57 thoughts on “Readers Submitted Photos: Ti-Fam The Witch Doctor’s Daughter”

  1. Let’s not forget that he’s a gondolier on the side.

    I remember when they changed the “black” to “dark”, so it would fit the kids in the segregated Sunday School. (i.e. C Sunday School).

    (Thanks for the fix, Darrell, I had some time before I headed out the door.) 😉

    1. What were you complaining about?? First you whine about Darrell posting on Saturday when you have to work and then you get first reply and a couple of others to boot! Some people are just never satisified… *sigh* 🙄 😉 lots-o-luv sis 😎

      1. Okay, I just got home and goodgoshamighty am I hurtin’! But, I can’t complain when a lot of my clients gave me my Christmas in the form of money.

        ANYWAY, to address YOU Don, for YOUR information, I wasn’t complaining that he posted on Saturday. I was complaining that at that moment he hadn’t posted anything, and I was fussin’ about it.

        AND FURTHERMORE, love you too, ya booger. 😉

        1. Christmas PRESENT, George!

          Clients were giving me gifts of money for Christmas. I always think its sweet when people remember their little ‘ol stylist at Christmas.

  2. Wait a minute isn’t she wearing a “Bearclaw” necklace? (comment dedicated to PW 😉 )

    I assume the story is about exchqanging one talisman for another given the black heart for a white one through crown, cross and book. (as opposed to bell, book and candle)

    Isn’t the racial angle subtle like a sledgehammer.

    hey its CEV, I wouldn’t expect too much.

    1. I have taught this story before many years ago (to an all white class; the small town northern churches I’ve been in aren’t particularly diverse).

      If I remember correctly, her necklace is a bag of charms to protect her from evil spirits. I refuse to feel guilty about my son’s bear-claw necklace, Don! 😆

        1. Don’t make me hunt through the boxes in my basement to find this story just to disprove you, Don!

          (BTW, I friend requested you on FB.)

        3. I’m pretty sure any bears in Haiti, or Hispanola for that matter, have long been extinct.
          It could be an imported bear claw, of course.

    2. …..and you could tell which kids were saved and which weren’t by who could see the piano and who couldn’t.

    3. My VBS teacher ran that tripe up the flag pole but we all knew she was lying, there wasn’t anything but the blank back page/cover.

  5. I will have to admit that singing “my heart was black with sin, until the Savior came in” at Bible Club, with a bunch of African-American children and a ton of white Fundy U students … yep, that was awkward.

    1. How about “I was culturally clueless, until I got some experience outside my own ghetto”? Hmm, that doesn’t scan as well, though.

    2. The sad thing is that Scripture describes our sins this way in Isaiah: “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”

      But red for sin doesn’t work with red for Jesus’ blood, so they went with black for sin. (Of course, there’s the dark and light imagery which is certainly Biblical.)

      American King James Version

      2. The original verse is actually rather inclusive, because wool comes in a variety of colors, from almost-white through tan and brown to black.

        1. That’s an excellent point! I LIKE that!

          (It’s disappointing that white people are called white instead of cream or peach or something because then one particular race is associated with all the positive symbolism connected with WHITE.)

        2. Personally, I think I’m going to say instead of “caucasian”, my ethniticiy in its entirety…

          Irish/Scotch-Irish/German/Native American/French/Southern American

        3. I’m with you, Natalie. But that means I’m German-Polish-Swedish-Jewish-Cherokee-Scottish-British-American, with probably a few other things I forgot in there.

        5. There are no black or white people, we are all just different shades of brown. The terms black and white were pasted on us because “black” and “white” are complete opposites which can never be reconciled.

        7. i am light brown-pink. my wife is medium-dark brown. not sure why skin pigmentation matters so much. i think its because we (human beings) tend to be prejudice and look for ways to distinguish the “us” from the “them.” skin pigmentation provides a very handy way to exercise this natural inclination toward bigotry.

          i think it’s most unfortunate that the bigotry is often dressed up in religious garb with arguments like “the devil wants a one-world government, religion, etc; we should segregate to stop him” and “god told the israelites not to marry the canaanites, so we shouldn’t marry outside our race.”

  6. By the way, “Ti-Fam” means “Little Woman” in Haitian Creole.
    That doesn’t really have anything to do with this conversation, but when will I get another chance to show off that particular bit of knowledge?

    2. Congrats someone could go their entire lives w/ that kind of info and never have the opportunity to share/use it. That seems like an accomplishment coming across something that obscure to have known/learned.

  7. Oh my, yes. I have heard this story at least a dozen times. I loved this one, because anything is better than a 45 minute sermon on the use of “filthy rags” in Isaiah.

    The copy our fundy “school” had was falling apart. I am 20; I think they had been using it for a few decades.

  8. This story looks like it has a dual purpose: to address the sin issue and her reprobate culture. Another piece of propoganda for the elitism of American culture.

    2. Most fundamentalist mission stories do that. It’s why I skip most of the mission stories in the ABeka reading curriculum. They can all be summarized this way: Backwards natives of [insert island/country/continent of darker-skinned people] don’t know about God and practice [insert frowned-upon cultural activity that is different from Western culture]. White missionary comes and tells them about God. They are all saved and abandon frowned-upon cultural activity that really has nothing to do with morality/immorality. Dislike.

    3. @daniel- ditto…not just fundyland. talked to an american businessman recently who exports from southeast asia and he had the same view of the people: dirty, unwashed masses yearning to be set free by american democracy and free enterprise/capitalism.

  9. I’m fairly sure my mother taught this in the Good News Club she ran in our neighborhood in the late sixties. It was always a missionary story, and it seems like there was a cliffhanger every week.

  11. It was really awkward when I tried using this story at a Bible club on a Pacific island … the kids there didn’t “appreciate” the story the same way my “white bread American” Bible club kids in the States did. In the Pacific, this wouldn’t be a “missionary story” anymore; it would be real life.

  12. Let’s be fair with the symbols. Even though the black heart symbolizes sin, this is not a racist analogy. Besides, the drawing of the heart is a symbol of the center of human thoughts and emotions, not an accurate picture of the cardiac organ.

    1. The ancient Egyptians believed that people think with their hearts and feel emotions with their livers. That’s why when they embalmed bodies, they preserved the hearts and livers, but threw the brains away.

      (You may make any analogies you like here to modern churches …)

      However, no one I know of in the modern world believes that our (literal) hearts are what does our thinking. That’s why I’ve always been uncomfortable with talk about people believing or wanting things “in their hearts.” The heart is just a muscle. We think with our whole bodies, but most of what we call higher thinking happens in the brain.

    2. Using black for sin and white for virtue or purity was surely not intended as a racist statement, but that’s how it looks to many dark-skinned peoples. It reinforces the idea that “white” is better.
      So it’s not exactly racist, but it’s massively insensitive.

      1. it’s not exactly racist, but it’s massively insensitive.

        bingo.

        And I speak as someone who spent the first half of his life as a minority in a country that is 98% people of African descent.

      2. I agree with the ‘massively insensitive’ statement. I might extend that by saying that even if someone isn’t intending their comment or behavior to be racist, sometime it’s still hurtful in racist ways. That doesn’t mean that the person doing it is *a racist*, but that the comment or behavior was racist and hurtful. (Even though it wasn’t intended, it’s not the white person who gets to say whether or not it came across as racist.)

        I think in the end it comes down to a decision about whose feelings are important to take into account and listen to.

  13. You know what? This post doesn’t have a good fight in it, yet.

    Can’t have a post without a good liberal/conservative or fundy/non-fundie fight.

    Where’s that Mike guy from the Lester Roloff post? I dont’ think it was our fundie Mike, because this guy was out there.

    Yeah, we need him.

    2. I think I could do without the hate and toxicity, tyvm. 😉 There’s a reason most of us left, right?

      ^I really hope that wink wasn’t passive-aggressive. I get tired of extremely passive-aggressive fundy winks.

      1. I was just joking, Naomi. It’s like how a family gathering isn’t a good one unless someone has a fight. 😉

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