The week-long celebration of Kwanzaa has returned and deserves so much as a wink and a nod in terms of recognition on the national stage, and even that’s being too charitable. To commemorate the holiday, as was the case last year, President Trump has issued yet another brief, three-sentence statement that barely constituted a paragraph.
“This annual celebration of African heritage, unity, and culture is a special opportunity for many to reflect on their shared ancestry and values. At this time, our Nation joins in honoring the important contributions of African Americans to the strength and success of the United States,” he said in the message. “As families, friends, and communities gather this week to light the Kinara, we join in sending our best wishes for good health and happiness in the New Year.”
The statement is basically a rewording of last year’s and could have possibly been arranged in five minutes — the “participation trophy” of White House holiday greetings. Compare the two:
Today marks the first day of Kwanzaa, a weeklong celebration of African American heritage and culture. Together, let us celebrate during this joyous time the richness of the past and look with hope toward a brighter future.
As families and friends join to light the Kinara, Melania and I extend our warmest wishes for a joyful holiday season and a prosperous year to come.
Last year, Newsweek criticized Trump for failing to emphasize Kwanzaa’s “African-American” values in contrast to his predecessor Barack Obama. The Root said of Trump’s statement: “Three sentences. That’s all the official Hotep holiday garnered. Three lousy sentences.” Splinter got mathematical, noting that Trump’s Kwanzaa statement was the shortest of any president. “For comparison, [Bill] Clinton’s first Kwanzaa statement was 143 words long—more than twice as long as Trump’s remarks,” they lamented. “President George W. Bush’s 2001 Kwanzaa statement was 172 words long. And in 2009, Barack Obama issued a statement with 196 words.”
Invented in 1966 by a convicted felon accused of torturing two women, the actual number of people who celebrate Kwanzaa has been hotly contested for several years. The founder has claimed that as many as 28 million people celebrate it; the African American Cultural Center once claimed 30 million. However, in 2004, a survey for the National Retail Foundation discovered that 1.6% of those surveyed in the United States celebrated it. Even one of Kwanzaa’s big proponents, researcher and professor Keith Mayes, admitted that its popularity has seriously waned since the ’60s and ’70s.
“It just no longer shows up in some of the places that it did 30 to 40 years ago. You still have people who actually celebrate it,” Mayes said. “You have third generations of Kwanzaa celebrants … but Kwanzaa no longer has its movement which brought it forth, which is the black power movement. That movement has waned.”
Mayes estimates that roughly 1 to 2 million people in the United States celebrate Kwanzaa, which means that even if the founder’s numbers are correct, it applies only to those outside the country.