KWANZAA
                    (C)1997 Alan M. Schwartz

Personnel/Human Resources/Human Factors Engineering stunned and 
amazed Korporate Kulture with unending spectacular revelations 
that executive suites are bursting with high-powered scions of 
industry who fibbed on their resumes.  (Personnel is charged with 
detecting said nugatory caprice *prior* to hire.  Never mind.)  
Pulling it off impresses me more as credential than liability.  
In academia it launches careers and cornucopian income streams.

If a resume containing false claims to real events is a bad 
thing, amazingly a resume fabricated of real claims to false 
events is an asset.  Dr. Maulana Ron Karenga is professor and 
chair of the Department of Black Studies (Afro-American history 
in untold shibbolethic revisions thereafter) at California State 
University/Long Beach.  He also is director of the Institute of 
Pan-African Studies, Los Angeles; chair of the President's Task 
Force on Multicultural Education and Campus Diversity at 
CalState/Long Beach; serves on the Board of Directors of the 
Ethiopian Research Council; and was featured speaker at the 07-09 
April 1995 Socialist Scholars Conference in New York City.  A 
weary exercise in SOP shaven-headed dashiki-clad name-altered 
Diversity professorship with origins lost in Black activism and 
FBI warrants for arrest luxuriates in sod broken by UC/Santa Cruz 
Professor Angela Davis. (Supa' fine wahtahmellun plantation do-
jigger eyeball scribble.)

Karenga is the inventor (26 December 1966) of Kwanzaa, a seven 
day Black celebration of seven principles and seven concepts 
abetted by seven symbols including a seven-branched candelabra 
recalling Campfire Girls' Wo-He-Lo and the politico-numerological 
hallucinations of Calypso Joe Farrakhan.  It mumbles Kiswahili 
(Swahili) jargon, a language foreign to West Africa where 
forebears of North American Blacks were harvested by their 
smarter brethren, sold to Arabs, and merchandised to European 
Christian love FOB New World.

Kwanzaa was copped from the Swahili "Matunda Ya Kwanza," meaning 
"first fruits."  Karenga added another "a" to give seven letters 
for seven principles (Nguzo Saba), seven symbols, seven concepts, 
seven candles...  There was also a symbolic dissonance, kwanza 
less the extra terminal "a" being the basic monetary unit of Angola.

Kwanzaa's bedrock pravda is Karenga's Kawaida theory, a premise 
that social revolutionary change for Black America is achieved by 
revealing (ersatz feel-good) cultural heritage.  Kawaida is a 
roiling concoction of nationalist, pan-Africanist and socialist 
blather (taught by Afrocentric heroes Molefi Asante, Maulana Ron 
Karenga, John Henrik Clarke, Yosef ben-Jochannan...) in turn 
suckling faerie tales (ink still wet upon paper) of Kemet, 
ancient advanced Egyptian civilization purportedly stolen, 
exported, and locally razed by White Europeans.  Lest anyone 
doubt this farce, try calling an Arab Muslim Egyptian a Black 
African to his face - and watch his pride rip your lungs out.

One is wont to question the sense of Swahili-swaddled socialist 
agrarian ceremony foisted upon First World technological 
civilization boasting $(US)2.5 trillion/day global financial 
trade (and supermarkets):

Umoja (unity)                  Kinara (candle holder)
Kujichagulia (self-resolve)    Mishumaa saba (7 colored candles)
Ujima (socialist work/burden)  Mkeka (woven straw place mat)
Ujamaa (cooperative economics) Mazao (crops)
Nia (purpose)                  Vibunzi (ear of corn/child)
Kuumba (creativity)            Kikombe cha umoja (group cup)
Imani (faith)                  Zwaidi (gifts)

Nguzo saba (seven principles)
Bendera ya taifa (Black Nationalism flag)
Tambiko (libation to honor ancestors)
Harambee (call to unity, collective work, and struggle) 
Habari gani (Swahili greeting)
Kwaheri (Swahili farewell)
(a second terminal "a" appears to be truant)

Kwanzaa Pledge (the author of this essay shits thee not):  "We 
pledge allegiance to the red, black, and green, our flag, the 
symbol of our eternal struggle, and to the land we must obtain; 
one nation of black people, with one god of us all, totally 
united in the struggle, for Black love, Black freedom, and Black 
self-determination."

L. Ron Hubbard was a puerile sci-fi hack who parlayed banal 
allegory into Scientology - the discipline that clears your bank 
account in trade for facile gibberish and cult camaraderie.  The 
One True Church was there first, amalgamating a faint Judaic God 
with every pagan mystery accessible, wrapping the parcel in Latin 
intricacy, and pandering multi-level marketing sales territories.  
Kwanzaa grows with discovered planes of complexity as the rabble 
pays its dues and goggles at mysteries tediously replete in New 
Age discount bookstores or compendia of socialist dialectic, 
fallen USSR to discredited Israeli kibbutzim.

Blacks celebrate the Pan-African unity of Hutus, Tutsies, and 
machetes by pursuing Kwanzaa empowerment with their wallets. 
Folks who brought you deodorant panty liners have caught the 
scent.  Steppin' Fetchit, Moms Mabley, and Pigmeat Markham will 
be video resurrected for Kwanzaa, bulging their eyes and shouting 
"SEGA!"  I suspect Dr. Maulana Ron Karenga is fabricating ancient 
Kemet microprocessors (MMX technology!) at this very moment.