The Politics of Hoodoo
Dr Raven Dolick M.s.D.
Mar 14, 2016
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2016 RavenStar Enchantments
"No one ever came into Africa who did not want something for themselves" Dr. John Henrik Clarke
Hoodoo, like many other African and African American cultural and material products, is fraught with political debate. This debate is grounded in a sad political reality. That reality is that Africans and their descendants are not permitted to claim their own material resources or cultural products or to be "experts" on themselves. This is true on the African continent, in the West Indies, in Latin America and in the United States. To address this issue we will be posting a list of suggested readings by prominent African and African American scholars who address the political issues surrounding the appropriation of African cultural and material resources.
What is Hoodoo? Hoodoo is African American folk Supernaturalism & magic primarily for healing and controlling. The term "magic" is misleading and is not meant in the Western/European common usage. Rather here it means a supernatural religious tradition. Hoodoo was developed by enslaved Africans on the North American plantations of the old "black belt" South. They salvaged what they could under the harsh conditions imposed upon them by European and White American slaveholders from any number of religious backgrounds. The tradition was grounded in priesthood linked by bloodlines and ancestry.
The ancient African gods were ancestral and the priesthood was passed down in families. Hoodoo, likewise was passed down in families based on bloodlines which linked back to Africa and African ancestry. Family connection was and is essential in the making of a traditional African spiritual practitioner. It was rarely taught to family outsiders and never to enemies, conquerors and oppressors. Following emancipation, Hoodoo experienced its "Golden Age," an era that both Harry Middleton Hyatt and Zora Neale Hurston longed for, but missed. During this short lived period between emancipation and the years immediately following World War 1, Hoodoo grew and thrived under black control. After World War I, as North American-born Africans and their descendants fled the terrorism of the South seeking employment in the urban North, the old traditions weakened.
The Hoodoo cultural gap, that was left after population displacement and assimilationist pressures, would be exploited and partially filled by "marketeers"with one purpose: exploiting Hoodoo for as much money as they could get. Most of their clientele were poverty stricken or very poor African Americans. These "marketeers" developed a litany of justifications and explanations when their intent and authenticity were challenged, especially by blacks. Their reasons ran the gamut from "my people used to be closed to blacks" (this one is most frequently used by those that perpetuate the lie that Blacks and Jews were "close" as a justification for their exploitation of Hoodoo) to "I'm helping people." Unlike the Jewish middlemen exploiters, Christian exploiters gave other reasons. Some claim, "I was taught hoodoo by blacks" or "I've been closed to blacks" or "I grew up around blacks". What they were taught was "marketwired hoodoo". Now, as then, many of the white marketeers have their "Negro front men/women" whom they push out front to either prevent or ward off challenges to their legitimacy and to help pull in more black dollars. In my research I found this to be a pattern, especially in the curio shops of the 1930's 40's. 50's and early 1960's. I have recently found this to be a pattern with certain "internet marketeers. It did not matter to the "hoodoo marketeers" then, as it does not matter now, that they were delivering a sacred product that they knew little of. What they did not have they fabricated, thus transforming the face of Hoodoo. But some African Americans resisted, and took the old original system underground, where, if you can locate it, it still exists today.
Those who depend on Hyatt for their knowledge are left to weed through a wealth of collected information on Hoodoo gathered more than two-thirds of a century into the falsification and control by marketeers; none of whom practice or believe in any African traditional system. Unfortunately these "hoodoo marketeers" have little knowledge of the shortcomings of the interview process, particularly when whites were questioning blacks and offering them money for information. Hyatt must be taken with a critical eye for "ethnographic integrity" as should all the writings of whites who claim to study and write about blacks. One final yet important question:
Would you consult a Buddhist priest to teach you to be a Jew? Would you consult a Christian minister to lead you to Islam? Or would you request that a Muslim teach you about the religion of Zoroaster? Then why would you consult an outsider and non-practitioner of Hoodoo for anything related to Hoodoo? Think about it. When you want Hoodoo--get the real thing from the black community and not from the outsiders who exploit African American culture for their own benefit.
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