As a POC born and grown up in a majority White country in Europe, being all-too familiar with the "liberal"-sounding but in actuality far-right concept of ethnopluralism and its lures, traps, and pitfalls, I am somewhat skeptical of institutions like Kwanzaa.
"Black people's Christmas" rings an uncomfortable lot like "Black people's restrooms" -- a case of self-imposed segregation. MLK dreamed of a society that leaves the question of skin color behind instead of making it define everything we do such as what winter holiday we celebrate as "ours."
Christmas has already been largely secularized and stripped of its original religious content (which itself was tacked onto an originally pagan winter solstice celebration, of course). That's actually a pretty progressive way to deal with it -- testament to which being that, say, the Japanese today are at least as enthusiastic Christmas aficionados as the average US citizen. They don't give a PHUK if it "isn't theirs" -- they "appropriated" it wholesale.
As a POC born and grown up in a majority White country in Europe, being all-too familiar with the "liberal"-sounding but in actuality *far-right* concept of ***[ethnopluralism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnopluralism)*** and its lures, traps, and pitfalls, I am somewhat skeptical of institutions like Kwanzaa.
"Black people's Christmas" rings an uncomfortable lot like "Black people's restrooms" -- a case of self-imposed segregation. MLK dreamed of a society that leaves the question of skin color behind instead of making it define everything we do such as what winter holiday we celebrate as "ours."
Christmas has already been largely secularized and stripped of its original religious content (which itself was tacked onto an originally pagan winter solstice celebration, of course). That's actually a pretty progressive way to deal with it -- testament to which being that, say, the Japanese today are at least as enthusiastic Christmas aficionados as the average US citizen. They don't give a PHUK if it "isn't theirs" -- they "appropriated" it wholesale.
Because the Smashing Pumpkins think "Today is the Greatest" every day.
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As a POC born and grown up in a majority White country in Europe, being all-too familiar with the "liberal"-sounding but in actuality far-right concept of ethnopluralism and its lures, traps, and pitfalls, I am somewhat skeptical of institutions like Kwanzaa.
"Black people's Christmas" rings an uncomfortable lot like "Black people's restrooms" -- a case of self-imposed segregation. MLK dreamed of a society that leaves the question of skin color behind instead of making it define everything we do such as what winter holiday we celebrate as "ours."
Christmas has already been largely secularized and stripped of its original religious content (which itself was tacked onto an originally pagan winter solstice celebration, of course). That's actually a pretty progressive way to deal with it -- testament to which being that, say, the Japanese today are at least as enthusiastic Christmas aficionados as the average US citizen. They don't give a PHUK if it "isn't theirs" -- they "appropriated" it wholesale.