False Beliefs in Witchcraft (Like False Beliefs in Ubiquitous Racism) Breeds Mistrust and Poverty – Part 2
The harmful effects of believing the false assumptions underlying “antiracism” and “equity” parallel the harmful effects of false beliefs in witchcraft.
As we saw in Part 1, in his article entitled “Witchcraft Beliefs and the Erosion of Social Capital: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa and Beyond,” Boris Gershman describes how belief in witchcraft in Africa breeds social mistrust. American ideologies based on grossly exaggerated claims of ubiquitous racism similarly breed destructive social mistrust. In this essay, I’ll explore more of those parallels and also research by economic historians that trace social mistrust in Africa back to its centuries of slaving wars.
Gershman describes how a communal fear of witchcraft creates a dysfunctional feedback loop in which
deterioration of social capital and witchcraft beliefs are mutually reinforcing. Witchcraft beliefs generate suspicion and mistrust which trigger accusations thereby validating and strengthening such beliefs in society. Similarly, witchcraft-related fears prevent people from participating in mutual help groups and building cooperative relationships with their neighbors. To the extent that such lack of solidarity and support aggravates the living conditions of the already vulnerable community members, it also tends to increase the incidence of misfortunes precipitating mutual accusations which keep witchcraft beliefs alive.
Essentially, a false belief in witchcraft triggers accusations of witchcraft, and those accusations alone can tend to validate the fear of witchcraft. Perpetuating the fear of witchcraft diminishes social trust, which in turn leads to more bad outcomes for people’s well-being, which then reinforces the belief that it’s the witchcraft that’s causing the bad outcomes. Sound familiar? As was discussed in a previous essay, it may well be that in America today, a false belief that disparities among people grouped by race is caused by racism is triggering accusations of racism, and those accusations alone (especially as they propagate widely over the internet) tend to validate the false belief in ubiquitous racism. Perpetuating the fear of racism diminishes social trust, which can aggravate those disparities, which in turn reinforces the belief that racism is causing the bad outcomes.
Gershman concludes as follows:
This paper establishes a robust negative relationship between the prevalence of witchcraft beliefs and various measures of community trust in Sub-Saharan Africa, an association which holds after accounting for a battery of potentially confounding characteristics at the individual, regional, and ethnic levels, in addition to country fixed effects. It also appears to be much stronger for witchcraft beliefs relative to other elements of traditional culture. Furthermore, witchcraft beliefs are also negatively related to other measures of social capital, namely charitable giving … These findings are consistent with the idea that witchcraft beliefs affect cooperation and trust by generating the fears of witchcraft attacks and accusations. Alternatively, the main results may be viewed as pinpointing a particular type of cultural equilibrium in which witchcraft beliefs and antisocial attitudes and behaviors coexist and are mutually reinforcing. Overall, this research argues that there is a strong potentially self-reinforcing relationship between witchcraft beliefs and the erosion of social capital which may plausibly impede economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa and beyond.
Social capital also deteriorates when people come to indulge their tribal tendencies to see people as part of either “in groups” (who can be trusted because they’re part of the tribe) or “out groups” (who can’t be trusted because they’re not members of the tribe). Those tribal tendencies, with a focus on racial “in groups” and “out groups,” is the central thrust of New York Times bestselling books such as Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be An Antiracist and Nikole Hannah Jones’ 1619 Project. That tribal tendency is weakest in societies, like the United States, that tend adhere to individualistic values, according to which people are seen primarily as individuals instead of as members of racial groups. As discussed in a previous video (at the 22:36-minute mark), research shows that seeing people as individuals (as opposed to seeing people as members of a racial group) is associated with both greater well-being and more charitable giving. As one of the researchers described their results in the New York Times:
The United States is notable for its individualism … When comparing countries, my colleagues and I found that greater levels of individualism were linked to more generosity — not less — as we detail in a forthcoming article in the journal Psychological Science. For our research, we gathered data from 152 countries concerning seven distinct forms of altruism and generosity … We found that countries that scored highly on one form of altruism tended to score highly on the others, too, suggesting that broad cultural factors were at play. When we looked for factors that were associated with altruism across nations, two in particular stood out: various measures of “flourishing” (including subjectively reported well-being and objective metrics of prosperity, literacy and longevity) and individualism … [E]ven after statistically controlling for wealth, health, education and other variables, we found that in more individualist countries like the Netherlands, Bhutan and the United States, people were more altruistic across our seven indicators than were people in more collectivist cultures — even wealthy ones — like Ukraine, Croatia and China … On average, people in more individualist countries donate more money, more blood, more bone marrow and more organs. They more often help others in need.
Other researchers from five different universities found that “Our empirical results, which hold with three different measures of individualism, show that individualism is indeed associated with higher levels of charitable giving,” as indicated by the WGI (the World Giving Index). And as Arthur C. Brooks has written, “As a general rule, researchers find that individualism in a country strongly predicts the average level of well-being, even when correcting for life expectancy, access to food and water, and other variables.” Let’s hope Americans continue to see people as individuals and maintain their high levels of charitable giving -- and reject the ideologies of Kendi and Hannah Jones that breed so much mistrust.
Other researchers have examined how belief in witchcraft has led to vigilante militia violence against those accused of witchcraft, and how African politicians have exploited for their own advantage the fear that witchcraft is behind “the occurrence of otherwise inexplicable misfortune.” The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) reports that:
Since 2012, approximately 10% of events involving vigilante militias [in Africa] are associated with witchcraft. Belief in witchcraft is widespread across Africa, where it is “a means of explaining the unequal distribution of good and bad fortune, and the occurrence of otherwise inexplicable misfortune” (The Guardian, 1 March 2012). Vigilante groups often carry out “justice” against alleged witches, even in cases where “witchcraft” is illegal and “justice” can be enforced by state agents, such as in South Africa where witchcraft has long carried a fine and/or ten years imprisonment. Researchers “have estimated the murders of supposed witches [worldwide] as numbering in the thousands each year, while beatings and banishments could run into the millions” (NY Times, 4 July 2014; UN OHCHR, 2009), and these trends have been on the rise in Africa (UN OHCHR, 2009; UNICEF, 2010) … More organized political and conflict actors can use violence surrounding witchcraft to their advantage, such as blaming repression on witchcraft or manipulating populations based on their beliefs. This may contribute to the prevalence of witchcraft-related violence seen in recent years … Certain conflict contexts can hence give rise to violence involving vigilante militias seeking to carry out ‘justice’ against witchcraft. This may be a result of trying to explain “the occurrence of otherwise inexplicable misfortune” (The Guardian, 1 March 2012), which may stem from large-scale conflict. Conflict actors can use this vigilante violence as a cover for their own repression, or may draw on beliefs surrounding witchcraft to manipulate populations within the conflict setting.
In America today, existing federal and state law already makes it illegal for public and private actors to engage in racial discrimination, but still politicians are prone to parroting false claims that racial discrimination alone is continuing to cause the disparities in outcomes we see among people grouped by race, and that misdirection can obscure the other actual causes of those disparities those same politicians may be reluctant to address. And regarding vigilante justice, in America, accusations of widespread racism in policing in 2020, perpetuated by politicians, led to rioting that’s estimated to have caused over $1 billion in damages. Those riots were also explicitly encouraged by Nikole Hannah Jones, who wrote at the time “it would be an honor” for that summer’s violence to be called “the 1619 riots.”
It’s also worth noting that economic historians have described how the seeds of mistrust in Africa that sprouted from belief in witchcraft grew in soil bloodied by the centuries-long African wars for slaves. Nathan Nunn, a Harvard economist, and Leonard Wantchekon “examine one of the channels through which the slave trade may affect economic development today,” in their article in the American Economic Review entitled “The Slave Trade and the Origins of Mistrust in Africa.” Nunn and Wantchekon introduce their article as follows:
Combining contemporary individual-level survey data with historical data on slave shipments by ethnic group, we ask whether the slave trade caused a culture of mistrust to develop within Africa. Initially, slaves were captured primarily through state organized raids and warfare, but as the trade progressed, the environment of ubiquitous insecurity caused individuals to turn on others—including friends and family members—and to kidnap, trick, and sell each other into slavery. We hypothesize that in this environment, a culture of mistrust may have evolved, which may persist to this day.
The authors test their hypothesis using data from the 2005 Afrobarometer survey to examine whether individuals belonging to ethnic groups that were heavily targeted by the slave trade in the past are less trusting of others today. They report their results as follows:
We find that individuals belonging to ethnic groups that were most exposed to the slave trades exhibit lower levels of trust in their relatives, neighbors, coethnics, and local government today. This finding is consistent with the historical fact that by the end of the slave trade, it was not uncommon for individuals to be sold into slavery by neighbors, friends, and family members.
Few students today appreciate the chaos and fear that pervaded Africa throughout its long history of slave wars. As explained by the authors:
Early in the slave trade, nearly all slaves were taken in large-scale conflicts or raids, which created an environment of extreme insecurity outside of the local community. Ironically, this in turn caused insecurity within communities, as individuals began to turn on others close to them, including neighbors, friends, and even family. Unlike most other environments of conflict and insecurity, the slave trade had one unique feature: individuals could partially protect themselves by turning against others within their community. By engaging in trickery, local kidnappings, or other forms of small scale violence, one could exchange slaves (with Europeans, or slave merchants) for guns and iron weapons. Slave merchants and raiders also played a role in promoting internal conflict, often forming strategic alliances with key groups within villages and states in order to extract slaves … In his book Planting Rice and Harvesting Slaves, Walter Hawthorne documents the decentralized and interpersonal nature of slave capture among the Beafares of the Guinea-Bissau region of Africa. He writes that “the Atlantic slave trade was insidious because its effects penetrated deep into the social fabric of the Upper Guinea Coast—beyond the level of the state and to the level of the village and household … Hence, in many areas, the slave trade pitted neighbor against neighbor.” … Data on the manner of enslavement in the nineteenth century confirm the descriptive evidence: by the end of the slave trade, individuals entered slavery in a variety of ways, including by being sold into slavery by acquaintances, friends, and family. During the 1840s, German missionary and linguist Sigismund Koelle (1854) collected information on the manner of enslavement of 144 former slaves living in Free Town, Sierra Leone. In his sample, the most common manner of enslavement was kidnapping, with just over 40 percent of the slaves being taken in this manner. Just under 25 percent of the slaves were captured during wars. Amazingly, almost 20 percent of the slaves were sold by relatives or friends. Koelle’s interviews document numerous accounts of individuals being sold into slavery by family members, relatives, and “supposed friends.” One of the more notable accounts is of a slave who was sold into slavery after being “enticed on board of a Portuguese vessel” by “a treacherous friend.” Another example is the custom of the Kabre (from Northern Togo), developed during the nineteenth century, of selling their own kin into slavery. The final process of enslavement was through the judicial system. Sixteen percent of the Koelle sample entered slavery this way. This form of enslavement includes the historically common practice of accusing others of crimes such as witchcraft, theft, adultery, or murder in order to obtain slaves. If found guilty, the accused (and often their family) were sentenced to slavery. It even became common for the leaders of local communities to obtain slaves in this manner. The fact that slaves often were taken or tricked into slavery by individuals close to them suggests that the slave trade may have eroded trust even in the most intimate social relationships.
What to take from all this? At the very least, the following: When considering how to address the alleged legacies of slavery today, we should be careful to avoid any means of doing so that relies on false narratives that tend to generate the same mistrust that is itself one of slavery’s most pernicious legacies to this day.