Kwanzaa 2024:
Progressive Holiday Meditations in the Time of Trump
December 26th is the first day of Kwanzaa, the African American Festival of the First Fruits. A cultural construction of the 1960s, Kwanzaa was created out of the ashes of the Watts Rebellion in Los Angeles in 1966.
I’m attaching a newspaper article interviewing me about the origins of Kwanzaa and the rituals associated with it. As a preface for the article, I’d like to talk about the value Kwanzaa can add to the holiday season for all Americans, but especially those of us who share a progressive vision for our country.
American progressivism embodies the idea of a secular nation in which there is no established state religion and where people can worship the religion of their choice, or no religion at all. Progressivism also advances a multiracial/multicultural nation and a democratic political culture in which we can debate what “liberty and justice for all” means and make policy to reflect those meanings in each generation.
The other major holidays that large portions of our population celebrate in this season, Christmas and Hanukkah, are religious. For large percentages of those holidays this is part of a 5-6 week season beginning with Thanksgiving and culminating on New Years Day, or perhaps even the 12th day of Christmas, January 6th.
For many In the mainstream of society Thanksgiving is a festival of the harvest and thanks by the English settlers for having survived their first year on these shores. Many progressives, mindful that Indigenous people view European success as the beginning of dispossession, attempt to join our Native fellows in a more somber recognition of Thanksgiving.[1]
Nevertheless, the festival of the harvest morphs seamlessly into a celebration of birth (of Christ), of the miracle of the Virgen de Guadalupe, of the rededication of the desecrated temple (Hanukkah) a pagan new year (solstice), i.e., the transit from past to future. For many these celebrations are not religious at all, but chances to bask in the company of family and loved ones as seasons change and the calendar flips.
Kwanzaa also does all that, but in a this worldly way with a slight nod to spirituality. It was born in the spirit of Black Power, and a yearning by Black people to create our own value system and institutions, because America was failing to assimilate us. That failure was one of white assimilationism, which is a cornerstone of American Traditionalism. Assimilation into White supremacy didn’t work for African Americans and before the 1960s were over all peoples of color had developed nationalist identity movements. Assimilation wasn’t working for them either.
The founders of Kwanzaa were Black separatists and there are those today who would still wish to reserve its observance for people of African descent. After marrying Rebecca who is of Anglo-Irish descent, having two beautiful children and living in ultra-White Bellingham, Washington, I wanted to give my family “something African American” for the holiday season.[2] We started having Kwanzaa parties and offering it to the entire community.
In our neck of the woods Kwanzaa became a multiracial celebration. And so it has across America. I don’t know how many African Americans who celebrate Kwanzaa and live in White communities share in with White people in their communities, but information about the holiday is available in mainstream media. News of Kwanzaa events is available in metropolitan areas with significant African American populations nationwide. Woke folx everywhere now say Happy Kwanzaa in the litany of their holiday greetings.
For all y’all African Americans in White communities who aren’t already doing it, I encourage you to invite White friends, and folks of all races into your Kwanzaa celebrations. In my last post, traumatized as we all were by Trump’s victory, I wrote that “we must defend our political and cultural positionality in the slim hope that we can force traditionalists to the table to attain a pragmatic middle-ground.” I promised going forward “to map some of the ways that progressives are defending the right to live according to our values.”[3]
The principles of the nights of Kwanzaa talk about Unity, Self-determination, Collective Work and Responsibility, Cooperative Economics, Purpose, Creativity ... things we must marshall in this world if we are to shape it to our liking.[4] In my house, in keeping with Kwanzaa tradition, we discuss the principle of the evening and how we can pursue it in practice in the coming year.
So this year celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah in the spirit of birth, rebirth and renewal. And embrace Kwanzaa for the possibilities it offers to create a world that embraces the values of multiracial/multicultural democracy.
[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/national-museum-american-indian/2022/11/23/thanksgiving-from-an-indigenous-perspective/
[2] See "A Beginner's Guide to Kwanzaa," https://www.wabe.org/a-beginners-guide-to-kwanzaa/
[3] Vernon Damani Johnson, The Case for a Pluralistic Notion of Nationhood, Damani: Let’s Talk Politics, Sunday, November 24, 2024.
[4] The last night. Imani (Faith), implies spirituality; but faith in the prospects for a better day in the future can be held in a secular fashion.