A Modern Look at Kwanzaa: An Interview With Christopher Harrison

Photos by Bryan Mason. Originally published in AphroChic magazine Issue No. 5 in 2020.

Since it was first introduced by Maulana Karenga in 1966, Kwanzaa has been part of the suite of holidays celebrated by Americans at the end of every year. Yet compared to other winter holidays, Kwanzaa is not especially popular, even among its target community of African Americans. Though a variety of Kwanzaa events take place every year, some attracting crowds of thousands, many of us are unfamiliar with the core principles of the celebration, its history or its original intent. For others, the disconnect is aesthetic, rooted in 60s perspectives on Black culture and diaspora and hard to connect with today. But the seven principles that form the core of the celebration, Umoja (Unity), Kujichagulia (Self-Determination), Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility), Ujamaa (Familyhood / Cooperative economics), Nia (Purpose), Kuumba (Creativity) and Imani (Faith), are powerful points of focus and we should be careful not to lose them to neglect. 

To get a better understanding of the holiday, we sat down with Christopher Harrison, a PhD candidate in Ethics and Social Theory at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, whose studies focus on Kwanzaa among other African American social philosophies. We talked with Chris about the history and purpose of the celebration of “first fruits,” and designed our own modern interpretation of this fifty-four-year-old holiday. 

AC: It’s widely known that Kwanzaa is a celebration of Black culture based on seven principles symbolized by seven candles. What should we know about it? Is there more to the story?

CH: Kwanzaa was never meant to be a once-a-year holiday. When Karenga first created Kwanzaa in ‘66, the Black Power movement was just beginning to come into focus in California. It had been a year since Malcolm X had been assassinated and The Us Organization and the Black Panther Party had just been founded. Karenga was the co-founder and chairman of the Us Organization and he felt that in order to be truly transformational, the political efforts of these organizations needed a cultural foundation. Kwanzaa was intended to be the basis of that foundation, a kind of cultural revolution to break Black people out of negative American stereotypes and reconnecting us, not to a specific African culture, but to a broad cultural framework based on a variety of traditions from the continent. In that way Kwanzaa is actually quite ambitious. It’s the beginning of an attempt to reconstruct a deconstructed people. 

AC: All of Kwanzaa’s terminology, including the name itself are taken from Swahili, an East African language. Some have called this an anachronism citing the prevalence of West African influence in the genetics and cultures of the Diaspora. Why was Swahili the language of choice?

CH: Swahili is one of Africa’s most widely spoken languages, connecting a number of nations in the central, eastern and southern parts of the continent. Moreover it was essentially the lingua franca of the Pan-Africanist movement at that time. East Africa was in the process of decolonizing and the leaders of Swahili-speaking nations like Julius Nuyere and Jomo Kenyatta - the first presidents of Tanzania and Kenya - were at the vanguard. That gave Swahili the kind of status that Ghanaian kente cloth had attained under Kwame Nkrumah. So for the type of practice Kwanzaa was intended to be and what it was intended to do, Swahili was a natural choice. 

AC: Even in the 60s, Kwanzaa’s popularity was limited by the idea that it was intended to supplant religious observances like Christmas. Does that continue to be true today? Can Kwanzaa be updated or incorporated into other holiday celebrations?

CH: They can certainly be combined now, but that was not the initial intent. Early literature on the holiday explains it as an attempt to construct a new philosophical environment for the unlearning of racists tropes internalized by Black people in America and elsewhere. Those tropes were strongly present and even reinforced in American churches with their insistence on the whiteness of Jesus and God. Since then however the lines between the two have softened. In fact, a large number of the Kwanzaa celebrations held every year are given by Black Catholic churches. Kwanzaa is not about elevating race or culture to the level of a religion. History is full of examples of why that’s a bad idea. It’s about fostering and reinforcing commitment to the process of liberation for Black people around the world - a process, this year proves, is still ongoing. 

AC: Since the 1960s, diaspora has replaced Pan-Africanism as the primary lens for conceptualizing global Black culture. As a result, many of Kwanzaa’s  signature components, like Swahili or the red, black and green color scheme don’t resonate for some in the same way that they once did. Can the practice be updated while keeping its significance and meeting its goals? What are the important features that need to be maintained?

CH: Without question, Kawaida, is the most important aspect to be maintained. Kawaida is the philosophy behind Kwanzaa as a celebration of the nguzo saba (seven principles), and can be thought of as the seven in combination. Maulana Karenga is still alive so it’s his perspective that really matters, but in my opinion it’s possible to alter much of the outer structure of the celebration and still make it work. But unless the principles and the goal of Kawaida are present, it’s not really Kwanzaa. Given that, it’s possible for the holiday to be celebrated in different ways in every culture and household while keeping to the observance of the nguzo saba. That flexibility would be more in accordance with how we see diaspora today, rather than Pan-Africanism in which the uniformity of the practice was part of the point. It also gives us the ability to update the practice while passing on the principles. 

AC: What books or resources would you recommend for anyone wanting to learn more about Kwanzaa?

CH: I would suggest starting with his website, maulanakarenga.org. Also Molefi Asante wrote and excellent biography called, Maulana Karenga: An Intellectual Portrait. 

Watch how this modern Kwanzaa celebration came together on AphroChicTV.