Vodou and Black Liberation

"If it's not about black liberation, I don't have time for it! " I hear this often from diasporans looking for spirituality without the centuries of racial, economic, and social oppression associated with American Christianity. The weakness of this assertion is that the qualification for liberty is rooted in white supremacy.

Black identity is a construct handed to us by those who sought to control white labor. By creating a boogeyman out of the Africans and Native Americans, the European aristocracy galvanized their workforces under a "White" identity, whipping them into a fear frenzy with the threat of us while promising them great rewards for reinforcing the aristocracy's power which will be employed in subduing the "Red and Black Menace". To keep the white workers from actually freeing themselves from the tyranny Europe's monarchies, they empowered second sons and ideological radicals to unite their communities under a white identity designed to keep the aristocracies in power (or provide a colonial safe haven should they ever lose it), necessitating the myth of the "Black Man".

This tidbit of history is important when discussing Black Liberation because, at it's crux, it is an effort to be absorbed into or exchange the places with the favored workforce, and not seek liberation from the aristocracy(or the plutocracy that replaced it) at all.

In this regard, black liberation is not compatible with Vodou at all. For Vodou, liberation is the freedom to observe your covenants with God, your ancestors and the spirits, and to live harmoniously with your neighbors and countrymen. Liberation in Vodou is a matter of merit, that you enjoy a measure of freedom you earn, but even if you are kept a modicum of respect for your humanity is obliged. That shelter, food, and companionship(not a sexual partner) is the bare minimum of civilized society. That opportunity might not be equally accessible but they must be equitably accessible. That regardless of our opinions, doctrines, and dogmas, God gave women the wombs, the honor, and burden to carry and bare children. A man's unsolicited opinion on the matter is a questioning of God's wisdom.

Black liberation is not achievable as long as it is couched in the language and ideals of the oppressor. Liberation comes from God, and if we are not mindful of making the observation of our ancestral and individual covenants with God the only qualifiers for liberation then we will never have it.