#AtheismSoWhite: Atheists of Color Rock Social Justice

[rug]

01/26/2016 04:11 pm ET |
Updated 14 hours ago
Sikivu Hutchinson
Author of White Nights, Black Paradise and a visiting scholar at USC’s Center for Feminist Research

Back in the day, supergroups ruled rock's largely white, largely male landscape. Megaliths like my boys Cream, Blind Faith and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young bestrode the earth in all their swaggering testosterone-oozing alpha glory. They dominated the music charts and arenas with power chord chestnuts which legitimized the careers of gatekeeping white music critics and fueled a multi-billion dollar recording industry ripping off black blues/rock trailblazers like Rosetta Tharpe, Muddy Waters, Little Richard and Jimi Hendrix. Outmoded, the supergroups of the 60s and 70s eventually crashed and burned, victim to the ravages of time, drugs, egos, corporate bloat, and the encroachments of disco and punk.

The recent merger of the secular organization Center for Inquiry (CFI) and the Richard Dawkins Foundation (RDF) has been dubbed atheism's supergroup moment. Acknowledging the two organizations' outsized presence in the atheist world, Religion News Service acidly declared it a "royal wedding". The partnership, which gives Richard Dawkins a seat on the CFI board, smacks of a vindication of Dawkins' toxic, reactionary brand of damn-all-them-culturally-backward-Western-values-hating- Muslims New Atheism. As one of the most prominent global secular organizations, CFI's all-white board looks right at home with RDF's lily white board and staff.

Meanwhile, atheists and humanists of color have been going against the white grain to address issues that much of organized atheism and humanism are resistant if not outright hostile to. Last week, the Black Non-Believers organization, the largest network of African American atheists in the country, celebrated its five-year anniversary in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded by activist Mandisa Thomas, the network is an antidote to the ostracism black atheists in the Bible Belt and beyond experience, especially in the absence of supportive secular institutions.

The intersection of racial segregation, economic inequality and cultural identity is the reason why religious traditions predominate in black communities. When African-Americans across the economic spectrum look to social welfare, educational and civic organizations they are more often than not tapping into those either provided by or connected to faith-based institutions. For example, at a recent Drew University conference (named after pioneering African American physician and scientist Charles Drew) I attended on resiliency and African-American men, faith was often cited as key to motivating young black men to pursue community leadership and academics.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sikivu-hutchinson/atheismsowhite-atheists-o_b_9078736.html

[rug]

1. "CFI's all-white board looks right at home with RDF's lily white board and staff."

http://www.centerforinquiry.net/about/corporate_governance

https://richarddawkins.net/boardandstaff/

[MisterP]

2. they've been stadialists or bell-curvers since the 60s

Zusne said that

The connection between the "primitive" mind and the mind of the child is that in both cases we are dealing with individuals whose conceptual development has not yet reached the stage of the educated adult in an industrial society. For this reason, both may show magical thinking under similar conditions

and that magical thinking in modern society is a resurgence of the primitive/childlike

small wonder their PALS say that South Italy's poorer because it's got more African blood

[rug]

3. Their privileges are on display.