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Danielle N. Boaz, "Voodoo: The History of a Racial Slur" (Oxford UP, 2023)
01:02:27
An interview with Danielle N. Boaz
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- [00:00]
A
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- [01:07]
B
Hello, and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very excited today because we have with us Dr. Danielle Boaz to tell us all about her fascinating book from Oxford University Press, just published in 2023, titled Voodoo the History of a Racial Slur, which is a fascinating book, a really important book that interrogates what the word means, where it came from, how perceptions have varied over time and place, and how it's still being used in a lot of different contexts today as well. So this book is doing a lot of different things and somehow manages to do it in, you know, not 500 pages. This is an incredibly concise and readable book, so for many reasons. Danielle, thank you so much for being here to talk about the book.
- [01:57]
C
Thank you for having me, and thank you so much for that kind introduction.
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B
Before we dive into all things book, I'm reigning in my enthusiasm. Would you mind please starting us off with a bit of an introduction of yourself and explaining sort of why you wrote this, how you came to the project?
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C
Absolutely. So I'm an associate professor of Africana Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, which is in the United States. My background is that I'm a lawyer and a historian, and all of that kind of rolls together to study one thing, which is the persecution of africana religions, Religions of the african continent and religions of the african diaspora. And I study the persecution and, indeed prosecution of these religions from the around late 18th century or early 19th century, all the way up through the present day. And in addition to my work as a scholar, I also do some volunteer work on religious freedom cases Involving africana religions. And then I'm also an advocate for the human rights of devotees. So if they're experiencing any kind of violence or discrimination that isn't sort of wrapped up into a court case, Currently, I also do whatever I can to try to advocate for their rights and give visibility to their. Their struggle. And with regard to why I decided to write this book, this has been a passion project a long time coming. And essentially the motivation for it was that I strongly believe that the way that people are using the term voodoo, and so I'm talking about the popular use, the popular terms like voodoo science, voodoo economics, voodoo politics, and also just the way that voodoo is portrayed in the media, on TV and movies, that all of these things are really racist and really damaging to africana religions, which, as I'm sure we'll talk about a bit today, all of these religions have been glossed as voodoo at some point in time. And so with this book, I really wanted to explore the history of voodoo and share with the public how this word came into being.
- [04:09]
B
And I think the book very much accomplishes that. I would challenge anyone to read it and not think quite differently, or at least much more critically about any of the kind of throwaway portrayals that I think the word is often used and not thought about. But before we get into kind of the history of the word, we obviously have to talk about the word itself. Can you tell us what you mean by the term voodoo and a bit of its evolution?
- [04:35]
C
Sure. So when I talk about the history of the term voodoo, I'm talking about the english term which is spelled v o o d o o. And I'm talking about this specific pronunciation of voodoo as well. And I clarify that because there are a lot of other terms that this term kind of came from, Most specifically, if we trace back the origins. And just to clarify, this is not something that I do in my book. I am not tracing the sort of etymology of the word back to its roots. I'm talking about just the origins of this anglicized term, b o o d o o. But the scholars who have traced it back have argued that it comes from a word from the faun language in west Africa, and that originally in that language, it was pronounced sort of similarly, Perhaps voodoo, perhaps a slightly different intonation, but that the word meant spirit or perhaps something like deity. And then essentially what happened, as with a number of different colonizers in the Americas, the French took this word, this fawn word, and basically applied it to all of the African languages in their colonies. And they had a mixture of kind of spellings that they used for it. Sometimes it was something like vau d o u x or. Or something like that. There were a lot of different little variations in. In how it was spelled, but definitely something different than. Than the v o that we see today. And then this term has kind of evolved again or shifted again. And in that, typically today, Haitian religion, When we're talking about what has typically been described as voodoo in Haiti, is typically referred to as vodou and spelled v o d o u. And that is in part, a way of devotees trying to separate it from the negative history, the negative stereotypes of v o o d o o. So we have this shifting term all of the. All of the time. This term has changed a lot since around the 17th, 18th century. And in this book, though, I'm focusing on this popular term, what we understand in English, which is v oo DLO video.
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B
Very helpful foundation to ground this discussion. Obviously, in that explanation, the emphasis on sort of the English word of it is important. To what extent has. Is there. Are there similar words in other languages evolving in similar ways?
- [07:34]
C
Sure. So one of the interesting and extremely problematic things that happened in the history of the Americas Is that in pretty much every colonial empire, or in some cases, this is something that varied from colony to colony. The Europeans developed a particular term, Often derived from an African language. But the Europeans developed a particular term that they used to describe all of the different varieties of Africana Spiritual practices, religious practices that came to the Americas and that evolved and developed in the Americas. Typically, these terms came about in part because the colonists wanted to suppress these religions. And so they're. They're using a term. They're finding a term to talk about it, perhaps in the law, perhaps in various kind of proclamations and this kind of thing, or just amongst themselves. And so they're talking about something that they are using the term in a very derogatory way, Something that they want to suppress. So we see similar terms come up in a lot of different places. One of the best examples is the term obia in the. In the former British Caribbean, in the anglophone Caribbean. And this term Is. Is very similar to voodoo. It originally comes from West African word obi. And scholars have talked for a long time about what the various meanings of the term might have been in West Africa. But basically it either had a positive connotation or at least an ambiguous one that it was, or I should say, rather, at least a neutral one in that it neither met something good or evil, bad or positive. It was a term that. That perhaps could be manipulated in a lot of different ways. But then in the British Caribbean, it becomes a term that the colonists use to refer to African spiritual practices when they start prohibiting these practices in 1760 and on. And so even today, we still have laws against obia in the British Caribbean. And it's very vaguely described as any kind of spiritual practice or. Or, sorry, any kind of supernatural practice or pretense at supernatural power. And so, in theory, this is something that could mean any religion, right? It could be Islamic, it could be Christianity, it could be whatever, because everybody is. Is pretending or professing to engage with the supernatural. But this term has historically been used to prosecute Africana religions. And of course, as you might imagine, since it is prohibited and has been prohibited for hundreds of years, it has developed a very negative connotation that I would argue is very similar to voodoo. But it, you know, it wasn't always that way. And we have to think about how much influence Europeans have had over time in crafting these originally African words just for the sake of time. I won't go into this in too much detail, but something that I talk about briefly in the conclusion of the book is that there's another term in Brazil, macuba, that has, again, a similar trajectory. It becomes a term that is popular starting in the mid 20th century or so. And essentially it's used to identify Afro Brazilian religions that can be prosecuted and other religious communities are kind of arguing against. Oh, our religion is not macumba. And macumba is the thing that can be prohibited. And so today macumba is again, used very much in a similar way to voodoo. It's used in a very derogatory fashion. It's used a lot of times by outsiders who are carrying out various acts of discrimination and violence against religious communities. But the tricky thing, and this is a very strong similarity, similarity to voodoo, is that macumba also identifies a religious community that still exists in Brazil today. And so there's a community that still uses this term as its name. But by and large, the way that it's used is as kind of a racial slur as I would argue that Netflix is.
- [12:15]
B
Thank you for taking us on that brief tour of other places. Obviously, this is one of the places to point listeners to the book itself for all of the details. But that at least gives us an idea of what the words are that we're dealing with and the range of places I'd like to get into, therefore, more kind of what the words are doing. We've talked about accusations, we've talked about legislation against. What are some of the common elements when accusations of voodoo are used, and to what extent are they similar across space and time?
- [12:50]
C
Well, I would say that the biggest thing is that since the inception of this term, voodoo v o o d o o the biggest thing that we see is just a general association with quote, unquote, superstition, an idea that people who use this term are referring to something that's illegitimate, something that is slightly other than religion, less than religion. But the other thing that I would say is that accusations of human sacrifice, snake worship, cannibalism, and ritual murder, and with regard to ritual murder, specifically talking about the ritual murder of children, that these accusations have commonly been something associated with voodoo since at least the 1880s or so. And I think that these are still common stereotypes today. They're often appearing in horror films and crime shows and that kind of thing. And then the other thing I would say is that since the term voodoo first emerged, there's often been kind of a sexual component to it. There has been this idea, this accusation, this theme that women are being drawn into some kind of a situation where they're at least engaging in something that's a little bit risque. And in more sinister interpretations, they might be perceived as being kidnapped or enslaved, either physically kidnapped or enslaved or kidnapped or enslaved, and kind of held in bondage by some kind of supernatural power, if you will.
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B
Thank you for taking us through that kind of overview of many of the common elements. You mentioned, the sort of inception of this, the beginning of this term being used. Can we go back to that and examine it a bit more detail, what work these accusations were doing when they were first introduced in US News media, and to what extent that changed over the subsequent decade or so.
- [15:00]
C
Sure. So to just kind of answer this question a little bit, I'd like to describe a little bit what I'm doing to conduct the research for this book, which I think helps helps answer the question. So what I was trying to do here is determine when this term, voodoo, B o o d o o emerges out of these French spellings and emerges into the English language. Because remember, these are. This is coming from terminology that the French were using in their colonies for decades. Before we see this term used in English in any consistent form, before this becomes a term that's in popular use in the English language, and before we see this spelling of V o, o, d o o. And so to conduct this research, I scoured through all of these newspaper archives. I looked through archives of. Of books, of magazines, travelogs, any kind of written document that I could get my hands on. And what I found is that the first time that anything close to the spelling of V o o d o o appeared consistently in print was in the 1860s. And in particular, the moment when we see this becoming a fascination starting to pick up, starting to be discussed in the news is following the Union forces capturing the city of New Orleans during the U.S. civil War. And essentially what was happening is that in pro Confederate newspapers, people were writing about how there's this thing called voodoo, and it's this superstition that passes for religion among black people. And what they were arguing is that these superstitions were flourishing under Union control and that this would happen throughout the United States if the Union wins the war and if black people are free from white control. And it's often specifically phrased this way that the. The authors of these articles, these accounts of voodoo, are talking about how slavery is the only thing that's supposedly keeping away these African superstitions, these barbaric African practices. And they're explicitly mentioning the need for white control over the black population. So this is the first moment when we really see people talking about voodoo. It probably comes as no surprise that it's referencing New Orleans. But this particular moment in which it becomes a fascination, I think is a really important thing. And then what happens over the next decade or so, well, after the Civil War is over, obviously the Union forces win, and then voodoo really becomes an even more popular term. But now, since slavery is gone, instead of talking explicitly about this idea of the need for white control, typically what's coming up is voodoo is being referenced in the context of black people being granted various rights, especially, for instance, the right to vote and the right to hold public office. And so this narrative goes something like, well, look at these superstitious people. They aren't prepared to vote. They aren't prepared to hold leadership positions in this country. And just look at this terrible society that abolitionists have forced upon us. And people are arguing, well, black people are going to be practicing their superstitions all over the place, and they're just going to essentially destroy this society for the rest of us if they're given the right to vote, the right to hold public office, the right to have some control over what's going on in society, that their superstitions are just going to reign supreme, and that the whole United States is going to be doomed, essentially.
- [19:21]
B
That's a lot of work being done by a term and I think makes a very strong argument as to the racial slur nature of. Of what you are analyzing. But this is not just happening within the United States. You also show how towards the end of the 1800s, the term is also being used in the US media, but with regards to external events, specifically Haiti, what's going on with that?
- [19:46]
C
Right. So in order to explain this, I need to rewind and I want to give a little piece of history so that we're not assuming any knowledge here. So the important thing that we need to know is that Haiti is the site of what scholars often refer to as the only successful slave rebellion in the Americas. So it was once the French colony of Saint Domingue, and then in 1791, enslaved people started a rebellion that eventually led to the expulsion of the French and the creation of the first black republic in the Americas. So, of course, this is every slaveholding society's worst nightmare, right? No society wants. No society that's based on slavery wants to see Haiti in a positive light. No society that's based on slavery wants to see Haiti succeed. And so this creates a moment where slavery is still existing in all of these other places throughout the Americas. But Haiti is theoretically independent, right? They're. They're constantly under threat of foreign invasion. They're forced to pay significant reparations to France. People are refusing to trade with them. So there's a lot of things that are negatively impacting Haiti. But in theory, it's a free black society that existing. That is existing without interference from other societies. So this is the background that's kind of necessary for us to understand what happens then almost 100 years later. And that is. So after emancipation occurs in other parts of the Americas, there's this controversy about what black people are capable of doing, what role can they play in society? And sometimes Haiti, which by this time has been independent for several decades, it becomes a yardstick for what black people are capable of in other areas. So we have travelers, government officials, various other people who start visiting Haiti and basically begin writing about the horrors there and how black people have run this country into the ground, and that Haiti is supposedly proof that Black people cannot rule themselves. And there's this one guy in particular, Spencer St. John, who writes these really terrible things in the 1880s, some of which were just exaggerations of what was going on, and others were probably just straight up lies or speculation. And in particular, one of the things that he's writing about is cannibalism. And I guess just as an aside, it's important to say that cannibalism is a really common way for people to demonize others. And this has happened throughout history. Europeans in particular basically called everyone that they encountered cannibals, right? Everyone who they wanted to, to denigrate, everybody who they didn't understand their society. It's, oh, they're cannibals. And so they're, they're terrible people. We should go conquer these folks, right? And so this is a, a common stereotype that comes up in a lot of societies, but something that kind of hold gets held on to in Haiti and a lot of people are believing it, a lot of people are buying into it, and it really has a, a very damaging effect on their reputation. So St. John talks about cannibalism, he talks about snake worship and all these other really negative things about quote, unquote, voodoo in Haiti. And he's talking about all these things as supposed proof that black people should not be able to self govern, should not be granted any rights, and that they need to stay under the control of white people. So this is kind of, this moving back to these conversations that were happening during the US Civil War about, look at what these superstitions that black people are engaged in are telling us. They're telling us that black people should not be freed from white control. And whatever emancipation means in these various societies in the Americas, one of the things that it should not mean is that black people are allowed to control the government, that black people are freed from some kind of, quote, unquote, civilizing influence.
- [24:27]
B
And unfortunately, it doesn't stop there. People don't read this and go, wow, that's nasty. Let's not keep doing that. Sadly, this would be a shorter book, but maybe a better outcome if that were the case. This expands, this becomes not just about Haiti, but also as well about Cuba and not just about whether a country that has become independent is allowed to stay so, but also about US Imperialism. Can you take us through this evolution?
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C
Sure. So I guess I should say that the discussion of Haiti in the book is actually relatively brief compared to what one might expect. And part of that is because there has been a lot of Great scholarship talking about what the reputation of voodoo in Haiti, what impact this had on the country long term. So in particular, folks like Kate Ramsey, her book the Spirits and the Law, it talks a lot about, and numerous other examples talk a lot about how in the moments leading up to the US occupation of Haiti, which starts in 1915, that the rhetoric about voodoo and its supposed barbaric practices and how this shows that black people can't rule themselves, scholars have talked about that quite a bit. We already had a really great understanding of this, this idea that voodoo has played a role in trying to justify US Imperialism in the Caribbean. But what I argue is that Haiti is actually not the first example of using narratives about voodoo to try to justify sending U.S. forces to the Caribbean. And as you already stated in your question, the particular place where we see this playing out is Cuba. So the US Occupation is a lot less formal. The US occupation of Cuba is a lot less formal than Haiti. In Haiti, it almost lasts for 20 years. And there's a clear kind of start and end with Cuba. Essentially what happens is that at the end of the 19th century, or yes, the end of the 19th century, the US steps in and helps Cuba win its independence from Spain and essentially makes a treaty that has a clause that says that the US can come back and occupy Cuba, basically if anybody asked them to or if there's ever a reason to. It's kind of very vague sort of language there. And over the next few decades, really, the US Sends forces to Cuba multiple times. Some are larger groups than others, some are longer periods than others. But something that remains pretty consistent is that at least within the United States, the media is talking about voodoo to understand these occupations. So each time that the US Is sending forces, the US Media, the US News, is publishing stories that are basically saying, oh, Cuba, it's overrun with voodoo practitioners. They're sacrificing small children to their voodoo gods and arguing that, well, we need to go and be a civilizing influence. We need to go whip this place into shape and make sure that Cuba can gain control over its black population, which is something that it doesn't seem to be doing a very good job of right now. And there's a lot of interesting narratives, too, about race relations in Cuba. I don't think that I go into this perhaps enough even in the book, but Cuba received a pretty healthy number of enslaved Africans in the Atlantic slave trade, far more than landed in the entire North American colonies. And so Cuba at the time of independence has a very significant Afro Cuban population. And so one of the things that the US Media is kind of talking about is, well, Cuba has a comparatively small white ruling class, a population of mixed people, and then all these black people. Is this white influence in Cuba enough to keep the black influence under control? To keep the black population under control? And so when the US Is sending forces to Cuba, we see these stories that are trying to kind of help justify the intervention in Cuba, to make it seem like the US is very reluctant in its imperialism and is really just going to help white Cubans get things under control. And then in turn, sometimes what we see is that when the forces are leaving Cuba, there are stories again, about all these barbaric voodoo practices. And the author of the story is asking, will, can the US really leave Cuba to self govern if it's clearly unable to control its black population? So there are these constant kind of ebb and flow of stories. And what I argue is that you can kind of track the occupation and track certain important developments in race relations in Cuba through looking at whether or not there are widespread stories about Vodou in the US Media, about Vodou in Cuba.
- [30:15]
B
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And again, goes back to the point you were making earlier about the methodology and how that kind of searching can help us understand what's going on. And I'd love to continue that, moving chronologically forward. But going back to the domestic US Side for a moment, I was fascinated in your discussion, particularly the first half of the 20th century, that by looking for these, this term in US domestic media, it actually illuminates kind of a lot about what people were worried about at the time. What were they worried about at the time when they were using this word?
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C
Sure. Well, I talk about a number of different things that were happening in the first half of the 20th century in domestic discussions of voodoo. And I think maybe just giving one example today will give you some idea, will give the listener some idea about the kind of work that I'm trying to do here. So one of the most interesting things, in my opinion, is that stories about voodoo illustrate or reveal these anxieties about interracial relationships. And by here, I mean both romantic relationships and also just relationships in the broadest sense. What is the relationship between people of different racial groups in the United States? And so during the first half of the 20th century, especially in the first few decades of the 20th century, there was this narrative about white slave trafficking. And this was an obsession in both Europe and the United States, which I think very offensively, both Europeans and folks in the US Tried to describe this notion of white slave trafficking as the worst type of slavery to have ever existed. And the reason that, of course, I say this is so offensive is that we are really just a few decades after the end of the enslavement of people of African descent in the Americas. I mean, in the case of Cuba and Brazil, we're Talking about maybe 20 years or so post abolition of slavery. And Europeans and folks in North America are already saying that the supposed problem of white slave trafficking is the worst type of slavery to have ever existed. So we're seeing folks who are very quick to dismiss the brutalities of the enslavement of black people very, very quickly after abolition in the Americas. So what do we mean by white slave trafficking? Well, these anxieties were about white women who were allegedly being kidnapped or lured away and enslaved, usually taken from the countryside to the city and mutually enslaved for some kind of sexual purposes. And this is a huge anxiety, as I said, in the first half of the 20th century, really, from somewhere about 1910 to maybe around 1930 or so. And we see major laws passed in Europe and in the United States to prevent white slave trafficking from happening. In the US in particular, we see these laws sometimes being used to prosecute black men for alleged crimes against white women. This can be seen as part of this broader narrative about black men allegedly raping white women, which, as most people know, if you've studied anything about the history of the 20th century United States, this is a narrative that led to a lot of cases of lynching of black men in the United States. So this all then connects to voodoo in domestic stories. Because what we see are claims about voodoo doctors enslaving women with their powers. And also just generally, black male voodoo doctors corrupting white women who came to them for services. So white women who are coming to them for things like fortune telling or good luck. There's one particularly notorious at the time case that I talk about in the book where a white woman went to a black, quote, unquote, voodoo doctor because she had become pregnant out of wedlock. And the allegation was that the voodoo doctor ended up killing her. And there are all these ways in which the media tries to portray this black man as having lured this innocent, beautiful young white woman to come and consult him for his services, and then he just savagely beat her to death. Which, of course, there are a number of holes in the story, which I do my best to point out. I mean, this was decades ago. And so it's very difficult to conceive that we would ever know what really happened. But there are a lot of holes in the. In the prosecution of this man. And what I try to highlight is how this. This prosecution and other prosecutions of black voodoo doctors for the services that they provided to women in general, but in particular white women, that they often become a kind of legal lynching, if you will, that they become a way to inflict the death penalty on black men for alleged crimes against white women. And that they also help us to understand different other race, other different racial tensions. Like there's a close relationship between race riots and narratives about voodoo. There's anxieties about all black towns, these communities that were founded by black people, and predominantly or exclusively African Americans lived in these towns. And so we see anxieties about these spaces. And I try to show how narratives about Vodou are connected to all of these things. And as you can imagine from the vague way in which I'm kind of wrapping up my answer to this question, there's just a lot going on here. And I discussed this over the course of pretty much two different chapters. And one of the other things that I'll just kind of leave the listener with that I hope will entice them to read the book is that one of the most interesting allegations that we see in the first half of the 20th century is that the founders of the Nation of Islam become known as the voodoo cult of Detroit. And I talk about how this organization, which is all about black empowerment and. And kind of this somewhat pro segregation, pro segregated education, at least how they are really demonized in media and how voodoo becomes an important tool of that. So I think there's a lot to unpack about the early 20th century.
- [37:55]
B
Absolutely. Thank you for giving us an overview of such a complex topic. As you said, there is so much there. So, again, listeners read the book. There's a bunch of examples, as you just mentioned, the Nation of Islam being one of them. If we continue moving chronologically forward, however, again, we don't see accusations of voodoo dying out. In fact, we've seen them in more recent decades, both in terms of U.S. domestic issues as well as U.S. discussions on immigration and borders. What's been happening more recently?
- [38:31]
C
Well, I would say that domestically, the last time that we really see widespread stories about voodoo in the US media was back in the 1980s. And this was because the Duvalier dictatorships led to a large number of Haitians coming to the US and seeking asylum. So at this time, Haitians earn. Haitians are given the moniker of boat people, because they're coming to the US in these rickety boats that are barely able to hold together. And a lot of people are dying in the crossing. And this is kind of the first time that we see this happening as a mass influx of people, a mass crossing of people. And part of the narrative in the US media at the time is an allegation that some boat captains were sacrificing their passengers in voodoo rituals and that that's why so many people died. So this brings back this decades old narrative that we saw during this US imperialism in the Caribbean about voodoo being connected to human sacrifice. So in the book, what I explore is how there seems to be this really close relationship between debates about whether or not Haitians should be granted asylum and discussions about the terrible conditions in which they were being kept and these allegations about voodoo. So I explore how we can track these changes in laws and court cases about Haitian asylum seekers and, you know, just kind of general things of that nature. Discussions about the reformations of the Chrome detention center where a lot of patients are being kept. We can track these changes through looking at conversations about voodoo which are being raised in the media every time there's some kind of a major development in their struggle for asylum or their struggle for better conditions while they're seeking asylum. And in this case, I argue that there's a little less clarity in the purpose of the narratives about voodoo. But it appears that sometimes these narratives are actually being used in a way that might generate sympathy for asylum seekers. For instance, if there's a major development in asylum law, a major court case that has just been decided, or a major law that has been passed, news about that law or case might be reported right next to a story that alleges that these boat captains had sacrificed dozens of people in a voodoo ritual during the crossing from Haiti to the United States. And so it's kind of this idea, I think. I argue that, well, these folks have suffered such a terrible journey and that maybe they should be granted some kind of leniency in this process. Maybe we should see them a little bit more. I'm at a loss for the word at the moment. Passionately, maybe compassionately. Yes, exactly, exactly. Thank you for that. And briefly, I try to delve into a little bit about immigration in more recent years, in particular following the tragic earthquake in Haiti in 2010, and conversations about whether or not Haitians should be granted asylum at that time, conversations about what role voodoo must have played in causing this earthquake. Because, believe it or not, that was a narrative that Was actually really, really surprisingly common. The notion that through supposed devil worship, which I should say that no Africana religion actually believes in the devil. It's not part of their cosmology. But yet this is a stereotype that's often imposed on them, this idea that their religion is centered on worship of. Of the Christian notion of the devil. And so there were a lot of narratives at the time of the earthquake in Haiti and in the years that followed about, well, Haitians had brought them on themselves, they had caused God to kind of abandon them because they were worshiping the devil. And if they had not done so, then the earthquake would not have had such a terrible impact, or Haiti just in general wouldn't be so kind of dysfunctional as it has been in recent years with various instability, political instability, and a lot of just natural disasters and disease and that kind of thing that has hit the country very hard. And so I do bring that a little bit into the present to talk about how even today, in our views of what's happening in Haiti and in our kind of sense of whether or not we're. We should show Haitians some compassion as they're seeking asylum, whereas they need some kind of foreign aid. Voodoo does often reappear as a factor, if you will, in whether or not Haitians kind of deserve that compassion.
- [44:07]
B
Definitely something for listeners to look out for next time those topics with Haiti come up in the news, which is unfortunately likely to happen. We'll see if this term is used when it does. But I wonder if I could ask you to tell us a little bit about some current events happening on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, Given the discussion we've had so far about the history, the more current usages, what context would you likewise want readers, listeners, but reading, if they're reading the news, to be aware of, if they come across news reports talking about things, for example, like trafficked Africans to Europe and concerns, fears, accusations around sacred oaths.
- [44:52]
C
So this, this topic is something that is actually a bit of a departure from the other chapters in the book in the sense that the. The mention of voodoo in this context is something a bit bizarre to me and something that I felt like, needed a bit more background, a bit more context, and a bit of a stronger argument about how damaging these conversations are. So to provide listeners or readers with a bit of an overview, what's happening essentially is that in the past two decades or so, there has been a lot of discussion in the news and also in human rights reports as well, about the use of so called Voodoo oaths and voodoo rituals and human trafficking. And in the last chapter of my book, I explore how this seems to be in reference to various religious shrines that exist in West Africa and the rituals that are supposedly being performed there to solidify a relationship between trafficked women and the people who traffic them, and that these rituals, then are happening before the women leave West Africa and are taken to Europe. These rituals, or these oaths would, in theory, cause the women physical harm, perhaps cause their death, if they fail to live up to the obligations to. Usually, the oath is to repay the traffickers and also to never disclose the names of the traffickers to the authorities. So things of that nature. Now, one of the things that I want to be very careful about Is that I'm not at all dismissing the very serious nature of the situation of trafficked women. And I do talk a lot in this chapter about what exactly is happening to them. So they're often being forced into prostitution when they arrive in Europe and generally held under very coercive conditions. But despite all of this, I argue that it remains really problematic. To just dismiss these oaths as something negative that need to be eradicated, which is typically the position that European authorities and human rights advocates have taken. So what we see is a lot of news reports and a lot of these human rights reports saying, oh, we need to stop these voodoo oaths, and. And maybe we need to stop the practice of voodoo altogether. But very few people, if any, really, are taking the time to try to explore what exactly are these sacred oaths? Where are they coming from? What religion is this actually rooted in, and what kind of role have these oaths, have these rituals played in society over time? And so what I try to do is take some of the publicly available data about these cases, and I try to track down what exactly it is that we're talking about. I also talk about how sacred oaths that are very similar to what are being used in these trafficking cases have played an important role in the history of Africa and the history of the African diaspora, Including enslaved people took sacred oaths when they rebelled against slave owners so that they could be sure that participants would not betray the rebellion. And also, these oaths were thought. And these rituals that went along with them were thought to provide protection for the insurgents. We see a very similar thing happening in uprisings against colonial governments on the African continent. A great example is the MAU MAU rebellion. And so we know that these oaths were being used as liberatory practices that were essential to African societies. African people who Were being oppressed by Europeans. And the other thing that we see that's really, really important to talk about Is that scholars today, Especially scholars coming out of the African continent, African legal scholars in particular, Are talking about the continued potential of these oaths to serve an important role in African justice systems. We're especially seeing this discussion happening in west Africa in places like Nigeria, Where a lot of people are really disillusioned with the justice system, the legal system that the colonial governments have left behind. And so one of the conversations that legal scholars are having is, how can we reintroduce indigenous spirituality, Indigenous legal and political practices that can improve our justice system or change our justice system to make it more. Swifter, to make it more fair, and to make it something that people will believe in? And so, for instance, one of the things that scholars. That these scholars have argued Is that we could reintroduce sacred oaths that, again, are taking place in very much the same context, the same practice as these oaths that are allegedly being used by the traffickers. These oaths could be administered to encourage witnesses to tell the truth in court. So think about this as something similar to swearing on the bible, which a lot of. Right. A lot of societies do before someone gives testimony. Except this is seen as being something much more effective. Because in the societies where scholars are talking about reinstituting these kinds of oaths, There is a very widespread, very strong belief that if you lie after telling this oath, that after taking this oath, that something very negative will happen to you physically, that you will suffer a very severe illness, perhaps even death. And so, essentially, one of the things that I'm trying to do Is talk about how these things that are being dismissed as. As voodoo oaths, voodoo rituals, have actually been used historically for very positive purposes. And that spirituality that can be used for a variety of ends, that can be used for beneficial and for negative purposes, shouldn't be condemned or outlawed Just because a few people are choosing to abuse them. Now, the other thing that I'm talking about in this chapter Is that it becomes really problematic to refer these oaths as voodoo, because this just causes more negative stereotypes Against Haitian Vodou Vodou in west Africa and any other religion that has been called voodoo, but has absolutely no relationship to these oaths, which none of these religions do. Haitian Vodou Vodun in west Africa, they're completely unrelated. In fact, one of. One of the journal articles that talks about the origins of. Of why we call these voodoo oaths Explains that immediately. The police in one of the European Countries. Now, I can't recall off the top of my head which one that the police gave this. These practices, these oathing practices, the term voodoo, because that's how they viewed them. They viewed them as illegitimate, ineffective, fraudulent, coercive, spiritual practices. And so they labeled them as voodoo. This is not the terminology that the trafficked women are using. And in fact, some of the trafficked women told the authorities, oh, this is not how we call these things. This is a term that we'll use because it's something that you outsiders, Westerners can understand. But this is not what we call them. We don't call them foodios. And so I talk about how using voodoo is really problematic because it's creating this. This fictitious relationship with Haitian Virgil, with Votun in West Africa, with all these Africana religions that the oaths are not connected to. And then it's creating this dual problem of by calling it voodoo, you're calling it something that is illegitimate and carries all these stereotypes that voodoo has carried. So we can't talk about them seriously as a legitimate religious practice. And it is becoming one more thing that people think about when they hear the term voodoo. So it brings all these stereotypes back onto these other religions, if that makes sense.
- [53:57]
B
Absolutely it does. And is such an important reason to make sure we kind of know what we're talking about and use the correct terms and concepts. So we've sort of talked about kind of implicitly, or I've maybe been a bit more explicit about, as we've been discussing this kind of, oh, this will help people be able to read this more effectively or understand this better. What would you like listeners and readers to do after reading the book or listening to the interview?
- [54:25]
C
I would say exactly the kind of analysis that you've alluded to. I would preferably like people to start rethinking their use of the term voodoo, ideally maybe to stop using it entirely, except, of course, in the unique circumstances in which devotees are using this term. And just to clarify, so in New Orleans, there is a religious community that still refers to their religion as voodoo. V ood o o But outside of this context, I don't believe that there is any religious community that's actually calling itself voodoo. Certainly not folks in Haiti, for example. And so what I would like to see is that people are not using this term unless it's in a context where devotees are using it. And I guess if that's not possible, if stopping the use of voodoo entirely is not possible, then at the very least I want people to understand the racist history of the term and to think about what they're really saying when they're saying something like oh, that's just voodoo science, that's voodoo politics, or oh yeah, so and so I don't know what kind of voodoo they're trying to do here. I mean, there are so many words that carry with them a strong racial history. And I feel like there's a lot more awareness of the history of these other terms. And so I really want people to think about and understand the problematic history of this term and to really think critically about whether or not this is something that they should be saying and what it means if they're using the term.
- [56:11]
B
Fair enough. I think after listening to this, people will definitely be thinking through the term again. Before I let you go though, moving on, I suppose from talking about this book, it's obviously now off your desk. Does that mean, is there anything you might be working on now or next, whether or not it's a book, whether or not it's on this term that you'd like to give us a bit of a preview of?
- [56:34]
C
Well, I'm always working on a number of different things. One of them is that I have an ongoing project that is producing public facing scholarship that helps dispel myths about Africana religions. I'm also always working on. I have a database on my website which is www.religiousracism.org religiousracism.org. that database tracks cases of discrimination and violence against Africana religions in particular. Right now what we have posted is a bilingual Portuguese and English report, map and spreadsheet that tracks 500 cases of discrimination and violence against Afro Brazilian religions. And we're really focusing starting on Afro Brazilian religions because the situation in Brazil is really very dire these days. Devotees are being attacked constantly and in a number of very violent ways. Their temples are being burned, priests have been murdered, there's constant invasion of temples, destruction of sacred artifacts, vandalism of monuments, statues that honor Afro Brazilian religious entities and religious leaders. And so one of the big projects is an ongoing project that I'm, that I'm trying to update and make publicly available all the time, tracking those cases of discrimination and violence. Another thing that I'm working on, which is very closely related, is that I've started some studies collecting some data about the relationship between race and racism and violence against religious communities in the U.S. looking at the vandalism, arson, shootings, et cetera, of mosques, synagogues and black churches, and trying to understand how racism or nationalism play a role in the desecration of places of worship and the attacks on religious communities in the United States. And a preliminary report on that can also be found on my website, religiousracism.org and then I guess finally the other thing that I'm working on is that I have actually another forthcoming book. It should be out with Amherst University press sometime in 2024, I think, if not probably very early 2025, but hopefully 2024. This book is co authored with Dr. Umi Vaughn from California State University, Monterey Bay, and it explores noise pollution cases against Afro Brazilian religious communities and talks about how discrimination against sacred music has become a way to try to attack these religions and in some cases to try to eradicate them. And so it overlaps with a lot of the stuff that I was talking about that's in this public facing scholarship in this database, but tries to summarize or synthesize this particular area of cases and these attacks on sacred music.
- [60:05]
B
Thank you for highlighting the other work that you're doing and enabling people to find it. I think that's really helpful. And of course, best of luck with the upcoming book as well. And hopefully while it is being finalized and everything, listeners can of course read the book we've been discussing titled Voodoo the History of a Racial Slur, published by Oxford University Press. Danielle, thank you so much for being with us on the podcast.
- [60:31]
C
Thank you so much for having me, Sam.