Racism/Sexism/Homophobia is a nasty three-headed rottweiler that’s been beaten with a rubber hose and hasn’t been fed for days, which is why one always gets bitten when approaching it. This is why more critical accounts of the origins of Kwanzaa are hard to come by: there doesn’t seem to be a way to publish one without being accused of hanging with the pillowcases-as-hats crowd.
In this post, I wrote:
My own feeling is that although Kwanzaa’s roots are pretty dubious, but I’m still looking for a non-drooling-right source to corroborate the evidence gathered against it.
Kathy “Relapsed Catholic” Shaidle, who wrote a controversial Kwanzaa poem, came through for me, providing me with two articles that don’t come from what I refer to as the “drooling right”.
(I find FrontPage too “drooling right”, just as I find IndyMedia too “loopy left”. My own political leanings are along the lines of Eric S. Raymond, who wrote: “Liberals, by and large, are fools” and “Conservatives, by and large, are villains”.)
The first is The Truth About Kwanzaa, written by an African-American woman.
If the Christian focus of the previous link bothers you — although I’ll bet that a Buddhist one wouldn’t — there’s a Telegraph editorial that expresses some doubt about its authenticity, along with some remarking on how you can’t say “Merry Christmas” anymore.
I’ve mentioned it before, but I do it again: here’s Tony Pierce (who’s a black hipster from L.A.) on Kwanzaa. I also found this Dartmouth Review piece.
Thanks, Kathy, for the links!
If you want to discuss Kwanzaa further, feel free to make a comment. I’ll be on and off the computer all this week.