Kwanzaa

Of the diminishing popularity of Kwanzaa among African Americans, Afi-Odelia E. Scruggs asserts somewhat remarkably:

Black Americans were never a monolith, but more and more we seem to be splintering into factions. Kwanzaa has brought us together, providing a common ground.That's why it's so important that public observances of the holiday continue.

Whatever divisions exist among African Americans, they cannot be healed by celebrating Kwanzaa. The significance of this so-called observance, which is the creation of black cultural nationalist Maulana Ron Karenga, has largely been overblown. The reality is that the observance never really took hold among African Americans and that its decline in popularity hardly comes as surprise because it is rooted not in the cultural experience of African Americans but rather in one man's imagined African past and its cultural traditions.