I am not one to stand on a soap box and criticize things, but today I just had to. Whats the deal with Kwanzaa? I just don’t get it. Now, I think I understand the reasoning behind it. It seems to me that it is a celebration in which black Americans get in touch with their African roots or something. Correct me if i’m wrong, isn’t a celebration meant to be celebrated? All the black American people I know seem to care less about the celebration.
Let me make another observation if you will. Kwanzaa lingo is said to be based on the Swahili language. As a Swahili speaker I have a few bones to pick with these Kwanzaanites. The name Kwanza means, first. Kwanzaa doesn’t mean jack squat in swahili.
The way the celebrants spell it is in actuality really bad Swahili. The equivalent of what they have done is writting “firstt” instead of “First”. Let me not even get started on the so called seven principles of Kwanzaa. The most of them don’t mean what they say they mean. So anyway, the relevance of Kwanzaa is debatable. I happen to think that it celebrants need to first get their spellings and translations right before even celebrating the event.
My suspicion is that they’d rather not find out from Swahili speakers what these words mean because it just doesn’t make any sense for them to ask an African the meaning of words they are certain they know. Besides they have been using these incorrect words for 40 years now!
1 response so far ↓
rateng // December 29, 2007 at 2:53 pm |
Dish it out, bro! Just last wkend a friend was telling me of an African American who’s called Toroka (swahili for run away). Guess what, she ran away from home when she was 13. And we still ask, “What’s in a name?”