Vodou Culture 101: Dignity

In the US majority culture, dignity is something we ascribe to modest, neutrally toned clothing, elegant jewelry, visible signs of age, quietness, and whether or not people tend to obey or display politeness when they deal with you.

The problem with that, of course, is that it’s often racially coded, and explicitly coded for affluence and age. The dignified person we often picture is white, definitely has access to enough money to dress the part, and is being treated by others in a way reserved for white people of a certain age and affluence.

Vodou is not a religion of the affluent. It is not a religion of just one group of people, and it is definitely not a religion in which people get treated well by majority culture law enforcement, religion, or government. The US majority culture’s definition of dignity cannot be applied to people in vodou—the religion itself has enough of a reputation to ‘taint’ even people who would otherwise fit its definition of dignity if their involvement is known.

In vodou, dignity is something you have because of your character. It is something earned between you and the spirits, in your display of self-control and self-mastery, in the love you show and the service to the spirits which you are willing to give. Dignity does not have to be acknowledged, either, though it is visible. It does not require the community’s participation or permission.

You can have dignity in vodou if you are naked and smeared in mud, if the cops are strip searching you, if someone is yelling at you. You can have dignity if you’re yelling at someone. In vodou, dignity can’t be taken away from you, no matter how you are treated, what you are currently doing, and what you are or are not wearing.

It takes wealth and social status to think of dignity as having anything to do with what you wear, consume, how old you are, or how people treat you.