An Ignorant Conversation about Kwanzaa

Written by CHRISTOPHER HICKS-MARSHALL a.k.a. CHUMA

IGNORANCE! IGNORANCE! IGRNORANCE! Although this season's Kwanzaa is now in the past, the principles are meant to be practiced throughout the rest of the year. But how could this be possible when ignorance is the purveyor of some people's thought process.

My partner works at a public school as a social work intern, and he is surrounded by other black social workers and psychologists, of course holders of masters degrees and Ph.D accolades. But even with all that education, ignorance still surmounts!

Today in the presence of my partner, one of these matriculated fools had the nerve to say that Kwanzaa was stupid because it's one of those man-made things. Sadly, her colleague agreed. He watched on in awe and pissivity as one of them went on to say that she once gave someone a Kwanzaa gift as a joke, but the receiver of the gift mistook her insincere gesture seriously with great appreciation, leaving her disappointed that her joke didn't succeed. WHAT!! She took Kwanzaa as a joke! How dare she commit such mockery????

Now when he told me this story, I became livid. This lady had the nerve to say that Kwanzaa was stupid because it was man-made, even though the other holidays are as well, believe it or not. I know everyone wants to believe that Jesus was born on December 25th, marking the Christmas holiday, but this is just not true. That is a date that was created by man, and so was the holiday. But to go into the evidence of that would be a whole other article, and I just don't have the time right now.

The bottom line is this. Black folks are always willing to accept the traditions of western culture, but are never open to creating or accepting many of their own. For centuries, we have been brainwashed to promulgate western culture's values, such as many of the holidays (which are man-made). But as soon as a prominent and righteous black man decides to create one that exemplifies principles such as Unity, Self-Determination, Collective Work and Responsibility, Cooperative Economics, Purpose, Creativity, and Faith, one of us calls it stupid. But we would rather embrace Christmas which clearly promotes commercialism, greed, poor management of money, and materialism, all wrapped up and masqueraded behind the birth of Jesus. How ridiculous and shameful. WTF!!!