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My Cultural Gaffe: Criticizing the Use of Swahili in Kwanzaa

Writer's picture: Shoga FilmsShoga Films

Updated: Jan 28


Around 1990, I had recently returned to America from a year of dissertation research on East Africa's most famous playwright whose plays were all written and performed in Kiswahili (with the publication of my thesis, "Drama and National Culture: A Marxist Study of Ebrahim Hussein," I became, and probably still am, one of the leading Hussein scholars in the U.S. Since his works are untranslated, nobody's attempted to wrest my crown). I had spent 1988 at the University of Dar es Salaam working on the language, reading works of local criticism (also in Swahili), and befriending the great man himself. When Hussein began conversing with me in Kiswahili rather than English (which, along with German he had perfectly mastered), it marked a real advance in our friendship.  


When I returned to the States, I was proud of my acquisition of Kiswahili. I had begun my formal studies of African literature at the University of Paris in 1977. My professors there were all French men and women who had spent time in France's former colonies, had become interested in and cultivated a knowledge of African authors writing in French but who made no attempt to learn an African language. In the 1980s, things were not significantly better for the study of African literature in the U.S. Professors who had mastered an African language usually taught in the disciplines of anthropology, linguistics, or folklore. I swore I would be a different kind of Western scholar of African literature and made it my mission to learn Kiswahili.  


So, puffed up with pride, I submitted a paper, "The Legacy of Swahili in American Culture," to the annual conference of The African Literature Association. The conference organizers correctly assumed that the panel on Swahili literature would not field a large audience, and I found myself in a small breakout room with a dozen Black professors sitting around a seminar table. I then set out my findings.  


No Swahili loan words had made it into English, with the exception of "safari." However, the creation and dissemination of Kwanzaa in 1966 by Professor Maulana Karenga (then known as Ron Everett) brought in a whole raft of Swahili words. Karenga chose Swahili to name and describe the ritual objects and leading ideas of this new Black holiday because it was the most widely spoken indigenous language on the continent -- 5 million native speakers, 50 million with different levels of mastery. However, as an artificial borrowing, several linguistic usages which would not have been recognized or condoned by native speakers were introduced by Dr. Karenga, to wit: 


  • Several of the Nguo Saba (seven principles) were incorrectly listed as infinitive verbs rather than nouns (kujichagulia and kuumba

  • Kujichagulia (self-determination) itself was a neologism that literally translated as "to choose oneself," thus erasing the collective nature of the English term 

  • The daily candle lit on each day of Kwanzaa was improperly termed in its plural form, mishumaa, rather than in the singular, mshumaa 


And most egregiously (by my lights) 

  • Adapted from the phrase matunda ya kwanza (first fruits), kwanza is spelled with only one a. Kerenga added an extra "a" at the end so that each of his seven children could display their own letter in the celebration. 


By the time I finished my presentation, the atmosphere in the room had turned noticeably icy. And then the attacks began. Who was I to set myself up as the arbiter of the correct usage of Swahili? What did I know about African American culture? How could I, as a white man, appreciate the value of these African borrowings to African Americans? Didn't this emphasis on "correct" usage entirely miss the point? Wasn't this just another way of asserting white superiority over Black practice? I sat in shocked silence as the conversation spun more wildly. One professor who lived in midtown Manhattan shook with anger as he described the consistent humiliation of being passed over by taxi after taxi trying to get to his job at Columbia University. "What does this have to do with the use of Swahili in America?" I thought to myself. I bolted the minute the panel was over.  


"But I was right!" I complained to my dissertation advisor who was also at the conference. "I was just presenting facts! I wasn't criticizing the people in that room!" She shook her head. "Do you think that having learned Swahili gives you a leg up on understanding African culture?" "Of course!" I replied. "I was able to get much further into the culture while living there than if I had relied only on English." "Book smart doesn't make you street smart," she said, handing me her profoundest lesson. "Be aware of what you're saying as a white person. Black people have been beaten down with facts during their whole time in the West. When you present yourself as an expert on anything Black, you have to be careful, especially if you think you're ‘right’. Humility is a much greater asset than knowledge."  


I had to think about what she said all that night. The next day I went through the conference until I found Dr. Makonde, the man who complained about the taxis in New York. "I want to apologize," I said, suddenly getting throaty with emotion. "I didn't know that I had hurt you yesterday." He gave me a startled look, then softened. "Thank you," he said. "You didn't know and now you do. That's a much more valuable lesson than the proper usage of mishumaa." 



- Robert Philipson


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