Hoodoos: It’s Your Spiritual Obligation to Care about Black Trans People
When you say hoodoo is liberation-centered, that's a promise
Note: This piece focuses on Black trans men and transmasculine people because it is a response to the murder of Sam Nordquist, a 24 year old Biracial self-identifying Black trans man. This focus is not intended to erase or decenter the much higher rate at which Black trans women, trans femmes, and trans girls are murdered, only to highlight that I’m likely not the best person to speak on that subject. For better coverage of how anti-trans violence impacts Black trans women and overall visions for Black trans liberation, I look to writers and thinkers like Raquel Willis, Angelica Ross, and the folks at TGI Justice Project. There are links to donate to Black trans organizations at the end of this essay.
Sam Nordquist’s family is fundraising for expenses related to his murder. They have about 8k left to go. Donate here.
Sam Nordquist was tortured to death allegedly by five people, including his girlfriend. He was twenty-four years old.
His murder was especially prolonged and heinous; his torture lasted months. The circumstances surrounding the murder recall the especially prolonged and heinous nature of Black trans men and transmasculine people’s murders, and of trans people’s murders more generally.
There was 17 year old Morgan Moore, a Black trans boy starved to death over the period of one year by his parents in 2022. He had diabetes and MS, and hadn’t been taken to the doctor in years. In the year he was murdered, a trans person was murdered roughly every eleven days.
Mostly, though, the circumstances surrounding the end of Sam Nordquist’s life remind me of Evon Young. As Cristan Williams wrote in a somewhat contradictory testament of Young’s murder in 2013:
“Evon’s last moments were gruesome. He was tied up. A bag was placed over his head and he was beaten. When Evon passed out, he was beaten harder… with blunt instruments. Then, he was shot multiple times. After that, they set him on fire… and then threw him away in a dumpster. After Evon’s murders stripped him of his life, both the media and public officials stripped him of his identity.”
Some of her missteps in reporting Young’s murder were almost definitely due to the fact that Williams is a non-Black person. She was unable to understand the way transness operates for Black people, and thus worked to understand the murder with the language of white transmasculine identity that existed at the time—further stripping him of the complexities of his Black identity that lived alongside his trans identity.
Which is what the larger Black community does all the time.
As a Hoodoo, a rootworker, a diviner, and an herbalist, I’m in community both physical and digital with Black folks who work with the dead. People who speak to ancestors, placate unhappy spirits, and seek right relationship with the land and the earth.
My work in the world has included local leadership in Black Lives Matter, sex worker activism, and regular degular autonomist shit.
I’ve spent the last week chatting, thinking through, and getting chewed out about my opinions on the “revolutionary” potential of a fucking superbowl performance under the guise of protecting Black celebrities from harmful online opinions. In the months before that, TikTok was a wave of online support for the apparently-not-propaganda NFL performance of Beyoncé, since any anti-capitalist opinion about the Creole billionaire is inherently anti-Black, even if you like her music and overall public persona, which I do—or at least that’s what the digital streets are saying.
So apparently thinking Black millionaires and billionaires operating on white supremacist stages is probably bad for the African diaspora is anti-Blackness. However, complete silence on the ongoing murder, and seventh or eighth stage of genocide preparation for Black trans people, is not anti-Blackness. Funny how that works.
Meanwhile, the assertion the Hoodoo is inherently and always a liberation-focussed tradition continues apace. By and large, I agree with the sentiment, the history it intends to highlight, and the legacy it seeks to create. I think it marks an ideal rather than a hard and fast reality, but it’s still a guiding light I believe that the community should strive for.
The hard part about making such a claim is that you (yes, you) have to live by it. If you want Black liberation, that includes caring about Black trans people, when we are murdered, but also to make sure we have what we need to thrive. Not just in the abstract, but in the specific and the material. It means having a mask policy at Hoodoo events that’s more than a suggestion so that Black immunocompromised people can attend.
If Hoodoo is an exclusively liberation-focused tradition, don’t let that just be the hook for your TikTok or tweet. Find ways to live that out every single day.
If Hoodoo is an exclusively liberation focused tradition, then it is your spiritual obligation to care deeply about Black trans people.
Hey, I’m Cyrée
I’m a rootworker, diviner, and clinical herbalist. I believe that spirit work is an essential part of all movements for justice. I hope you’ll take a look around, there are plenty of opportunities here to deepen your connection with your gifts (with my guidance.)
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