The Spirit of Kwanzaa Compels You

by Chase Salazar Southgate
Cenhesse (Friends) Meeting

The tradition of American Friends is inextricably tied to the legacy of colonization. This cannot be presumed to have zero effect upon the social norms of Friends, which begs the question: How do you decolonize a culture? Certainly it cannot be done in one generation.

What drives a people to change? What allows for change in cultural practices and norms? Many well-known examples of these changes in the past have been brought about by violence or coercion. Some insight might be found in language: Recent research in linguistic development reveals that it takes approximately 3 cohort generations to create (Kuumba, Day 6) a full and distinct language. Less recent research also shows that language is deeply entwined with culture and the manner of living in community (Umoja, Day 1) with others.

My parents were born in 1961 and 1964. Kwanzaa was established toward the end of the same decade. My parents are reverse migrants of the late 1980s; they both were raised in the Midwest in post-Great Migration communities and they both moved south to Atlanta, Georgia, where they met and I was born. Frugal (Ujamaa, Day 4), bookish, and subtly pious, my parents are very Quaker in manner, though not in name. I often stood out for my lack of branded clothing of any sort, and our household’s flat disavowal of alcohol, cable television, and video game consoles. The internet, being a vehicle of knowledge and the economic stability of specialized skill sets, was wholeheartedly embraced exclusively for educational purposes.

In hindsight, it becomes very clear to me that my parents engaged very deliberately (Nia, Day 5) in building the world in which they wished me to grow. In doing so, they also conveyed to me their own experiences in what is called the ‘Black Mecca’. Celebrating Kwanzaa and Black life itself was central to this. I never had pale-complexion dolls or action figures growing up; my mother was quick to lecture my elementary school friends’ parents on the subject at any time, because how could Black children self-determine (Kujichagulia, Day 2) their place in tomorrow’s world if they never saw themselves represented in it?

I have observed Kwanzaa in full or in part every year of my own life; my parents’ friend Arthur Cole hosted the 27th, my mother the 28th, her friend Binta the 29th, and another friend Janet the 30th, and we would inevitably attend one public Kwanzaa or another on the 26th and the 1st. The 31st we stayed at home to ring in the New Year.

Hosting it for the first time myself, I feel a strange kind of fluency which cuts through the signs and forms to the very spirit in which Kwanzaa is enacted. The past and the present must be taken together to build for the future. This futurity is not the obligation of any one person, but the collective work (Ujima, Day 3) of all of us as ancestors, as relatives and as descendants.

I have spent the last week fomenting Kwanzaa at my local community hub, a coffee shop/bar. And in that time I have had the most heartwrenching and heartwarming conversations with my neighbors. One of the many gifts of Kwanzaa is to provoke one another into conversations with our neighbors who are still strangers. They are now all my Friends. It is my plan to seed Kwanzaa Club at my old school, Eagle Academy for Young Men of Color II. And after that to every Friends School in New York City.

Rejecting ritual for the sake of ritual is Quakerly and in keeping with Early Friends’ disdain of “signs and forms”. With all due respect, my rituals are not empty; they are full with the ujima that lies before us. And I invite you to them, for the work of a new world is before us.

It is time for Quakers to take the leap of faith (Imani, Day 7) required to adopt intentional and meaningful forms, using signs, and I cannot think of a better holiday to become an American Friends Holiday than Kwanzaa. Seven unifying principles that Black America directed us all towards the moment they had achieved emancipation and ‘equal protection’ under the law. Quakers should celebrate Kwanzaa not because it is fun, though it is; and not because is is full of meaning, though it is, but because they have been invited and asked to help preserve the legacy of intentional Black community building—which is, after all, one of the most redeemable parts of the American Legacy.

You can find Chase and Daniela on Instagram: @nyc.quakers.