There are some days that should be considered Pan African holidays for the impact they have had on the Diaspora. Holidays play the all important role of reaffirming shared values, reminding us of who we are, and giving us time to reflect on what it means to be a part of a culture.
Which is why we should be careful about the holidays we practice.
There is no harm in observing and respecting other cultures and their practices. However, when we practice holidays attributed to an alien culture as seriously as we practice those of our own culture, we actively practice miseducation.
Miseducation: the cultivation of an alien identity The Miseducation of the Negro
When we celebrate Columbus Day in the West, we honor the genocidal white supremacist values that killed so many people that the climate of the planet changed.
When we celebrate Martyrs Day – an Ugandan Holiday that commemorates the day an African King tried to prevent the domination of the European church – we elevate the interests of an alien group over our own.
And when we practice Christianity and Easter, we hypocritically engage in Pagan worship forced on us by an alien group.
The Importance of Pan African Holidays
African holidays are important ways for us to express our collective identity and culture. Culture teaches the individual knowledge of self – who they are, how they came to be, and the world around them in the context of the society that they are a part of.
African holidays and the culture they represent is our link to the past. And through the creation, knowledge, and protection of our culture through holidays, we are able to access the thousands of years of shared experiences from the group that we belong to.
This is the tragedy of the weapon of white supremacy known as integration – a form of mass miseducation.
When one integrates with an alien group, ones culture comes to resemble theirs. The ways and customs of your people disappear – and with it, a knowledge of who you are, how you came to be, and the world according to your original group.
Assimilation forces you to abandon what you know to be natural and appropriate in favor of accepting the way of an alien group. You begin to forget how to dress, how to speak your language, how to build relationships, and how to learn. You must then re-learn these things according to the alien culture that you find yourself assimilating into.
By reclaiming and creating our African holidays, we can begin to undo some of the damage caused by our individual miseducation and our collective integration.
Click the next tab below to see all 6 Pan African holidays we should all be observing.
Empowering indeed
Empowering and quite educational
I’ll observe the holidays of other nations when I’m in those other nations as a demonstration of respect and deference to that nations people and culture, but otherwise I’ll have to pass and continue to celebrate my own. How about ideas on making black solidarity day more meaningful?