I've been noticing a lot of ignorant yet self-righteous posting on social media, particularly Tumblr, that broadens the definition of cultural appropriation to an absurd degree. White teens with limited understanding and experience trying to police who can practice hoodoo is a fine example. It may make them feel good, but it belies vast and repellent ignorance. "So what?" you may ask, it is Tumblr. Well, so what? Let's talk about it for a minute.
As a white person who has been a practitioner of that form of magic for 20+ years, whose direct and in-person teachers were very open and accepting African-American and Jewish-American women, I'd like to point some things out and then add two passages from respected voices in the US magical community—one from Christopher Penczak (a witch) and another from Ray "Dr. Hawk" Hess (a traditional southern conjure doctor with deep family roots in multiple traditions). These are only two reliable authors. There are tons of others saying the same things I could draw on. I will provide more references by request.
TL/DR bottom line: research and learning magical history tend to make you more tolerant and less of an absolutist racial gatekeeper, especially when you start out with no idea about what you're talking about. In many cases, it's just the term, "hoodoo," that gets the racial absolutists in an uproar. Change it to the more abstract, "folk magic," and no one has a problem. This is material for a different discussion, but it bears noting here. Online self-righteousness often defaults to who gets to use what label and who can shout the loudest. It's unfortunate. And it's stupid.
Hoodoo (and other ethnic folk magics) have more to do with class than race—but this is never a simple distinction in the States:
Many, if not most, of the techniques and tricks of hoodoo are similar (sometimes identical) to Appalachian, Creole, and other forms of southern and south-eastern folk magic. There are good reasons for this. Pull a materia magica from those systems and it will have three characteristics in common with the others:
(1) rural products and assumptions (much of this work was done in agriculturally centered communities—in hoodoo, this is especially true up into the 1920s and 1930s when the "Rexall" tradition of urban hoodoo emerged because there was a movement of southern US practitioners into Detroit and Chicago for work opportunities, see Spiritual Merchants: Religion Magic & Commerce by Carolyn Morrow Long for a good study of this);
(2) a social dimension to the work (hoodoo was very multicultural, eclectic, and was done in communities that regularly crossed ethnic boundaries); and
(3) it was more often about class (who was poor / who had the social-financial power) than race—though in many cases, especially in the early 20th century, it is impossible to separate the two. Poor ethnic groups all had their workings, which were very alike since they informed or were informed by those of other ethnic groups including (but in no way limited to) Romani, Jewish, European, Asian, Caribbean, Native American, and African cultural beliefs. Hoodoo was a magical melting pot in the truest American sense. Trying to determine the right to work it based entirely on DNA shows a horrible misunderstanding of its history.
Historical metaphysical trends like spiritualism, grimoire magic, psychism, sex magic, and culinary magic played into the multi-ethnic, multicultural hoodoo mixing bowl over time. Also, fine and performing art aesthetics like orientalism, primitivism, and so-called "found art" can be located in hoodoo. If you want examples of all of this, take a look at Henry Hyatt's documentation of rural conjuration and folklore. Also look at any books by Stephanie Rose Bird. If you want to understand cultural influence and how it works in this context, look at the multi-ethnic and syncretized works of Denise Alvarado, Talia Felix (especially with an eye towards the Obeah influence), Nicholaj De Mattos Frisvold, and Michael Bertiaux.
Christopher Penczak, in his recent post "Bad Advice," writes:
Not everything you recognize from another culture is culture appropriation, particularly if you are uneducated or misinformed in how a particular practice entered into another tradition or community. There is a lot of living community memory not set in writing and inaccessible to much of the online world, particularly for those who joined an overall movement in the last two, five, or even ten years and who primarily engage with others online. You can disagree with a particular cultural usage, but if you are not also making the distinctions between appropriation, misappropriation, cultural exchange, inspiration, diffusion, blending, syncretism, and the much more prevalent problems of misinformation, misrepresentation, discrimination, and denied access, you are being intellectually dishonest in an effort to create a binary right/wrong with you being right. Without this subtle understanding, most of our modern food, language, music, and art would be considered misappropriated, and under such wisdom, should therefore be abandoned. Likewise most traditions we know have experienced vast cultural transfusions from other sources, and often those times and exchanges were framed in periods of empire and invasion.
Ray "Doctor Hawk" Hess, writes in Backwoods Shamanism:
Hoodoo brings so many different traditions and beliefs together in a beautifully synchronous fashion, encouraging unity of diverse faiths and practices. Secondly, It is a school of “practical magic” which means it addresses day to day concerns of the average person and typically involves tangible substances with the expectation of tangible results. Unlike western mysticism and “high magick” rituals, which require secret rites of initiation and prohibitively costly tools, hoodoo makes use of easily accessible materials and requires no initiation beyond the call to serve. It is, in essence, a form of independent interfaith ministry. Finally, hoodoo represents a great wealth of wisdom completely distinct to American culture, particularly the south-eastern states, especially the Mississippi delta and Appalachian hills. America is a country of many cultures. A nation of many nations. While it has also been a nation of civil war and separatism the lower classes in rural areas have often banded together regardless color and creed. Hoodoo is a unique system with influences from Native American, African, Dutch, Irish and Romany (pejoratively known as “gypsy”) traditions. Isolated areas like Appalachia and the Louisiana bayous where these marginal groups came together developed self-sufficient, close knit communities with a strong sense of connection between members.
In this post, I'm not trying to "gatekeep the gatekeepers." I identify primarily as a witch and a Hermetic magician—traditions that thankfully have less uninformed racial absolutism directed at them (note that I wrote, less). But the raw ignorance I've been seeing lately has inspired me to write this.