Introducing Religious Reparations: Repairing the Perceptions of African Religions Through Expansions In Education

Abstract

Western bookstores today are full of small boxes that advertise “Voodoo Revenge Kit” on the front. Their short descriptions encourage anyone who wishes to harm a cheating lover and curse a difficult boss to buy this product. Companies now sell t-shirts, mugs, buttons and key chains with “voodoo dolls,” and bound figures with needles through the heart. Novels, newspapers, and movies have, for over a century, produced representations of human sacrifice, cannibalism and devil worship as rituals central to the practice Obeah, Vodou and Santeria. U.S. televangelist Pat Robertson even remarked that the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti on January 12, 2010, was God's retribution on Haitians for practicing voodoo and making a “pact with the devil.” Remarkably, few people recognize that these depictions are, to a large degree, linked to slavery and racism, which continue to leave their stain on the past and present laws of American and Caribbean nations.