http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/FWK-Feb-17_7425411
February 17, 2010
by Franklin W Knight
IT is quite surprising to note that some Jamaicans want to celebrate
a Black History Month as done in the United States, or to participate
in the recently created Kwanzaa winter observances that fall around
Christmas. Some American importations such as Coca Cola beverages,
McDonald's fast food, Uncle Ben's rice, and Kentucky Fried Chicken
are not entirely bad since they employ local workers and sometimes
require some local ingredients. Imported American ideas, however,
usually deserve closer scrutiny. Neither Black History Month nor
Kwanzaa passes any respectable need-to-have test in Jamaica.
This is not to say that there is anything inherently erroneous in
espousing a Black History Month, or even joining the commercial slide
toward adding Kwanzaa as yet another marketing opportunity. But
celebrating Black History and Kwanzaa did not originate from any
overriding commercial need. They were individual responses by
politicised subordinate groups in a society quite different from
Jamaica. Both festivities are quintessentially made for the USA.
Black History Month, formerly Black History Week, was the brainchild
of the eminent scholar, Carter G Woodson, the second African American
after WEB Dubois to receive the degree of doctor of philosophy at
Harvard University. Both Woodson and Dubois were distinguished
intellectuals who deplored the biases and patent inadequacies of
American society and especially of history. They vehemently opposed
the marginalisation of black people in the USA. Rectifying those
social omissions became the reason for their intellectual being.
Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and
History in 1915 and the following year created a journal, The Journal
of Negro History, to disseminate new research on people of African
descent. During the 1970s when black political sensibilities were
undergoing fluid changes, the association modified its name and that
of the journal to reflect the more acceptable term, Afro-American. In
the 1920s, Woodson along with associates in the college fraternity,
Omega Psi Phi, began advocating for a designated week in February to
call attention to the neglect of non-white dimensions to the American
reality. The selection of February reflected the birthdays of Abraham
Lincoln who freed the US slaves and Frederick Douglas. But February
also presented other important historical milestones such as the
birth of Dubois, the congressional approval of the 15th amendment
extending the franchise to black males, the taking of oath of the
first black senator during reconstruction, and the founding of the
National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People. On
February 1, 1960, a number of college students in Greensboro, North
Carolina, began a sit-in in a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter
and gave impetus to the ongoing civil rights movement. And it was on
February 21, 1965 that three Black Muslims assassinated Malcolm X.
By the 1950s many cities and states recognised Black History Week
celebrations. With the civil rights movement gaining strength in the
1970s, February was declared Black History Month in the USA and an
increasing number of institutions began to recognise the occasion and
support various forms of observances. Black History Month has become
a sort of collective catharsis for the centuries of neglect of
African-American history and marginalisation of American non-whites.
Kwanzaa does not have quite the intellectual pedigree or honourable
genesis of Black History Month. Instead, it grew out of the radical
Black Nationalist movement of the 1960s. Ron Karenga (the
self-designated new name of Ronald McKinley Everett, a Black Power
activist) created Kwanzaa in 1966 as a seven-day black alternative to
Christmas and white American culture. Over the years Karenga has
given many explanations for Kwanzaa. In the 1960s he declared that
his aim was to "give blacks an alternative to the existing holiday
and to give blacks an opportunity to celebrate themselves and history
rather than simply imitate the practice of the dominant society".
Later the explanations would vary from allowing African Americans to
reconnect with their African past to a community celebration of blackness.
Karenga described Kwanzaa as recognising the seven principles of
Kawaida, a Swahili term for tradition and reason. Each of the seven
days of celebration is dedicated to one of the principles of Umoja
(unity), Kujichagulia (self-determination), Ujima (collective work
and responsibility), Ujamaa (cooperative economics), Nia (purpose),
Kuumba (creativity), and Imani (faith). Kwanzaa ceremonies sometimes
include drumming, ritualised drinking, lighting a candle each day,
feasting and the exchange of simple Swahili phrases such as Abari
gani, which roughly translates as "How are you?"
Eventually Kwanzaa gained a sort of general acceptance, with the US
postal service issuing two commemorative stamps and Hallmark greeting
cards getting into the act. In 2004 a small research organisation
estimated that 1.6 per cent of its survey, extrapolated at about 4.7
million Americans, observed the holiday and President George Bush
even issued a Kwanzaa message that year. Nevertheless, very few
Americans can trace their roots to East Africa. The Kwanzaa use of
Swahili phrases is contrived and the ritual resembles a watered-down
version of the Jewish Hanukah or Festival of Lights.
Black History Month and Kwanzaa grew out of a minority population
that had been oppressed and marginalised for centuries in the USA and
whose self-confidence and self-esteem had been aggressively
denigrated. That has not been the case in the Jamaican and Caribbean
experience. Throughout the Caribbean non-whites have comprised the
majority of the population almost everywhere. They have shaped
mainstream society in fundamental ways as Brian Moore, Michele
Johnson, Patrick Bryan, Barry Higman and Swithin Wilmot have
demonstrated in excellent histories. Moreover, authors of Caribbean
histories represent some of the most path-breaking research in the
fields of the humanities and the social sciences. Jamaicans do not
need a month to focus on their history or to imitate irrelevant
foreign rituals. They simply need to make their history a more
fundamental part of their formal and informal education throughout
the year. That history will show that for much of the modern era the
Caribbean held an important position in a wider Atlantic world that
was shaped largely by locally enslaved and free people.
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