is there a dockta in this house?

Any attempt to talk about rootwork without talking about its role as a method of alleviating the suffering and harmonizing the negative conditions that imported Africans and their descendants find themselves placed in here in the U.S. is a conversation that misses the point of rootwork entirely. If that seems like a controversial or confrontational statement all I can say is.... oh, well (shrugs shoulders). Hoodoo today reflects the goals and concerns of African-Americans in the same way that it has every day throughout our history here. Rootwork today addresses the goals and concerns of African-Americans as it has everyday day since we’ve been here. Methods modulate and evolve and tools and tactics are foregrounded and backgrounded as people migrate and people’s concerns adjust to the topographies and ecologies of current circumstance. In other words. rootworkers and hoodooists did and do what they gotta do in the way that’s appropriate for the time and place they live in. But the working methods always relate to and are based on the systems brought over by the original African-Americans and developed by their descendants. As I talk about rootwork and how to deal with certain energies and tactics for solving certain problems I’m going to touch on issues that I have to deal with on a regular basis that are probably going to make people who don’t have to deal with them uncomfortable. I refuse to apologize for this. In my mind the people who are going to be put off by having to deal with issues they’d much rather not confront will be more than offset by those people who recognize themselves and their situation. Those people who recognize themselves might find they’ve been given tactics and insight into their problems which are seemingly coming from a new angle, an alternative viewpoint, but which in fact have evolved out of the same problem- solving methods their ancestors used.