Issue #39, December 22, 2006

UNDERSTANDING THE ROOTS OF KWANZAA

By Sally Flynn

It takes six hours to fly across the United States. It takes twelve hours to fly across Africa. It is huge, with more countries than Europe. And just as European neighboring countries are vastly different from each other, so it is with African countries. Nigeria is as different from Chad as France is from Germany. Different cultures, languages, customs, everything.

If you’re white, you probably can name one or more of your countries of ancestral origin. You KNOW where you came from. You probably have decorations in your house that identify your heritage. Things that say, “These are my roots. This is my children’s heritage.” Even though we are all American, we are proud to proclaim our roots. It makes us feel culturally grounded since, outside of Native Americans, there is no indigenous American culture. Everything here is only 230 years old at most. Our pride in our ancestral heritage doesn’t detract from our pride as Americans. It is the seasoning in the melting pot.

But an African-American person who is a descendent of slaves doesn’t know his country of origin. Where are his people from? Sudan? Congo? Uganda? What were their customs? What objects and decor reflect and respect that heritage? Many African American people can only trace their heritage back to a slave ship where some distant relative, was brought in shackles. They can’t even get a clue from their surnames, which are usually from Plantation owners.

How could you avoid people feeling culturally adrift?

If you’re white, what if all you knew is that your ancestors were from Europe? How would that impact you? Would you celebrate Oktoberfest, Bastille Day or St. Patrick’s Day? Does knowing your origins make a difference in how you perceive yourself? You bet it does.

The American slave descendants became a subculture here. A community-nation within a nation, like the Jews in the Diaspora. This subculture, which I call Afmerica, originated when Africans caught and sold their brethren to European slavers, who sold them to plantation owners, who used them for labor and sex. Who is to blame? The collective civilized world at that time. Not the world today, because it wouldn’t happen today.

Afmerica evolved when slaves and their descendants, trying to adapt, took the colorful ribbons of many African customs and the cords of Christianity and wove a new cloth. The conflagration of all these inclusive elements created a new subculture, a potluck of many African cultures, no less valid than any other community-nation. Afmerica has a culture, a patois, and a value system, all specific to itself.

If a person says they are Afmerican, I know their culture of origin is that they descended from African slaves. If an African-American person knew he was Kenya, he’d say, “I’m Kenyan” just as I say, “I’m Irish.” It wouldn’t mean he was directly from Kenya anymore than I am from Ireland. “Black” in America doesn’t refer to the race, it refers to the decedents of slaves, Afmerica. That’s why it’s not really racist to have African-American awards shows and such. If they could have the Kenyan Hour and the Chad Chat, they would.

An anthropologist named Dr Maulana Ron Karenga had an inspired idea to take the common themes of many African celebrations and create a holiday for Afmericans to celebrate what is good and noble in their generic African heritage. Kwanzaa was first observed in 1966. Does is matter that this holiday began forty years ago? No. Why should it? There was a first time for all holidays.

Kwanzaa celebrates the values of family, community, harvest, religion. These values are as American as apple pie.

Is it divisive to recognize Afmerica as a community nation that is entitled to celebrate itself? More divisive than what? What we have now? I think it benefits everyone to recognize Afmerica as a real community nation and call it such, not just “African-Americans or Black America.” It gives our African brethren a cultural anchor to replace the one they lost.

No amount of financial restitution could restore to any African-American person what was taken from them. This isn’t a problem that money can solve. But, if I could, I’d order DNA tests on any person of African origin who wanted it, so they would know what tribe or nation they came from. In restoring that linkage, they would no longer be just the generic descendants of slaves. They would be the descendants of a specific African nation and slavery gets demoted to only a chapter in their history.

I love Kwanzaa because it acknowledges Afmerica. It reaffirms Martin Luther King’s wonderful statement, “We all came here in different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.” I’m glad to take a seat next to my Afmerican brethren. I want them to know that I regret, with my whole heart, the despicable circumstances that brought them here. And I am glad, with my whole heart that they ARE here.

The place wouldn’t be the same without either of us...