The cards featuring pictures of women in brightly printed dresses and red, green and black geometric designs reminded him of Africa, but not quite.
It was Donald Donga's first year in the United States after emigrating from Nigeria, and at a drugstore greeting card display, he was introduced to a holiday called Kwanzaa. He had never heard the word in Africa. So he figured it must be American slang for Christmas.
The confusion was understandable. The annual seven-day celebration that begins today is steeped in African traditions but is wholly an American invention, one intended to raise the racial consciousness of black Americans and link them to their heritage.
These days, some of the people marking Kwanzaa are actually African-born and just a few years away from that heritage.
Six years after his bewildering experience with the greeting cards, Donga has embraced Kwanzaa as enthusiastically as any child of the civil rights era, performing traditional African dances at holiday parties and speaking knowledgeably about the history of slavery and the significance of race in this country.
He is, after all, an American now -- a black American.
"We don't need it in Africa; there, every day is Kwanzaa day," said Donga, a tall, 35-year-old District nursing student with a lilting accent. "Kwanzaa is necessary here. African Americans have lost touch with their culture, and they need to come together to help each other."
Donga's words reflect a reality of his experience here: Despite their skin color, many African newcomers and those whose ancestors were American slaves haven't had a natural bond. Just like the 19th-century conflicts between established European settlers and Irish immigrants, the two black groups have often seen each other as different -- and as competition, particularly for jobs and political opportunities.
The Washington region, long a hub for black Americans, is now home to the country's second-largest population of immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa (New York is the first), with nearly 100,000 people. Many of the nation's estimated 1 million African immigrants arrived in the past decade, after the U.S. government started issuing "diversity visas" to allow newcomers from a broader range of nationalities.
That some Africans are recognizing Kwanzaa is a sign of a growing comfort with identifying themselves with black Americans, rather than just with immigrants or with people from their specific country of origin, academic cultural experts said.
| Continue Phuong Ly's Washington Post article "United by a Common Present"
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