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A Republican senator from Arizona is reminding America that the real reason the GOP struggles to make significant progress with Black voters has nothing to do with Democratic propaganda painting the party as racist — because Republicans do a fine job of that all on their own.
Meet state Sen. T.J. Shope, who represents parts of Arizona’s Pinal, Pima and Maricopa Counties.
Last week, Shope barely let Christmas be over and done with before taking to social media to express his contempt for Kwanzaa and anyone who celebrates it, namely, Arizona’s Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs.
On Dec. 26, the first day of Kwanzaa, Shope retweeted a post from a right-wing group blasting the seven-day annual celebration as a “fake holiday invented by a criminal Marxist.” Shope added in his caption that Kwanzaa is a “fake anti-American, anti-Christian ‘holiday’ celebrated by our governor.”
Yes…a fake anti-American, anti-Christian “holiday” celebrated by our Governor in AZ… https://t.co/cQfbozZfYx pic.twitter.com/eR1k32xmac
— T.J. Shope (@TJShope) December 26, 2024
So, Shope thinks Kwanzaa is a “fake” holiday despite the fact that the celebration came to be the same way all holidays did: Somebody made it up.
He also thinks it’s an “anti-Christian” celebration despite the fact that Kwanzaa isn’t a religious holiday at all and is celebrated by Christians and non-Christians alike. Of course, white conservatives prove year after year that they just can’t stand to see any other holiday celebrated during the holiday season besides Christmas — which is why they continue to make “Merry Christmas” vs. “Happy Holidays” a thing — and since Kwanzaa is also a Black American celebration, it’s also, by default, “anti-American” in the mids of the perpetually white and fragile.
Shope isn’t the first Republican to denounce the holiday. In 2021, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene referred to Kwanzaa as “a fake religion created by a psychopath.”
Stop.
It’s a fake religion created by a psychopath.
You aren’t bringing in new voters, you are turning them away.
People are tired of pandering and BS. https://t.co/NrhE6O6BG5— Marjorie Taylor Greene
(@mtgreenee) December 26, 2021
Here’s what I wrote about that at the time:
As Business Insider pointed out, Kwanzaa was founded in 1966 by Maulana Karenga, who, in 1970, was convicted along with three other members of the US Organization, a Black liberation group, of brutally assaulting female members of the group in an attempt to force them to confess to conspiring against him.
Now, Karenga denied the accusations even after his conviction, but we can concede that he likely wasn’t a person to tout as some kind of great man or leader. Still, we essentially celebrate the massacre of indigenous people and theft of their lands on Thanksgiving, we celebrate a date when Black people were still enslaved and would be for more than a century and call it Independence Day and we celebrate Presidents’ Day and our Founding Fathers like most of them weren’t either slavers, rapists, unabashed white supremacists or all of the above—I think we can handle celebrating Kwanzaa despite the sins of its creator.
Republicans just elected for the second time a president who is now a 34-time felon who paid hush money to a prostitute, has been accused multiple times of sexual assault, and one whose anti-American and anti-democracy propaganda inspired a domestic terrorist attack at the U.S. Capitol. Black people really don’t want to hear about what these people think of Kwanzaa or its founder. We’re just going to keep exchanging gifts, eating traditional meals, lighting candles to honor the ancestors and minding our Black business while the racists who still celebrate holidays honoring the Confederacy continue to whine about our “fake” holiday.
SEE ALSO:
A Complete Guide To Celebrating Kwanzaa
Social Media Celebrates The First Day of Kwanzaa
