Kawaida

Intellectual Heritage

To construct his system, Karenga borrowed from and builds on a wide range of continental and diasporic African thinkers. Among the most significant thinkers whose concepts Karenga evolved, redeveloped, and reshaped as essential elements in Kawaida philosophy are Sekou Toure, Julius Nyerere, Kwame Nkrumah, W.E.B. Du Bois, Léopold Senghor, Malcolm X, Robert Williams, Frantz Fanon, Marcus Garvey, and later Amilcar Cabral. Kawaida incorporates all these thinkers' emphasis on the centrality of culture and cultural revolution in the liberation struggle and the overall life of the people. Later, Kawaida incorporates the womanist writings of Anna Julia Cooper; Mary McLeod Bethune's concept of the educated and socially conscious vanguard; Ida B. Wells's idea of the right and responsibility of self-defense; as well as texts in the Husia and Odu Ifa that reflect its concern with an egalitarian complementarity and partnership of men and women in the ongoing project for human freedom and human flourishing.

Focus on Culture and Community

As a self-consciously cultural and communitarian philosophy and practice, Kawaida focuses on culture and community as the twin pillars of its intellectual and practical foundation, framework, and focus. Here Kawaida draws heavily on Toure's concept of full re-Africanization, the self-conscious thrust to “recreate, create, and circulate” African culture—on the continent and in the diaspora, ancient and modern— and use it to constantly bring forth the best of what it means to be African. This re-Africanization supports and advances the liberation struggle and improves and enriches the present and future. As Karenga put it, “Culture provides the basis for revolution and recovery.” In fact, people's recovery of their Africanness in the fullest and most progressive sense aids and insures revolutionary practice. Thus, at the heart of the Kawaida project is the thrust to inspire, inform, and sustain cultural revolution and national or communal liberation, as well as new paradigms of being African and human in the world.

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