Best joke I’ve heard this year, some stand-up said “I only know five people [ who celebrates Kwanzaa] and two of them are white lesbians with black kids.”
Nope.
It must be a bit discouraging that Karenga the inventor of the “holiday” was sentenced to one to ten years for literally torturing two women who he claimed he thought were trying to poison him.
Dampens the holiday spirit just a tad.
Perhaps, perhaps not…
Festivus’s “Airing of Grievances”, however, has never been more popular.
From the reading I’ve done and from people I know it seems that Kwanzaa really isn’t a holiday that people celebrate at home, like they do Christmas or Hannukah. It’s a more community-based thing - more like St Patrick’s Day, perhaps. Where people primarily celebrate by going to bars and drinking green beer, or something.
The local paper does stories on Kwanzaa every year (I just searched archives, and if it makes a difference, this region has a high black population and Flint itself is majority black - maybe it doesn’t get covered much in “less black” media markets) and that’s pretty much the only context it’s mentioned in.
I’ve never met anyone that celebrates it.
And I only know what Ujamaa means because that was the name of my freshman dorm. Actually, I don’t remember what it means now that I think about it. Crap!
I don’t know a lot of people who celebrate Kwanzaa, but some. My aunt and uncle do.
Well if they celebrate, it ain’t with me!
I don’t know anyone who celebrates Kwanzaa but I think I could count the number of black people in a 30 mile radius with my fingers. I really know next to nothing about the holiday other than it incorporates the colors black, yellow and red and (according to the Food Network) this is a great dessert for the holiday
Racists invented Kwanzaa? Do you have a cite for that?
Ha, right. A lot of these “no” answers I’m sure come with “I know zero black people.”
I know a few, mostly through working with students from a historically black university.
As mentioned, lots of institutions include some kind of observance. Many holidays are observed through schools, libraries, churches, etc. without necessarily being celebrated often by individuals in their homes (Memorial Day, Labor Day, Earth Day, Columbus Day, Arbor Day, various minor religious holidays, etc.)
Well in my case, I don’t know many white people either XD I’m a bit antisocial and living in such a redneck, small town doesn’t give me many opportunities to meet a diverse range of people. Though, from the sounds of the thread, even if I did know anyone, chances are they wouldn’t celebrate it.
Nope. Asked a black co-worker once (semi-facetiously) if she was going to celebrate it; she laughed and said that Kwanzaa was “bullshit.”
Sounds like my kind of gal.
I’m white but have a decent amount of black friends and acquaintances. I don’t know anyone in New Orleans or Chicago who celebrates it, most everyone in our current neighborhood just goes in for Christmas.
I just asked my roommate (black, mid-20s, adopted by a white family when she was young) and she said her folks took her to a couple of Kwanzaa events when she was a kid, but she hasn’t celebrated it since then, or know anybody who does.
Yes, actually, I do. From the History section:
In other words, he created Kwanzaa because he thought Christmas is a white man’s holiday.
No, you don’t.
His asshole is his cite.
As I recall, ujamaa is translated as “collective economics” or “socialism” depending on how favorable one is to Kwanzaa. 
That is, some people use this as an additional criticism (additional to the ad hominem critiques above :)) of Kwanzaa that it enshrines socialism as one of its values and is thus un-American in their eyes.