7 principles for building a world that works for everyone.

It’s a little odd I guess for a white guy to be writing about Kwanzaa, a week-long celebration honoring universal African-American heritage and culture, observed from December 26 to January 1 each year. I’ve vaguely known about Kwanzaa for many years but this is the first time I have truly explored and participated in the holiday. One of the great benefits of being married to Kyra is how my life has been further and more deeply enriched by African-American culture, including being part of Kwanzaa. Kyra, Jessica, and I were sitting around the other day and the subject of Kwanzaa came up, which sparked my curiosity. I didn’t anticipate that this curiosity would become so significant for my life and heading into a new year.

Though Kwanzaa is considered mostly an African-American holiday, the seven principles, one for each day, are foundational to all of humankind and for building a world that works for everyone.The principles are:

• Umoja (Unity): To strive for and to maintain unity in the family, community, nation, and race.
• Kujichagulia (Self-Determination): To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves stand up.
• Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility): To build and maintain our community together and make our brothers’ and sisters’ problems our problems, and to solve them together.
• Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics): To build and maintain our own stores, shops, and other businesses and to profit from them together.
• Nia (Purpose): To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.
• Kuumba (Creativity): To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.
• Imani (Faith): To believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders, and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.

For me personally, each principle has been an invitation to embrace more fully who I am for myself, others, and the world. Though Kwanzaa ended January 1st, I would encourage anyone to take the time and explore the principles in light of your own life and the new year ahead.

I was inspired to write a blog series about my exploration of Kwanzaa and it’s z principles. Today’s post includes links to the rest of the blog series if you’re interested in reading what is essentially a white guy’s guide to Kwanzaa.

Photo Credit: African American Music of Iowa