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.