By Christopher Newman
I am what God is
And since God is African
I am African.
(“I am African” a haiku)
As a doctoral student in the History Department at Howard University, I am often asked about my research, my area of study, and my dissertation work. I explain that my major is African Diaspora and Caribbean Studies with my dissertation work focusing on 18th-century Voodoo as a form of slave resistance in Saint-Domingue (colonial name of modern-day Haiti).
Routinely, when I mention Voodoo, I am met with intrigued, yet cynical responses laced with a stereotypical reply linking Voodoo and devil worship. As disappointing as such prejudiced conclusions can be, I understand biased misinterpretations because as Black people in the Diaspora, we are bombarded with imagery and rhetoric that belittles African traditions and diminishes the hundreds of African indigenous religions practiced throughout the Diaspora.
Misinterpretations and lack of acknowledgment is precisely why I choose to study Vodoun (also known by its inaccurate American nomenclature, Voodoo). In my research entitled, Savages and Sable Subjects: White Fear, Racism, and the Demonization of Creole Voodoo in New Orleans in the 19th Century,” I uncover the origin of Vodoun demonization in New Orleans, La. stemming from fears that followed the successful Haitian Revolution.
I landed upon the possibility that Vodoun played a significant role not only in Haitian experiences, but also in the lives of many Africans enslaved in the Deep South and Gulf Coast. Voudoun is a practice that uses root work and ancestral veneration as ways of connecting with nature’s magic, engaging with ancestors, and protecting from evil spirits as a means of navigating life’s harsh realities. Vodoun represented mysticism, healing, and revolution, while provoking fear, misunderstanding and racism.
As a Black body in the Diaspora, I asked myself, “What did my ancestors believe in, and who did they believe in if it wasn’t Christianity or the Christian God?” Many of us tend to recognize religion and spirituality in terms of Eurocentric Christianity while integrating it with traditional African spiritual practices that often preceded Christianity by thousands of years.
Many Black Christians in the Americas and Caribbean trace their religious understanding to their ancestors’ enslavement, fostering a connection to Christianity based in large part upon forced servitude. Meanwhile, new religious practices arose fusing Christianity with African spiritual understandings resulting in Brazil’s Candomblé, whose origins can be traced to the Yoruba, Fon, and Bantu of West and Central Africa, and Afro-Cuban/Afro-Caribbean Santería, originating with the people of the Yoruba nations of West Africa.
Living in the Diaspora allows for exploration of the cultural, linguistic, familial, and spiritual bonds which were carried across the Atlantic and passed down through generations. Such understandings push aside the falsehood that Black people in the Diaspora, especially in the United States, are monolithic.
Truly, to be a Black body in the Diaspora is to understand that while one might have been born in the Atlantic world, he or she is not of the Atlantic world. Instead, the Diasporan body encompasses what Dr. Joseph Harris noted is the “Triadic relationship linking a dispersed group of people to the homeland, Africa, and to their host or adopted country.” My lived experiences as a Black body in the Diaspora have dictated that I am not of the country where I was born, nor should I claim to be if I know that my ancestors were brought into this world elsewhere. Likewise, if my ancestors began elsewhere, then how might they have understood God within a framework absent of enslavement?
My lived experiences have been shaped by the African Diaspora insomuch that I consistently look to my ancestors to discover more about myself. Having conducted Black Genealogy on my paternal and maternal sides for nearly a decade, I discovered that many of my ancestors were Gullah and Native/Indigenous. This proved invaluable as I embraced the essence of the Diaspora in both my personal and academic life. My research, especially my recently published article in the Madison Historical Review, is a way of honoring my heritage and rewriting the demonization of our heritage.
Through the years, I have become more aware of my spirituality, while slowly shedding the skin of religious indoctrination. Through this, I have also developed the mantra that “Spirituality is what you’re born with, religion is what you’re taught.” Therefore, it is important to gravitate toward that which is inherently inside of ourselves. Only then can one find themselves in harmony with the ancestors who carried their spirituality across the Atlantic and beyond.
