Responses to Summer Walker’s altar were rife with anti-Black commentary and lacked historical knowledge around Black people’s relationship to witchcraft. Twitter has been a source of a lot of criticism about singer-songwriter Summer Walker for the last couple of weeks. Some critiques have been valid, and come from a place of good faith; most have...
Tag: Santeria
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The ‘Charmed’ Reboot Still Has A Lot To Learn About Portraying Black Characters
The treatment of Black characters on “Charmed” is still lacking in nuance, but I believe it still has the potential to be headed in the right direction. This essay contains spoilers for “Charmed” By Cosima Smith I grew up watching “Charmed”—the original, slightly dated, and very white version—and dreaming about witchcraft, magic, and the “Power...
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Witch-y Gift Guide for the Holiday Season
Feel free to treat yourself with this witch-y gift guide during this hectic and stressful time of the year. Just because the holiday season is adorned with silver bells, plastic images of Christ in the manger and Christmas trees doesn’t mean that you have to be. It’s perfectly acceptable and possible to insert some witch-y...
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Respecting Living Practices This Halloween
Everyone should be able to enjoy this commercial holiday and no one should have to worry about seeing themselves represented negatively so others can have a good time. A few weeks ago, a Twitter screenshot began to circulate calling for people not to dress up as witches for Halloween because it was in the same...
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Busting the Myths of Santeria — And Their Anti-Black Origins
Cuba was the first country I visited where I was able to blend in. Despite my modest Spanish skills, as long as I kept mum, locals assumed I was Afro-Cuban, and other tourists gravitated to paler, more familiar faces for translations and directions. For the first time in my life, I was able to enter...