I'm Pseudo-Black and I'm Proud: Kwanzaa for White B-Boyz Original online essay, 11/20/95 This goes out to the phat n' phunky white kids, hangin' at the malls in their butt-cleavage threads and chuggin' from 40-ouncers. You might not know it, but you're part of an American tradition of caucasian hip-wannabes remaking last year's Black cultural stances into this year's lifestyle uniforms. Thing is, once whites start copying a black style, blacks do something else. When hippies took over electric blues, blacks went to soul. When soul became the property of Brit teen idols, rap emerged. Now that you're the main gangsta market, Af-Am kids are listening to prosocial R&B harmonizers, as part of the Black Pride thang. Another part of Black Pride is Kwanzaa. That's a non-religious holiday created in 1966 by Black Studies prof Dr. Maulana Karenga. The name means "the first fruits of the harvest" in Swahili. Here's the short version of how it works: Each day from Dec. 26 to Jan. 1, Kwanzaa celebrants hold a simple home ceremony at a table decorated with straw, fruit, ears of corn, a communal cup, and seven candles. They light one candle and speak about one of the holiday's seven principles: Umoja (unity), Kujichagulia (self-determination), Ujima (collective work and responsibility), Ujama (cooperative economics), Nia (purpose), Kuumba (creativity), and Imani (faith). That's a long ways from the glorified lowlife white kids love about gangsta music. But to be an ahead-of-the-curve hipster is to fake today's blackness, not yesterday's white fake blackness. Otherwise you'll look as dorky as Dan Aykroyd's Elwood Blues bit looks today. So put down that malt liquor (you probably don't like the stuff really). Get one of Karenga's books, like Kwanzaa: Origin, Concepts, Practice. He writes for descendents of the African Diaspora, but a lot of his message has universal meaning, including the part about how "History is Knowledge, Identity and Power." Kwanzaa yenu iwe na heri (Happy Kwanzaa).

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