Kwanzaa: Failure of Umoja (Unity) in Black Communities
By: David Player
Tags: Kwanzaa, American Sign Language, Deaf, BlackLivesMatter, Disability

On Christmas Day, I watched The Black Candle documentary traces the origins of the Kwanzaa holidays starting on December 26 — January 1 that originated in Los Angeles, California on Amazon Prime. Dr. Maulana Karenga created the Kwanzaa holiday in response to a cultural crisis facing Black people in America. Black people have been dealing with a larger phenomenon of Double Consciousness to wrestle issues of being Black and American identities. Black people’s African roots further complicated the idea of what it is like to be Black in a country where whiteness remains supreme. Kwanzaa holiday affirms Black people’s historical roots with the Africa continent of 54 countries regardless of specific tribes, identities, and languages that were being erased during the Transatlantic Slave Trade and several centuries of being in bondage.

In the Black Candle documentary, I learned 7 principles of Nguzo Saba. These seven principles are Umoja: Unity, Kujichagulia: Self-Determination, Ujima: Collective Work and Responsibility, Ujamaa: Cooperative Economics, Nia: Purpose, Kuumba: Creativity, and Imani: Faith. A principle that remains to be elusive for Black people is a Umoja: Unity. Dr. Karenga stated that a Umoja: Unity is to strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation, and race.

Last August, I wrote an article called “Three Strikes: You’re Out: Audism in Black Communities’’ to address the issues of Black Deaf signers that continue to be rejected by their own families and communities because Black Deaf signers do not speak in the same tongues as them. Instead of speaking, they are signing with their hands that requires 5 parameters of American sign language are handshape, location, movement, palm orientation, and facial expression/non-manual signals to give meaning in their signed languages. The grammatical structure of American sign language also differs from English structure based on topicalization structure. Topicalization means the topic at the beginning of a sentence. Object-subject-verb (OSV) structure found to be common in several topic-prominent languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Hungarian, Korean, and Japanese. Therefore, American Sign language is one of a topic-prominent languages as foreign languages do.

Unfortunately, American Sign Language continues to be perceived as an inferior language in Black Communities. Speaking in the same tongues is preferred communication despite the challenges of speaking from a person who cannot hear well as a non-disabled person does. Further disruption of an Umoja: Unity, Black Deaf people are continually being marginalized from communities that erode their sense of Imani: Faith in their communities whose space that remains exclusive for non-disabled speakers.

Black Deaf signers faithfully follow the second principle of Kujichagulia: Self-Determination that molds their destinies in their hands. They continually perceive their deafness as not medically defective that gets to define their humanity. Black Deaf signers see their deafness as something additive to their Black identities, not subtractive. Since the first principle of Kwanzaa is Umoja: Unity will remain a mirage if the refusal of learning sign language for Black Deaf people has yet to be addressed.

Resources:

https://tubitv.com/movies/560779/the-black-candle

https://www.interexchange.org/articles/career-training-usa/history-principles-and-symbols-of-kwanzaa/

https://www.mtsac.edu/llc/passportrewards/languagepartners/5ParametersofASL.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object%E2%80%93subject%E2%80%93verb