rights, social justice, and the law. She has a Ph.D. in history with a specialization in Africa and the African Diaspora; a J.D. with a concentration in International Law; and a LL.M. in Intercultural Human Rights. She is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Africana Religions. Boaz's research focuses on the intersection of racism and religious intolerance, with an emphasis on discrimination and violence against devotees of African diaspora religions.
She applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, Voodoo: The History of a Racial Slur, and reported the following:
Page 99 provides background information about the political situation in Haiti in the 1970s and 1980s which led thousands of Haitians to seek asylum in the United States. It also describes the changes to refugee laws and policies during this time period which resulted in very few Haitians being granted asylum.Learn more about Voodoo: The History of a Racial Slur at the Oxford University Press website.
Page 99 is part of Chapter 5, which is titled “‘Sacrifices at Sea’ and Refugees in the 1980s.” This chapter is about several cases in which boats full of Haitian refugees arrived in the United States in the early 1980s and the passengers claimed that the leaders of the voyages had sacrificed people in “voodoo” rituals during the journeys. It explores how these tales of “voodoo” sacrifices were manipulated in media reports about the status of Haitian refugees– in debates about whether they should be granted asylum and in descriptions of the terrible conditions in which they were being detained. Page 99, therefore, provides essential background information about this chapter but does not get into the meat of the argument (of both this chapter and the book in general) about public understandings of “voodoo” and how they shifted over time.
As the book title suggests, the core argument is really about one thing– “voodoo” is a racist term. It developed during the mid-to-late 19th century to question whether Black people should be emancipated and if they were fit for citizenship and voting rights. In the early 20th century, tales of “voodoo” practices were used to argue that Black people in Haiti and Cuba could not govern themselves. In the mid-20th century, the precursor to the Nation of Islam was denounced as a “voodoo cult.” Essentially, the book is about encouraging the reader to think about where the term “voodoo” comes from before flippantly calling something “voodoo science” or “voodoo economics” and to get the reader to question why popular understandings of “voodoo” (and African diaspora religions more generally) are so negative.
--Marshal Zeringue
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