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.”

Imani

The final principle translates to “faith.” Karenga defines this as faith in community, writing, “To believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.

Not a single black person is actually familiar with these concepts. Just imagine if all white Americans were thought to celebrate a holiday whose principles came from Old Norse, but not a single white person knew them.

They would, of course, not allow us to have our own Kwanzaa in any case. Some on our side have thought that this is a good idea, but if it ever actually became a thing for us, it would just further marginalize us in the eyes of ordinary whites. It would never be taught in schools, and it would just make us look stranger and further apart from the rest of white America.

Black Nationalists can be as ridiculous as they want to because there is no social stigma attached to their ideology, and many blacks don’t mind its goofier aspects. Plus, every institution is compelled to celebrate it. Just look at NASCAR’s tweet.

All this will look harmless when compared to the messages we’ll receive for Juneteenth, however, a less comical holiday that resonates to a greater degree with the current moment. You’ll see major corporations celebrating blacks as the true founding fathers and committing themselves to deconstructing whiteness. They will go far beyond lighting up the Africana menorah and dedicate themselves to the ideology of anti-whiteness.

Kwanzaa celebrations are merely absurd. Juneteenth is far more nefarious, and the messages delivered to us by politicians and the sports leagues for Kwanzaa is just a preview of what we’ll see on June 19, 2022.

*  *  *

Counter-Currents has extended special privileges to those who donate $120 or more per year.

• First, donor comments will appear immediately instead of waiting in a moderation queue. (People who abuse this privilege will lose it.)
• Second, donors will have immediate access to all Counter-Currents posts. Non-donors will find that one post a day, five posts a week will be behind a “paywall” and will be available to the general public after 30 days.

To get full access to all content behind the paywall, sign up here:

Paywall Gift Subscriptions

If you are already behind the paywall and want to share the benefits, Counter-Currents also offers paywall gift subscriptions. We need just five things from you:

• your payment
• the recipient’s name
• the recipient’s email address
• your name
• your email address

To register, just fill out this form and we will walk you through the payment and registration process. There are a number of different payment options.