Again, we rightfully set aside time and space to celebrate the sacred initiative and narrative we name and know as Black History. It was first set aside as Black History Week by Dr. Carter G. Woodson (May the good he did and the legacy he left last forever).
Once again, the edges of the years have met and merged, and another new year has come. And we find ourselves and the world in the midst of winter in the worst of ways. COVID-19, a pandemic of worldwide proportions and devastating impact, has swept across the world, wreaking havoc on the health, lives, and livelihood of millions, showing no mercy and no signs of an early exit.
So, we have come again to a beautiful and hopeful time: Spring, the promise of new and renewed life; Easter and conversations, imaginations and initiatives of resurrection, renewal, repeating life, “coming forth by day” and rising in radiance into the heavens and afterlife. The concept of resurrection, repair and renewal has a long and rich history in the spirituality, ethics and social teachings of African people. It is both a spiritual and social-ethical concept in the intellectual genealogy and social history of Black thought and offers us lessons on how to live and die and rise up and live again in beautiful transformative ways.
It is a fundamental tenet of Kawaida philosophy that practice proves and makes possible everything, that is to say, practice brings it into being, makes it real, relevant and worthy of the name and quality it claims, whether it is love or life, parenting or peace, teaching or learning, art or ethics, science, religion or righteous resistance. And so, in this month of March which pays rightful and focused attention and homage to women and calls for recommitment to secure their rights, respect their dignity and address adequately their rightful needs and aspirations, the question is always of how this is translated in practice, how is it brought into being and made real and worthy of its name and claims?
This is a reminder and reinforcement for Black Lover’s Day this month and each day all year round. It is not an exaggeration to state that there is no issue of greater importance, urgency or enduring impact in terms of the foundation, functioning and future of us as a community and a people than the quality of male/female relationships.
Let us begin this sacred month offering tambiko, homage of rightful remembrance and profound appreciation of the way openers, lifters up of the light that lasts and tireless teachers of the good, the right and the possible. Let us say then, as it is written in the Husia: homage to you beautiful, Black and radiant spirits. You shall always be for us glorious spirits in heaven and a continuing powerful presence on earth. You are counted and honored among the ancestors. Your names shall endure as a monument. And what you’ve done on earth shall never perish or pass away. Hotep. Ase. Heri.
In this time of warmongering, weapon brandishing and the waging of war of various kinds against the vulnerable, revisiting this Kawaida stance and statement on the importance and essential good of peace is both needed and reaffirming.
Kwanzaa is a time of celebration, remembrance, reflection and recommitment. It requires these practices throughout the holiday. But the last day of Kwanzaa is dedicated to deep reflection, meditation on the meaning and measure of being African and how this is understood and asserted for good in the world in essential, uplifting and transformative ways.
Kwanzaa was conceived as a special time and space for celebrating, discussing and meditating on the rich and varied ways of being and becoming African in the world. It invites us all to study continuously its origins, principles and practices and it teaches us, in all modesty, never to claim we know all that is to be known about it or that our explanations are only for those who do not know much about its message and meaning. For each year each of us should read and reread the literature, reflect on the views and values of Kwanzaa and share conversations about how it reaffirms our rootedness in African culture and brings us together all over the world in a unique and special way to celebrate ourselves as African people. One focus for such culturally-grounded conversation is on the deep meanings and message embedded in the symbols of Kwanzaa which are rooted in Kawaida philosophy out of which Kwanzaa and the Nguzo Saba were created. Indeed, each symbol is a source and point of departure for a serious conversation on African views and values and the practices that are rooted in and reflect them.
The histories and holidays of the oppressed, colonized and enslaved are, of necessity, different from the history and holidays of the oppressor, the colonizer and the enslaver. Likewise, their interpretations of those histories and holidays also differ, for they are lived and learned from different standpoints. Thus, the Palestinians call the conquest and colonization of Palestine, the Nakba—the Great Catastrophe, and the Israelis call it the war of independence. The Native Americans call the conquest and colonization of their land and the decimation of their people genocide and Holocaust. The Europeans call it “discovery,” “the move westward,” “reaching the promised land,” and other self-sanitizing words and phrases.
And on this day of memory and marking, May 25th, set aside in 1963 at Addis Ababa by the Organization of African Unity as African Liberation Day, we remember first and pay rightful homage to our ancestors. For they are the way-openers, the path-finders, the original freedom fighters, the layers of the foundations on which we strive to build in good and righteous ways. It is they who lifted up the light that lasts, the spiritual and moral visions and values by which we understand and assert ourselves at our best in the world. And in rightful homage to them, we in the Maatian ethical tradition, as written in the Husia, humbly ask of them every day “Ancestors, give us your hand, for we are bearers of dignity and divinity who came into being through you.”
We have come again to a beautiful and hopeful time: Spring, the promise of new and renewed life; Easter and conversations, imaginations and initiatives of resurrection, renewal, repeating life, “coming forth by day” and rising in radiance into the heavens and afterlife. The concept of resurrection has a long and rich history in the spirituality, ethics and social teachings of African people. It is both a spiritual and social-ethical concept in the intellectual genealogy and social history of Black thought and offers us lessons on how to live and die and rise up and live again.
As Kwanzaa draws to an end and the old year meets and merges with the new, we are, as always, obligated and urged by ancient custom and ongoing current concerns to sit down and seriously engage in righteous reflection on being African in the world. To speak of righteous reflection is, in an Ebonics sense of the word righteous, to talk of thought that is real, ethical and excellent. That is to say, thought that is free from the artificial, false and formulaic and comes from the heart as well as from the head. What is aimed at here is thought which is informed by an ethical sensitivity to the subject under consideration. And this holds true whether in our concern for each other or for the health and wholeness of the world; for the loss of human life or the mutilation of historical memory; and for the deprivation of material needs or the denial of dignity and rights due everyone.
Here Kawaida calls on us, as always, to dialog with our culture, to ask it questions and seek from it answers to the fundamental issues facing us, African people and humankind