The Hard Truth – Violence- Why Kwanzaa matters

27th December 2011   ·   0 Comments

By Min. J. Kojo Livingston
Contributing Columnist

As we watch our people sink further and further into animalistic behavior it becomes more and more important that we remind ourselves of who we really are. The violence in our streets and homes, the poverty, is directly related to a lack of knowledge of self.

Because we have been told and sold that we are clowns, cowards, idiots, thugs and savages through most media and most institutions it has become difficult for many to see ourselves as anything more than this. It shows in our behavior.

The truth is very different. We know only know how to be civilized, intelligent, prosperous, peaceful and productive, we INVENTED these concepts.

Kwanzaa is the only holiday that deliberately links Black people in the United States to our Afrikan Heritage. This makes it of incredible importance. Most other days, including MLKing Day, Black History Month and Malcom X’s Birthday (May 19), deal with our experience since we have been here. It is critically important to remember that Our Story does not begin on a plantation. We are greater than that. Our Story is older than the slave ships that brought most of us here.

This is important because no other group of people has been lied to like we have about our ancestral homeland. No other group has been the victim of such a prolonged brainwashing that the hatred of self has penetrated our very souls. Many educated Blacks don’t know that Afrika is full of thriving cities as well as rural villages. They can’t even make the connection that most of the planet, including the USA, is mostly rural. Drive to the next biggest city and what do you see mostly while you are on the road? Trees, fields, and bodies of water.

No other group has been consistently taught to hate and deny their roots the way that we have. You won’t find Italians born here dissing Italy or their history. Chinese, Germans, Koreans, Greeks, the Irish and, of course, the Jews all feel that their history before coming to the U.S. is vitally important for their children to know, appreciate and celebrate.

There is only one group who gets the “hate our roots” treatment and that is us. Those who have spent the last 500 years doing this know that whenever we wake up to our historic cultural identity that we will once again become the most powerful people on this planet. Others know this about us. They flock to Afrika to visit, to study and to live. Then they claim that white people actually did all of the great things that our ancestors accomplished.

The image war rages on today as most of our people only think of poverty, violence and ignorance when they think of Afrika. Why would anyone want to investigate our true history if they believe that all they will find there is ugliness and shame? If you thought that something foul and smelly was in a box would you be eager to open it?

Brainwashing has let us to proudly forsake that which worked for us thousands of years before the emergence of a white man. We once knew how to build strong, healthy prosperous individuals, families, communities, tribes, nations and empires.

Today we mimic slave culture. We can’t even put a basic family unit together, much less keep it going for longer than a year or two. Most of our children do not have responsible fathers. This is not how we roll, folks. This is a dramatic divergence from all that we have ever been. Study our history and you will know what we are really capable of.

Now we are feeding ourselves a diet of mental self-destruction. Much of our music, entertainment and street culture have directed us on a path that is pulling us down. Kwanzaa can help counter this.

How? The values of Kwanzaa are not the only values we need to build a strong family, community or nation but they are good, valid, legitimate values that can help push us forward. What nation-building values do you find in the way that Christmas or Easter is celebrated?

Kwanzaa helps to “connect-the-dots” between where we are and where we came from. The clothes, the ceremonies, the words, the use of another language to describe things of value, all of these help to elevate the consciousness of our people. No, it’s not perfect but it has too much good in it to simply dismiss.

I know that many activists, especially those who know the mistakes/shortcomings of Kwanzaa’s creator, Dr. Maulana Karenga and his followers refuse to support the holiday. I believe they are wrong. Kwanzaa offers us a lot to work with that can help transform and empower our people. Just consider the Seven Principles: Unity, Self-Determination, Collective Work & Responsibility, Family-hood/Co­operative Economics, Purpose, Creativity and Faith. You could argue to include others but can you honestly say that these are not both good and important?

I also know that some national media figures, like J. Anthony Brown openly tell people not to celebrate Kwanzaa or do anything else that would associate us with our Motherland. That’s just self-hatred. There is an entire class of Black people whose aim is to lock and limit our thinking. They want us to confine our sense of identity to the culture and politics of the USA. This is ignorance.

When we learn and appreciate how big, beautiful and vast we really are as a people, it will be nearly impossible for anyone to keep us on our current path to ruin.

We can save ourselves and Kwanzaa can help.

So, Whatchagonna Do?

This article was originally published in the December 26, 2011 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper