Black Witch

Alright, a little thing during my EEOC issue happened and while I was basically going through one of the worst experiences of my life, a post had happened across my personal FB timeline about Blackthorn Hoodoo Blend teas, created and made by Amy Blackthorn, a relatively big name in the Pagan community. If some of you all will remember, I reviewed the tea itself in an Open Box Review for Sabbat Box. I liked how it smelled and the tea tasted pretty decent but it’s that name. I really dislike the name.

Amy Blackthorn is White, Hoodoo is Afro-Caribbean (and so am I). Blackthorn doesn’t have any major background in Hoodoo culture or traditions to the point that it would be okay for her to use the name for part of her business moniker, which she is making money from. Also, the teas don’t have any connections to Hoodoo anything in culture, taste, type or anything, “hoodoo” is basically just a name. That’s cultural hijacking. She doesn’t donate or assist to Black communities, she doesn’t talk about race or anything that could possibly be seen as a saving grace. Nothing. It would have been better for her to simply name them “Blackthorn Celtic Blends” and that would have been at least a bit more accurate than “Hoodoo”.

I’m simply commenting as a normal person, not Black Witch, about the tea. Unfortunately, Blackthorn thought it would be smarter to block me than actually talk about her business choices head on because somehow being neglectful is a great business practice, even on the pages of their friends (Blackthorn and I have a mutual friend, that’s why we could interact, I was just commenting to my friend talking about the tea, I didn’t know Blackthorn would be about).

Prime business practices here

Blackthorn’s comment, as you could guess, was basically “Why don’t you like the name?” It was my responses that basically got me blocked from seeing future comments from Blackthorn. Apparently she must not like when being challenged about her business’ name. Which leads to wonder: “Why did she name it that if she didn’t want to deal with the package that comes with it?” I wasn’t even being snarky or nasty, just explaining my reasoning.

When I got blocked, I totally didn’t see it coming, I thought my FB was acting odd because I was on mobile:

I really didn’t know what happened, I’ve never knowingly been blocked before from causing butthurt

Annnnnnnnd here comes a random person, out of nowhere but super predictably because Paganism is excruciatingly White, so I really shouldn’t be surprised. They’re defending the name choice. Remember, I’m Afro-Caribbean, they’re not. I don’t practice Hoodoo but it is more part of my culture than it is theirs, a White person. Also, it is because of Whiteness that Hoodoo is seen the way it is and with such the rep it has. There’s a whole cultural issue that is still very much ongoing because of this.

You can almost hear the “Feel the Bern, I’m not racist. I have a black guinea pig and I pet my Black friends always”

Here’s the thing…”Hoodoo” has everything to do with race. Part of how Hoodoo was born was literally from slavery because slave-owners did everything they could to rip and destroy cultural ties as a psychological tactic to mindbreak a mass group of people and turn into obedient and ever-fearing slaves. Same reason why slaves learning how to read and write was illegal, among other things, which still stretches quite a bit into modern times. Like education and jobs, for example. None of which I’ve ever seen Blackthorn remotely talk about. You want to have Hoodoo be considered worldly for all (read: White people) to use and do whatever with? Then get ready to talk about all the baggage that comes with it. The people lynched. The people oppressed. The people stolen. The people dehumanized into animals. The people brutally murdered. The people who rarely get to see justice. The people widely hated. Can’t approach that topic? Then maybe Hoodoo and Voodoo aren’t your bag. Try Wicca.

Hoodoo was mainly a clever way for Black people to retain and practice cultural beliefs and ideas cobbled together. Blackthorn has absolutely no idea what that is like or to have something of the sort in your cultural heritage, background or anything. Hoodoo, like Voodoo, is usually synonymous with “evil”, “dark”, “wicked”, “superstitious”, “dark people dancing in the night over feverish drums hexing innocent people they don’t like”. Stuff like that. Germanic, Roman and Celtic practices in Paganism are seen in a better, much more comforting light.

I try to explain to the person why the name is problematic.

Now, it’s more than just Blackthorn who blocked me, several supporters of hers did that, mainly the people you saw that I responded to. Everyone, this is a bad idea. Why? Because even if no one lobbed epithets at me or anything, blocking me in refusal to talk about a racial issue they caused, it’s still racist. It’s still racism to blatantly use a word in reference to a culture you’re not part of for business purposes and to silence any and every one that calls you out on it. It’s still racism to not want to listen to people from that cultural background trying to explain to you why it’s racist. Bigotry comes in many forms and not all of them are abrasive and overt. Sometimes it’s just making sure to turn a conversation about Black historical and cultural beliefs into a “Whites Only” forum.

Blackthorn, in trying to duck an actual, non-aggressive conversation about the name of her business because it is problematic, is being racist about the whole thing. Racism isn’t all burning crosses and voting for Trump, it can be as quiet and simple as simply saying, “This is mine and I won’t listen to anyone about it because I don’t care, I just wanna make money.” Geez, if she were richer and hated her own gender, she could match Trump in idea. How much you wanna bet she finds that guy abhorrent…despite thinking just like him?

Her tea bins may as well be air, what’s the point patronizing her business? Even if she posted “Black Lives Matter”, it’s pretty clear she doesn’t genuinely feel that way. And people think White liberals and White Pagans are progressive. Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. But hey, what does she care? It’s just business.

Instead, here are some actual Black owned tea online stores:

Wystone’s World Teas

Look at that vast selection! And the prices are really good! A basic skim of the site seems like the average price is $6.95, it’s pretty great! There’s even a tea blog to learn new teas and types.

SoRen Tea

This site looks really nice. The prices are greater but it’s moreso high-end. Try them out!

Update (April 1, 2016, 6:50 PM):

I posted this column to Twitter, including Blackthorn (@MorrigansWitch) in the tweet:

This is literally what I get less than a couple minutes later:

Seriously? How was I supposed to learn anything about her, her stance or anything? She blocked me the second she noticed I wasn’t a glowing review, not actually talked to me. It would be one thing if I had a convo with her, then posted this like nothing happened but newp, she basically blocked me from the get-go.

How I responded:

Of course, in prime business sense, she is ignoring me. She’ll probably whinge on later about how I still don’t know anything about her and made an assumption from a quick interaction…that she, herself, axed so there wouldn’t be any continual discussion of any sort.

Everyone, especially White Pagan business owners, this is a really bad way to handle a problem. If you don’t like dissent, tackling head on is probably your best bet… or avoiding the thing that would get you dissent, like not picking a name that becomes racist on its face. If she talked to me originally, something that was her fault she didn’t do, this could have been pretty different. It’s a number of reasons why I didn’t like how she responded, all of which I already mentioned. This is basic business sense. She can’t complain “OMGZ, U dun know meh!” when she literally made sure that I wouldn’t be able to. Because she blocked me before really chatting with me. Killing all chance I could talk to her, which is all I wanted to do.

Now, usually March is when I have guest writers and suches happening, because I like to break the monotony once in a while but ehhhhh, with what has happened recently, it simply can’t happen this year. Sorry!

Being Pagan, it is important to note that you don’t have to be a social know-it-all. Since starting Black Witch, I have noticed that I don’t really know the who’s-who of popular Western Pagan culture. Sometimes, it would surprise people that I didn’t know so-and-so and such-and-such. It didn’t really irk me, but surprised me instead. All I really knew were my books and my info on cultures, religions and other beliefs.

I think this was a good thing because I have avoided a lot of unnecessary drama that pops up in the Pagan community. Very much a good thing. It’s a good thing because I get annoyed very easily and when I’m annoyed I’m very irritated and I just want to bow out of the socializing. Just participating in the non-alternative Black community on Tumblr has already shown me this. From what I understand, the Pagan tag on Tumblr is full of people who want to culturally appropriate, people who don’t understand Paganism but just want attention, that the tag is just a playground for people to act as stupid as they want. Although I try not to be, I feel that I’m a very serious person, especially when it’s in regards to faith and religion so to have people abuse the tag, to have people run amok with racist nonsense tends to irritate me and make me not want to socialize with other Pagans. And if I interacted with this type of nonsense earlier when I was younger, I probably wouldn’t have learned at all or gotten as far as I did in knowing about Paganism because I would have been convinced that it was a “Whites Only” kind of religion, which is one of Paganism’s major problem in the PR department.

Now, I know some are going to think, “Well if they can’t get past that, then this is not for them. Anybody who truly wanted to learn and participate with the religion would do so, no matter the obstacle. We all have a hard time somewhere.” Thing is, that ignores most defiantly that some need a safe space to learn about themselves and the faith. And that the safe space has to be safe for them, not simply for White Pagans. Basically, the safe space has to actually be safe. To be barraged with Whiteness and the othering it can cause, that brings an additional and unique stress that a Black Pagan has to unfairly encounter because it brings about a sense of being constantly embattled. That you can’t, metaphorically, really get any sleep anywhere, not even where you’re searching for a peace of mind.

And for Black Pagans, it is particularly difficult because they also have to encounter anti-Blackness, which other minority Pagans will express. Never fun having to explain to people about how they’re lightening up African deities – or just making them White – just to be argued with about how they were somehow always White or light and how to challenge this is somehow offensive to the person doing the White-washing. And how pointing out that African deities shouldn’t be lighter than plywood is somehow a display of being racist, not the actual act of lightening itself.

This is just one example of a massive slew. Pervasive racism makes learning effectively very tricky. It can be a myriad of ways, from the “I can’t be racist – I’m voting for Bernie Sanders!” White liberal thinking to the “Trump is right! It’s not racist to tell the truth! It’s called ‘being honest’!” White conservative thinking. There’s a myriad of ways prejudice can seep up, like bedbugs.

Granted, I’m more the solitary type but I know other Black Pagans who really would like some camaraderie, to be able to fellowship with other Black Pagans the same way a good chunk of them probably did before when they were Christian. I can totally see why: it’s nice to belong, to be in a group that reflects you and have your best interests at heart, that can support you and build community with, so on and so forth.

Most, if not nearly all Pagan communities lack this type of support for Black Pagans, as well as other minority Pagans. They’re all so pervasively White-centered, even when not based on Euro-centric deities, that it’s near difficult to feel comfortable in those communities because of the multitudes of micro-aggressions that will eventually stack up on each other, driving whatever diversity that visits very far away.

Even without cemented cultural ideologies of prejudice, making and keeping a group going is very hard work. There’s amassing a space, amassing people, amassing time, etc etc etc. It’s herding cats…with a very loose fishnet bag. But it’s not necessary for practice. Strongly desired for very justifiable reasons but not just mandatory.

If anything, I would recommend a newbie to kind of stick to the books and readings first before super seeking out people. The reason being is because, while you do want to find people to connect with and that is indeed important, the most important thing is figuring out where you stand when it comes to Paganism, metaphysics and magick. If you’re not careful, you’re going to invite some very predatory people into your life. Or pick up some really wayward beliefs that will be pitched as Paganism but isn’t at all like the faith. It’s ok to chat and find some nifty Tumblr but Paganism as a religious and spiritual practice, can only be done alone. It’s best to build a foundation first and go from there.

And don’t worry if you don’t know any big names in Paganism, they’re not that important. They’re not deities, just people with a lot of visibility.