Scanning the TV dial last night I came across a station called WCPB.  It’s a “public” station and it was airing a canned holiday greeting for something known as Kwanzaa.  From what I can make out this is a holiday created in a political science lab by some Marxist college professor with hopes of destroying the United States as a national entity.  In the 41 years or so since inception the intent of this Kwanzaa has morphed into something more akin to St. Patrick’s Day but without the pints of stout.  It appears Kwanzaa is a holiday celebrated by a handful of academics and members of the news media.  The academics put on brightly colored clothes, similar to the beach shirts seen at summer services at St. Jude’s.  And there are trays of food at Kwanzaa, many with the consistency of a termite mound, and this food allows the celebrants to commune with a long ago imagined past.  A local library basement or school gymnasium is the site of the event, which allows the news media to be educated about history, injustice and segregation, because the only way to end these crimes is by creating a self-segregating holiday.  Some 23 year old bleached blond arrives with a microphone attached to a camera and photographer and the photographer scouts the gym for donuts and is quickly disappointed. 

 The reporter is then educated after asking the piercing question, “So, what is it that you’re doing here today?”  

The answer involves slavery, Ken Norton and Alex Haley.  The photographer then grabs some b-roll and the bleached reporter makes small talk and feigns serious interest.  Even on a slow news day the story will be at least third in the rundown.  

I know a man from Nigeria.  He’s an old friend from my television days.  He was an outstanding electrical and IT engineer.  He didn’t smoke or drink and he read a Bible every day.  We became such fast friends that after the 6:00 news on Friday nights we would pull up chairs in the empty newsroom and spend a couple of hours talking about life.  Later we would become traveling companions as the company sent us away on many training seminars.  Our jobs were to bring back the latest equipment and instruct our own staffs in the use of the latest technology.  

Abiodun liked to talk about growing up in Africa.  He was raised Muslim and after a religious conversion to Christianity and a political coup he feared for his life.  He lived for a time in Australia and then Las Vegas and finally settled in upstate New York.  He found the shores of North America the most appealing and welcoming of any continent he had visited.  His wife found work teaching at a large university and he landed in television.  He raised lovely children and they were scholars and now are grown and a source of great pride.  They are leaders and value hard work and self determination.  It reminds me of a neighborhood where I once lived among Ukrainian immigrants.  The children all became doctors and dentists and lawyers.  

I miss the long talks with Abiodun and remember his reaction to Kwanzaa and hip-hop and the need to portray the self as a perpetual victim.  He explained the people of Africa thought distant relatives in the United States were suffering from mass delusion.   A people so long willing to play the role of oppressed that any progress was impossible.  Abiodun’s family didn’t celebrate Kwanzaa but at Christmas he would wear a colorful sweater over his dress shirt, just like he did all those years ago in far-flung places in Africa, Australia and the western United States.  I guess it’s because he didn’t see himself as different and as a humble man didn’t call much attention to himself.  He liked being an unhyphenated American.  

I thought of him yesterday when I read an essay in a major Canadian paper.  The writer is a scientist raised Hindu in India.  While at college he met and married an Australian Catholic.  The couple’s children were born in Canada and New Zealand and now reside in Australia.  Family members travel extensively and the writer made one very important point.  The only place his kin feel most “ordinary” is while visiting the United States.  It’s because they don’t feel pigeonholed.  They don’t have a need to self-segregate and can’t understand the desire to be separate.  

What is the difference between the two families mentioned and the Kwanzaa crowd?  Check political persuasion.  Abiodun and the family with its roots in India and Australia succeed on merit, hard work and determination.  The Kwanzaa crowd believes government spending, political correctness and the nanny state are the solution, however.  If self-segregation is taken to its terminus there won’t be a single institution left standing.  Then what will we have?  I suspect 300 million individual Rwandas.  

Happy SHAM-a-Lam-a-Ding-Dong. 

 

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 29th, 2007 at 11:01 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.