As I have made my way through the readings in this course, I have had an idea strengthened that has lived in the back of my mind for a while now. As I mentioned in my first discussion post, David Graeber and David Wengrow’s book The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity has informed this budding worldview tremendously, and studying the religions of the African diaspora for these past couple weeks has provided me further, self-contained evidence of this worldview. The worldview that I am referring to is the idea that somewhere along the way, humanity has gotten itself “stuck” in one all-encompassing type of societal, cultural and political mode. As Graeber and Wengrow detail, the Western, democratized mode of living which we all seem to find ourselves unwittingly drafted into is anomalous if we look at the grand picture of human history, a picture which is and should be viewed as entirely non-linear. The beliefs of modernity themselves are nothing new – many cultures in the past have experimented with and even flourished under democratic, secular representative governments and societal frameworks. Rather, it is the very fact that no matter where you go in the world, this type of society is, if not directly experienced and implemented, ever imposing upon every land as the dominant (and expected) mode of being. I am not going to, nor am I prepared to argue against the validity of this mode of being. Rather, I believe that the insistence by those in power, as well as the general ebb and flow of the zeitgeist itself, upon sticking to this single mode of existence has opened the door to tremendous injustice, and outright atrocity in some cases.

Let me be clear: Western, secular democracy itself is not inherently evil, nor does it directly, by virtue of its ideas, lead to the types of atrocities I have and will reference. It is the insistence upon western secular democracy as the “inevitable conclusion of history” that leads to these evils. This insistence breeds a type of worldview in which anything which deviates from western democratic values, even to positive ends, is somehow “backwards,” or “regressive.” These evils, which have largely been experienced by and committed against the “others” of this western mode of existence – minorities and marginalized groups – are purely the product of a desperate clinging to a “story of history” which simply isn’t true. The human race is more complex than a formulaic story-arc in which we pull ourselves out of primitiveness (read: non-western, secular democracy) and into civilization (read: western, secular democracy).

In the United States, one of the most prominent examples of othering at the hands of entrenched ideology are the atrocities committed against former slave populations, transported to this land against their will. The Black population in America since its captivity and kidnapping has been made out to be utterly different, in opposition against, and inferior to the ruling, white, westernized class. This belief and distinction is particularly present in the attitudes and scholarship around Black religion in America, which, until quite recently, has predominantly been viewed and publicized from a white, protestant Christian perspective. Practices like Conjure, Orisha/Yoruba, and Ma’at have been characterized, from a western scholarly viewpoint, as “magical” practices. In other words, these spiritual worldviews are not worthy of the title of “religion.” Rather, because of their emphasis on active participation and appeal, a characteristic of Black religions which came about in large part because of the necessity to wrench some semblance of control over one’s life and place in the universe while in captivity, these religious and spiritual worldviews must be othered and put in a different camp than other, more “well-established” religions such as Protestant Christianity, Judaism and even Islam, to a certain extent.

I want to make a distinction that I believe is important to the pursuit of the truth. I am not positing that the very act of othering is inherently evil or wrong. To do so would be to advocate for homogenization, and by extent destruction, of all cultures. On the contrary, othering is quite human, and in some cases necessary for survival. Some anthropological theories of cultural genesis even posit that culture itself is created via distinction between one group of people and another, something Graeber and Wengrow repeatedly refer to in their book as a practice commonly seen across the world before modernity. Othering can be used to positive ends, provided this othering does not turn into assertions of supremacy. As we saw with Frederick Douglass’s account of Sandy’s Conjure, othering has been and can be used to distinguish oppressed groups from their oppressors. In the case of Douglass and Conjure, it helped him to hold on to a small lifeline of freedom, which eventually grew into his will to stand up to his captor and escape.

Religion, identity and distinction are agency itself. In reading about a historically captive, now marginalized group’s religious beliefs, this worldview has been strengthened within my own mind. The ideas which budded from Graeber and Wengrow’s account of human history as cyclical, non-linear and experimental have been strengthened by seeing and studying something truly parallel to modern secular ideology, something which I would have otherwise, by virtue of my non-contact with African American culture, would have never had the opportunity to see and interact with.