How the phrase ‘voodoo’ turned a racial slur

For many years, it has been widespread for individuals to throw round phrases like “voodoo politics,” “voodoo economics,” “voodoo science” and “voodoo medicine” to reference one thing that they assume is ridiculous, idiotic or fraudulent.

Horror movies and crime shows typically inform tales about evil “voodoo medical doctors” who terrorize their victims with black magic. Even Disney’s first film with a Black princess, launched in 2009, had a “voodoo physician” because the villain.

Sadly, these reveals and flicks promote myths about voodoo that reinforce greater than a century of stereotypes and discrimination. In my 2023 e book, “Voodoo: The History of a Racial Slur,” I argue that voodoo is an especially problematic time period with a deeply racist historical past.

Most African diaspora religions, that are religions which have roots in Africa, have been mislabeled as voodoo in some unspecified time in the future in time. That is very true of Haitian Vodou – the faith that’s most regularly stereotyped by outsiders as “voodoo” within the twenty first century.

Early makes use of of the time period

The time period voodoo traces its roots again to a phrase within the Fon language in West Africa which means “spirit” or “deity.” The French adopted a model of this time period, “vaudou” or “vaudoux,” to consult with African non secular practices of their colonies in Louisiana and Saint-Domingue – modern-day Haiti.

Later, “vaudou” developed into “voodoo” within the English-speaking world. It first turned a family time period within the U.S. within the 1860s and 1870s. When the U.S. public was first introduced to voodoo, it was sometimes in newspaper articles and different publications that described African American non secular practices in an exaggerated approach, typically retelling weird and even fabricated tales as in the event that they have been widespread follow.

More often than not, the authors used these narratives about voodoo to argue that African People have been unfit for citizenship, voting rights and holding public workplace due to their so-called superstitions.

Actually, the primary time the time period was broadly used was after the Union forces seized New Orleans through the U.S. Civil Struggle. Confederate supporters argued that the recognition of voodoo in Union-controlled New Orleans confirmed the barbarity that Africans would return to if not beneath the management of white individuals.

Later, within the twentieth century, claims about voodoo have been used as one method to justify the U.S. colonization of Caribbean international locations with massive Black populations. Specifically, fabricated claims that Black Cubans were practising the ritual homicide of kids as a part of their voodoo practices circulated within the media to assist sending forces to the island within the 1900s and 1910s.

Equally, within the early twentieth century, journalists, travelers and others falsely claimed that U.S. intervention was vital as a result of Haitians have been participating in cannibalism, human sacrifice and snake worship as a part of their voodoo rituals. Historian Kate Ramsey writes in her 2011 e book, “The Spirits and the Law: Vodou and Power in Haiti,” that whereas U.S. Marines have been occupying Haiti from 1915 to 1934, they persecuted and prosecuted devotees – arresting the individuals they discovered taking part in ceremonies and burning their sacred objects.

In the meantime, within the first half of the twentieth century, references to voodoo continued to be a method to communicate disparagingly about Black populations within the U.S. Even the founders of the Nation of Islam have been stereotyped as a “voodoo cult” after an alleged member dedicated a extremely publicized homicide in 1932.

Allegations that Black Muslims practiced human sacrifice adopted the group for many years, lengthy after the one that dedicated the crime was decided to be legally insane and despatched to an asylum.

Prejudices linger

This historical past has left a stain on public perceptions of voodoo that’s troublesome to scrub away. The very best instance is the remedy of devotees of Vodou, a religion in Haiti that may hint lots of its beliefs and practices again to West and Central Africa. Vodou facilities on honoring the ancestors and venerating spirits generally known as the Lwa.

Vodou was regularly labeled as “voodoo” in Anglophone newspapers and different literature within the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and devotees have been falsely accused of committing atrocities like cannibalism and human sacrifice throughout their ceremonies. Though Vodou has no final supply of evil in its cosmology, it’s often denounced as satan worship. These myths have led to discrimination and violence towards devotees.

In 2010, some Haitians and a few foreigners blamed Vodou, which they typically misspelled as “voodoo,” for the tragic earthquake and subsequent cholera outbreak that devastated Haiti. Probably the most well-known remarks got here from the late Pat Robertson, an Evangelical minister and political commentator, who claimed that the earthquake was God’s retribution towards Haitians for holding a Vodou ceremony. He described the Vodou ceremony as a pact with the satan to help of their revolution towards the French.

Inside Haiti, some individuals committed acts of violence towards devotees and denied them the emergency aid that was despatched to quake victims. Later that yr, violence escalated as some Haitians blamed Vodou for the cholera outbreak. In November and December of 2010, lynch mobs violently killed dozens of Haitian Vodou clergymen.

Sadly, discrimination and the violence perpetrated towards Haitian Vodou and other African diaspora religious groups typically goes unpunished and unnoticed. Actually, a latest survey means that a big portion of the U.S. public subscribes to the stereotypes about voodoo that led to those assaults.

With assist from the Public Faith Analysis Institute, my fellow researchers and I asked 1,000 adults dwelling within the U.S. whether or not they used the time period “voodoo.” Two in 10 respondents, or about 20%, mentioned they’d used or heard others use the time period at the least as soon as a month. The survey discovered fewer than 1 in 4 thought of voodoo to be a faith.

Additional, roughly 3 in 10 respondents believed that followers of voodoo have been extra more likely to be concerned in legal exercise than the typical individual, and an astonishing 64% mentioned they believed that followers of voodoo have been extra more likely to follow black magic or witchcraft than the typical individual.

This survey reveals the pervasiveness of those biases that developed to assist slavery and imperialism. Due to this fact, I argue that when somebody makes a press release like, “That simply seems like some ‘voodoo’ to me!” they’re co-signing the lengthy racist historical past of the time period and selling the concept religions from Africa are primitive, evil and barbaric.