Conversations
for a while during Kwanzaa’s seven-day celebration has encompassed the
principles that we all try to live by as we move into the next year (or
as we express the next phase of our lives). Kwanzaa, derived from the
Kiswahili phrase “matunda ya kwanza”, Kwanzaa means “first fruits of the
harvest.” Kwanzaa’s purpose is a reaffirmation of peoples commitment to
ourselves, our families, our community, and our fight for equality and
justice.
Those on the outside (and I am including those Black people unaware of
or refuse to participate in Kwanzaa as well) see this celebration as a
Black Holiday or a protest against Christmas due to its parallel
preachings of Self-Determination and the fight for justice. Any mention
of those needs will always place fear in the minds of those whom see
these actions as anarchist and or challenging the American way of life
but Kwanzaa is actually more inline with the spirit of Christmas than
it is as practiced today.
The whole experience of Kwanzaa is a re-booting of the spirit. By
energizing the very core of the human condition. The holiday
concentrates on; unity, self-determination, collective work and
responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith.
This may sound like a massive laundry list of actions of accomplish
within seven days or much more, within a year of one’s life but it can
be accomplished and often is. I recently expressed that as people live
out their lives with purpose, the forces that block our blessings can
and often wear us down thus the seeds of apathy take root. Kwanzaa
allows for those things needed to grow the fruits needed to nourish our
body, our minds and our soul. It’s a holiday of focus, of thanks,
commitment and love.
So on this day of Kuumba (Creativity) I am going to focus on a creative
solution to the disconnection of Blacks in America and Blacks in Africa.
Big challenges to say the least since there are cultural tensions that
neither side wants to address. I decided to actively work on and
concentrate on a formula to address this a little later in the New Year
of 2008 but for now I want to tell how I came to this idea of personally
looking at this as a creative project.
Two days ago I watched the National Geographic Channel’s show TABOO.
Like all things National Geographic I find what other cultures and
countries do a fascinating topic. Now I do not believe that National
Geographic to be 100% fair and balanced, but for the most part, the
reporting is accurate. On the day I watched there were several topics of
taboo discussed; food, self-mutilation and coming of age rituals. The
continents covered were Asia, Europe and Africa. When it came to Africa
the country of focus was the West African coastal nation of Benin. There
are groups of African people who practice a male coming of age ritual
when the Men challenge each other by whipping each other to “test” their
Manhood. The youth at the age just before adulthood are brought
together in a ceremony for all to see and experience are stripped,
made-up and displayed for their masculine beauty. At the center of the
community its one man versus another man in an, "I whip you and you whip
me competition". The whips are made of tree branches (the very same
branched our mothers and fathers, grandparents and elders used on us
when we were children) and made in such a way that they can cause the
most pain and damage. The goal, to make the person inflected with the
lash cry, scream or pass out due to the pain. To fail this test would
bring shame to the family and not allowed to marry. For the women, it
was a chance to see what eligible men would be available for marriage.
During the ritual I watched as man after man took turns whipping the
other as they tried their best to break the other. They taunted each
other, they laughed as the lashes cut deep into their ebon skin of the
challenged. The other part of the ritual was to want the cuts to
encourage the scarification. Each cut displayed the proof of survival,
the journey of Manhood and most of all, the statement of being a
Warrior. Ultimately the ritual was more about being both a Man and a
Warrior. And as I looked in those faces going through this Mind Over
Matter competition with the grand prize being a pick of any woman in the
village for gratuitous sex, I could not dismiss that all of those faces
looked exactly like mine.
National Geographic noted that this ritual had nothing to do with
religion for based upon the culture you could assume that this
particular group was part of an Islamic society; it did have more to do
with the structure of cultural law dating back hundreds of years. Its
bases was established for how men and women are to behave in this Benin
society. Outside of the whipping, which I believe with that of the
American use of the whip, this African practice may have also survived
long enough to have influenced my ass beating in my youth, I said to
myself, “… that could never be me, after that first strike, I’d scream
like a girl, fuck those women.” As funny (or ignorant depending on your
point of view) as that sound, I had to acknowledge that I was different
than my Benin Brothers when it came to proving my Manhood, but had much
more in common in many other ways.
We "are" different than our African Brothers and Sisters but this
difference when you look at the big picture is small. We might think
that the differences are as large as the Atlantic Ocean is wide but it
really isn’t. When it comes to culture, it is just a matter of language,
limits and freedoms and knowledge about community. I see Black men with
Omegas and Sigmas branded into their skin, Black men with tattoos that
cover their whole arms, chests, necks and backs, I see Black men with
piercings in their ears, eye brows, lips, nose and sexual organs,
circumcisions, Mohawks, dreds, capped teeth, plastic surgery and I know
that in Africa, many of our beatifications or ritualized practices in
America would be equally taboo to them. To be honest, these actions are
taboo even to our own people here in the United States. Yet, take away
all the social stigmas and social differences, when you look at a
worldview, family and economics, we have more in common almost identical
commonalities which displaces any African ritual that we as Blacks in
American are disconnected from. We often find that in our disconnect, it
is often based in our lack of understanding of our core being as Black
people which is why Kwanzaa is so significant in our healing. At its
core unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility,
cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith is what facilitate
that gap.
How is that for insight on New Year’s Eve?
"Kuumba (Creativity) To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it."
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