« The hunt for a GOP punching bag to succeed Meghan McCain on 'The View' isn't going well | Reality is impinging upon the Democrats' carefully constructed COVID tyranny »
December 28, 2021

Kamala Harris celebrates Kwanzaa: Fake recollections of a fake holiday

By Monica Showalter

Kamala Harris emits phoniness, and there isn't much phonier from her than her claims about her idyllic childhood memories of celebrating Kwanzaa with her extended family.

According to Breitbart News:

Vice President Kamala Harris celebrated the beginning of Kwanzaa Sunday night, an underlying Marxist holiday created by black nationalists, by praising one of the "seven principles" of Kwanzaa, which happen to coincide with the seven principles of the Symbionese Liberation Army.

"When I was growing up, Kwanzaa was a special time. Friends and family members would fill our home. We would listen to the elders tell stories and watch them light the candles on the kinara," Harris said, recalling her childhood memories of Kwanzaa in similar fashion to her remembrance last year.

"During dinner, we would discuss the seven principles," she continued.

"My favorite principle is the second: Kujichagulia (self-determination). This principle is about having the power to design your own life and determine your own future. It's a deeply American principle," she claimed. "From our family to yours, happy Kwanzaa[.]"

Now, it's possible she might have had some encounter with Kwanzaa, given that the holiday was invented in 1966 by a radical Black nationalist who was fighting with the Black Panthers at the time, which was two years after she was born.

Harris's first six years, which were spent in the States, were in over-the-top radical Berkeley, California, so she could conceivably have been in touch with the invention, assuming her parents were on the anti–Black Panther side in this dispute.

But the idea that it was she and her elders all gathering round the mock-menorah like some old family tradition is a bit hard to swallow.  All of her elders were in foreign countries, and international air travel was not as easy or cheap then as it is today. 

What's more, Mom and Pop weren't speaking to one another much by the time Kamala got to the age of being able to remember things.  They divorced when Kamala was seven, and mom and kids moved to Quebec, Canada, which was not exactly a hotbed of black nationalist political correctness.

Mom was a high-caste Brahmin Indian Tamil whose relatives lived in southern India, where the holiday sure as heck wasn't one they celebrated, not when they had bona fide traditional ones to celebrate as part of their Hindu faith, such as Diwali.  Kamala has in the past said she celebrated Diwali as a kid.

Dad, meanwhile, was an immigrant from Jamaica, where the holiday is never celebrated.  West Indians on Twitter absolutely insist on this:

Here's the word from Oralette Dawn, a Jamaican blogger:

Kwanzaa is a non-religious, non-political cultural celebration that began in America but has its cultural roots in Africa.   Its originator, Dr. Malauna Karenga, created Kwanzaa in 1966 as the only original African-American holiday [Gentle correction: That would be Juneteenth, first celebrated in 1865. —MMS] that gave cause for a special occasion.  It has since evolved into a celebration for all African descendants throughout the world and for anyone else who can identify with its values and principles and want to make it a part of their celebrations regardless of race.

Kwanzaa does not appear to have impacted on Jamaicans in any identifiable substantial way as it has done in America.  Jamaicans in the main operate from a different cultural framework with a different cultural identity from that of the Black-American experience.  Jamaica's history, culture and values are a unique blend of the people who live here and of all the past dwellers that have influenced the culture we have today. 

It would be nice and somewhat fitting, however, to share in a cultural celebration with all other African descendants throughout the Diaspora.  But through what avenue could awareness be raised? And what relevance could Jamaicans find in such a practice?

Even Africans don't care for the phony holiday:

Harris's father, meanwhile, wasn't just a Jamaican immigrant who'd probably turn up his nose at the nonsense, but a professor of Marxist economics at Stanford University.

On those grounds, maybe he paid some kind of acknowledgment to the holiday, given his leftist orientation and life in the radical Bay Area, but that's still far-fetched.  The Black Panthers at the time were the smart set's favorite radical group, as Tom Wolfe chronicled in his essay "Radical Chic."  What's more, Harris's father never had significant exposure to his kids after the divorce, so even if he did celebrate it, his kids weren't around.  No elders sitting around the candelabra telling stories in his case.  Based on my knowledge of far-left radicals in the Bay Area, they all celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah, the same as anyone else, with secular takes of their own, such as hammer-and-sickle Christmas tree ornaments, which is something I have actually seen.  I never knew any who celebrated Kwanzaa.

Kamala, who's posted childhood Christmas photos, was apparently not at all different.  We know she celebrated Christmas:

She pretty well got called out for the phoniness of it all by the Twitterati, above all in the fact that she has never shared a photograph of these extended family celebrations — she shares all kinds of childhood photos to win sympathy, but not on this matter.

Fake, fake, fake — it's all the Twitterati can see:

Being Kamala, the phoniness was probably just reflexive.  But it also was likely political pandering.  The only ethnic group that still largely likes Kamala Harris is African-Americans, where she reportedly still has a 71% approval rate.  Nobody else can stand her.  Might this be a bid to shore up the African-American voter base, given that that's the one thing she can contribute to the failing Biden administration?  Possibly.

But it's still phony stuff, and a lot of people are noticing.  Apparently, she will say anything to pander as her ship sinks.

Image: Twitter screen shot.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.

If you experience technical problems, please write to helpdesk@americanthinker.com