I was 16 years old when I witnessed my intoxicated uncle scream at the top of his lungs: “I’m a witch; Now what?” at a family gathering. I’m not clear on what the circumstances leading to this outburst were (though I think it is safe to assume that this was drunken babble rather than a factual declaration) but I do know that this awakened a curiosity in me that I have struggled to satisfy. It is a cultural barrier that will stubbornly withstand all transformation. Even in the most diversely evolved future, this will be the thing that white people and black people will struggle to logically explain to one another; witchcraft.
In the many years of society grooming me to become an uppity pseudo white kid who perpetuated elements of white supremacy with my snotty “white” accent and my inability to speak my own vernacular, never have I been confronted with my own blackness more than when a white teacher suggested that there was no such thing as witchcraft. My burning desire to tell her that she was an idiot was held back only by my pursed lips and fear of detention. I felt an almost primal need to list the many people who inexplicably went crazy or went to sleep and never woke up again. It was a confusing time. Surely, in a cut and dry world, bi-polar, schizophrenia, or heart and brain aneurisms would serve as more logical than the old lady next door hunched over a cauldron…but for some reason, at that moment my world seized to be cut and dry.
*I would like to take this opportunity to draw attention to the fact that white people are not completely untouched by the entity that is witchcraft as “supernatural” and “vampire diaries” have so considerately brought to light. If you can believe in vampires and ware wolves, we can believe that an undisclosed amount of people have been turned into flies and various other insects.*
Now, before I delve into my opinion of the issue of witchcraft I would like to apologise in advance to the many people who will be offended by my statements: I don’t mean to hurt you but I do mean what I say. The door to the belief in witchcraft is kicked open around the same time that the door to the belief in miracles. That door is then taken off the hinges by the scientific theories e.g. “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”. Angels/demons, God/Lucifer, Heaven and Hell are all just testiments of this “tit for tat” theory. Then there are slogans such as: “If you believe; it you can achieve it” and “mind over matter” which are thrown around all willy-nilly and everyone feels great about it…but what about those who want to achieve things that are to the detriment of others? Surely they can achieve what they believe too? Or is there some sort of filter that ensures that all bad thoughts are not realised? Isn’t that what witchcraft is essentially: bad energy?
I don’t mean to trivialise the white experience at all, and I promise to write many articles on the white experience when I come back as a white woman in my next life, but right now as a black woman, I can honestly say that being black is tough. Often, watching a black family come from nothing and gradually scrape their way to success, school their children and go on to live a comfortable life is somewhat of a miracle, so much so that most times it is assumed that the family had a little help from say….a demonic snake? If the family suffers some sort of a loss (their child or close relative dies) it is widely accepted that the deceased’s life was how the family had to pay for their wealth. No one mentions the double shifts the mother worked or the two jobs the father has because; everyone has double shifts and everyone has two jobs but not everyone has a Lexus. Who is going to tell the man with two jobs, five kids and a mountain of debt that; the only reason the Nxumalo’s have a double story house and their kids are in private school is because they made sacrifices? We all make sacrifices and no one wants to hear that despite their sacrifices; things may never work out for them as well as they worked out for the Nxumalo’s. So it must be a demonic snake. It can’t be luck or good fortune or hard work and preparation meeting opportunity…it is obviously a demonic snake because a demonic snake means that it is fair. A demonic snake means that the only reason the Nxumalo’s are making it, is because they have no problem selling their souls and we all have souls to sell meaning we can all make it.
I’m not saying that witchcraft does not exist but I do believe our insecurities and hardships as black people contribute widely to how much of a role we think witchcraft plays in our lives. There are people who experience hardship after hardship and struggle to make it from one day to the next. People who struggle to actually live due to the amount of sorrow that burdens their day to day lives. Those people are the ones who wake up one day and think: “this can’t be life”. Those are the people who are looking for a reason…desperately seeking an explanation for their unending misfortune and in those cases, it takes one person pointing out a possible witch to initiate a re-enactment of the “Salem witch trials”. With belief comes passion and not all passion is positive. So again, negative energy steals the show.
There are very few black people (if any) that can say with a straight face that they honestly do not believe in witchcraft, mostly because we have just seen too much. The average black person has seen things that would send most whimpering back into their mother’s arms. When I apply my cheap street psychology, my findings are that we need to believe in the supernatural. We need to know that, when needed, there is a means to protect oneself from the evils of this world, whether it is by means of prayer, meditation or chewing on a stick Gonondo gave you. But whose Voo-Doo is the right Voo-Doo? Well that is not for me to decide.
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