Brooklyn Ron

Kwanzaa, a Controversial Celebration with Controversial Roots

Some years ago, Elaine Brown, author of the Book "A Taste of Power" about her life in the Black Panther Party, told me how she detested the celebration of Kwanzaa.

"If somebody sends me a Kwanzaa card, I just tear it up," she said.

Brown's hostility had much, if not everything, to do with the founder/creator of Kwanzaa, Professor Ron Karenga, whose 1960s group US (for United Slaves) was involved in the assassination of one of Brown's beloved friends, Black Panther John Huggings, in California.

Since that incident, Karenga's group was said to have had links to the FBI (as did many groups of the era, allegedly) and Karenga himself spent time in prison for the assault of a female US member.

(Read here original story in which Elaine Brown was interviewed.)

Founded back in 1966, Karenga's Kwanzaa has grown enormously in popularity and is recognized as the Christmas feast of African-Americans.

The American Museum of Natural History in New York, for one, is hosting a special Kwanzaa event this coming Sunday. (See here for details.) And beginning today, Dec. 26, through Jan. 1, homes, churches and a multitude of public places will feature the lighting of candles and profession of the Kwanzaa principles that include unity, self-determination, faith and other values.

But the celebration remains a source of controversy among a number of African-Americans, even those who do not necessarily have the same radical political past of Elaine Brown.

One thoughtful expression of cultural discontent was on the popular website, The Root.

In signing off here, we say, despite it all, Happy Kwanzaa (and Merry Christmas, and Happy Hannukah and Seasons Greetings.)

[Above photo: Tech. Sgt. Jennifer Myers, a noncommissioned officer in charge of the U.S. Military Equal Opportunity office, lights a Kwanzaa candle. Photo is by Christopher Myers.]

A Ghost of Christmas Past, in Brooklyn, of Course

Blogspot has done much to spread the art and craft of blogging, which in olden days might have been called diary-writing or, in really olden days, pampleteering, perhaps.

Now here's one from a self-declared native Brooklynite who reflects on old Fulton Street in Downtown, with a reverence that brings to mind old classic films, though with a certain special flavor and color.

Brooklyn has undergone tremendous demographic shifts in the post World War II years, moving from mostly ethnic white (with a smattering of blacks and Puerto Ricans) to largely black with Caribbean currents and then to the gentrifying whiter (though also very multi-cultural) borough that is today.

Of course, where we go from here, no one knows, certainly not the economists who failed to forecast the big mess that we're in now.

This blog post on Christmas past and Fulton Street past should be some reason for reflection among the thoughtful.

Here, in BrooklynBorn's own words, is how a weblogging experience got started:

"This blog started in my head when talking with a friend who moved here. She said, 'it's the greatest block ever...even though it's in B'klyn & a little sketchy!'"

I, too, would've had a strong feeling hearing that, and maybe have gotten a bit puffy inside; and, as they say, writing is fighting.