kwanzaa
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Big Beauty Tuesday: It's Time to Upgrade Your Work-From-Home Wardrobe With Junny NYC
If you work from home (as many more of us do these days), you’re already well-accustomed to the struggle. Aside from the fact that you may no longer know when your workday begins and ends, your idea of a work wardrobe may now consist of tie-dyed sweat sets punctuated with the odd message tee or…
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Free Cyntoia: It Was Her Faith That Made It So, Long Before She Left Prison
It is most appropriate that we open on this Sunday morning—it’s Wednesday afternoon, you say? Oh. Excuse me, er, that we open on today, in the Christian tradition, with this quote from the King James Version of the Bible: “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed…nothing shall be impossible unto you.” As…
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There Was but One Creative Gawd Who Smote All Others in 2019. Mr. Billy Porter Is Kuumba Personified
If there’s one thing black folk are, it’s creative. Whether through necessity or just burned into our melanin-ness, we make sumptuous meals from scraps, our bodies defy gravity when we dance; and we have reimagined fashion, hair, sport, ways of looking at the world, and even naming our children in our burnished image (even if…
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Resist! Maxine Waters Stayed True to Her Purpose of Impeaching the Orange Menace
On this fifth day of Kwanzaa, we celebrate Nia, which means purpose, and also surges in popularity as a name every time Nia Long releases a film. “Imani” is the only other principle that even comes close, according to research from the Love Jones Institute for Boyz in the Hood. My aunt Kujchagulia Ujima Jenkins…
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Ujamaa That! Annual Kwanzaa Crawl Brings $250,000 to Black Businesses in Gentrifying Harlem and Brooklyn
Even us anti-capitalists recognize that economic freedom is power in the good ole US of A. And as it relates to Kwanzaa, on this fourth day, we celebrate Ujamaa (ooh-jaa-mah), meaning cooperative economics and also, “shared wealth and work”, “economic self-reliance” and “obligation of generosity.” Last year, we feted Richelieu Dennis, and in 2017, it…
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Randall Woodfin’s #BirminghamPromise Embodies Ujima, or Collective Work and Responsibility
On today, the third day of Kwanzaa, we celebrate the principle Ujima, or collective work and responsibility. Last year, those who embodied Ujima were the founders of GirlTrek, Vanessa Garrison and Morgan Dixon; in 2017, it was Patrisse Marie Cullors. This year, the honor goes to Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin, who promised that starting in…
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Baltimore Raven QB Lamar Jackson Is the NFL’s Probable MVP, Quite Possibly a Superhero and the Personification of Self-Determination
On the second day of Kwanzaa, the black nationalists gave to me…a hard-ass word to pronounce! But in fact, Kujichagulia (pronounced: koo-gi—as in Coogi sweater—cha–goo–lee-ah—as in Aaliyah) is probably my favorite principle in the Kwanzaa pantheon. To practice Kujichagulia, or self-determination, always celebrated on Dec. 27, is to define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves,…
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Certified Genius Nikole Hannah Jones’ 1619 Project Embodied Unity in 2019
Some years, when we say an entity (person, persons of note, or not) embodies Umoja, or unity, the first principle of Kwanzaa, it is because their actions bring together the larger black community (see Tarana Burke in 2017). Other times, it’s more about a personal manifestation of unity (see the workers of KFC in 2018).…
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Kwanzaa Is Dame Dash to Jay-Z’s Christmas
There was a time back when Kwanzaa and Christmas were cruising on a yacht popping Cristal and truly Big Pimpin’. Then there was a feud, something about Christmas cozying up with Lyor Cohen or Kwanzaa promoting Cam’ron to the president of Holiday Records, and Christmas bounced, went on to marry Beyoncé and partnered with the NFL.…
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Christmas Vs. Kwanzaa: The Tale of the Tape
I was raised in a fundamentalist church that believed in the seventh-day Sabbath, tambourines and neverending, four-nights-a-week services that lasted well into Arsenio Hall’s opening monologue. Apparently, God’s eternal kingdom specifically forbade rap music, brazen women who had premarital sex (if you were a man it wasn’t ok but it didn’t decrease your value) and…