Kwanzaa 2019


KWANZAA 2019  / NOTES 



1.  UMOJA (unity)  ---Face it.  Striving for unity in the family, the community, the nation, and the race is praiseworthy.  Notice, however, the results of striving are contingent.  Forces beyond our control are operative.  Erosion of will power leads wretchedness;  systemic racism is an abstract equivalent of nuclear warfare;  benign genocide, a staple in education, flourishes; bad choices and self-hatred maintain dysfunction.  Family is not necessarily a traditional unit  of parents, children, and assorted relatives.   "The community" is an ungainly trope.  It is useful in moments of extreme crisis.  At other times the phrase fails to provoke rigorous analysis of how we organize ourselves and our contradictions "The Nation" is most certainly only "unified" in stories of inclusion and  excluding , the object of many revisions; some of these revisions tell us more about diversity and deconstructive gestures than about unity.   Under these circumstances, we do well to strive more for viable coalitions and less for tantalizing theories of solidarity and  unity. 



2. KUJICHAGUIA (self determination)-- We talk ourselves purple with talk about  defining, naming,  creating, and speaking for ourselves   We have agency.  The more we study history as a complex project of documenting events, checking facts and segregating them from factoids, and  deciding how to arrange facts into persuasive narratives, the more adept we become in making empirical  analyses of self determination.  We can't depend on the  amoral or immoral machinery of government to do for us what we must do for ourselves.  We can't depend on those who claim to represent us in the houses of Congress to effect moral imperatives for us.  I suspect we ought to talk less and act more as a way of teaching our descendents. "First Fight. Then Fiddle" by Gwendolyn Brooks should be our catechism for self determination.  We have also to be aware that "ourselves" are ultimately not detached from "other-selves,"  regardless of the ideologies we embrace and serve.



3. UJIMA (collective work and responsibility) --Collective work does involve compassion, but collective responsibility does not ordain excessive sympathy. Do not confuse the sacred and the profane with unconditional virtue and trashy corruption.  We have limits we shall never transcend. Habits of the heart have to be measured and endlessly subjected to critique.



4. UJAMAA (cooperative economics)  --  Viable economies pivot on and maximize the oppressive dynamics of capitalism. Learn how to "read" the evidence.



5. NIA (purpose) ---Kwanzaa is our excellent opportunity to interrogate our purpose and commitments, to question our rationale for being alive and awake.



6.  KUUMBA (creativity) ---Creativity without discipline and sustained study of craft is silly and rebarbative.



7. IMANI (faith) --Faith is neither a given nor an absolute; it is an irrational and relative event or accident.  Use it strategically and sparingly.



Jerry W. Ward, Jr.            December 27, 2019.






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