How to Celebrate Kwanzaa Despite the Actions of the Founder

The holiday is a collective that is bigger than any one of us. Let’s continue the tradition.

Photo: Hill Street Studios/Getty Images

I celebrated Kwanzaa for the first time as an undergrad, after I nearly suffocated from the stark Whiteness of the liberal arts college I attended. On campus, Kwanzaa safely shrouded me in Blackness, Black creativity, and the Black community — if only for a week. Since then, the celebration’s seven founding principles have guided much of my life and work as a writer and advocate:

Unity

Self-Determination

Collective Work and Responsibility

Cooperative Economics

Purpose

Creativity

Faith

Initially I never questioned if I should celebrate the cultural holiday established by Dr. Maulana Karenga. But two years ago, I learned that Karenga was convicted of assaulting and falsely imprisoning two women in 1971, a handful of years after founding Kwanzaa. The decades-late discovery left me feeling slimed, like a tortured contestant on Nickelodeon’s Double Dare. Immediately I wanted to distance myself from the seven principals, to separate myself from the icky tentacles of its founding father…