By Sikivu Hutchinson At an early age, black girls are branded as public menaces. They are suspended and expelled for “defiance” at greater rates than white boys who commit actual felony offenses. They pack the juvenile halls and adult prisons of the most prolific “first world” jailer on the planet. In textbook history, their connection to radical social change …

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In a nation in which economic inequality, racial wealth gaps, mass incarceration of people of color and Christian fascist mobilization have become the rule, what are some examples of culturally relevant atheist and humanist activism? On Friday, March 8th at 7pm, the DePaul Alliance for Free Thought, in association with the Secular Student Alliance, Center for …

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By Sikivu Hutchinson “If you’ve seen a black or Latino person portrayed as a criminal on TV within the past twenty-four hours stand up.  If you’ve seen a black or Latino person portrayed as a professional on TV recently stand up.”  These were the two powerful icebreaker questions my students asked the audience in a …

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Women’s Leadership Project (WLP) student and Gardena High School senior Karly Jeter recently won a prestigious Posse Foundation Scholarship to attend the Hobart and William Smith Colleges in the fall as a pre-med student.  She is a cancer survivor, and her experiences have inspired her to be an oncologist.  Although she is passionate about science …

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By Naima Washington It is a sad fact that people of color, particularly African American nonbelievers, are alienated within the secular community.  Among the ‘faith’ communities, even those with the most racist and sexist doctrines, continue to do whatever it takes (and make no apologies) as they aggressively recruit and make space in their communities …

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By Sikivu Hutchinson Melanie Andrews is the director of the internationally acclaimed Washington Prep High School theatre program in South Los Angeles.  A native of Compton, California, she received her MFA in theatre from the University of Southern California and has worked as a director in China, Germany, Canada, and Mexico, as well as at …

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“Perhaps adults believe if they just don’t talk about gender or racism, then they won’t exist in our lives. The truth is that we see the effects of racism and gender bias everyday on television, on the Internet, in the beliefs of teachers, friends, and ourselves.” –Ariana Mercado, 12th grade scholar, Gardena High School “As …

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Some atheists are constantly bashing faith-based organizations AND believers of color for being backwards, ignorant and discriminatory.  But at the end of the day, what are mainstream secular, humanist, atheist and freethought “human rights” organizations doing to actively fight for social and racial justice in American communities of color?  How many know or care about the following human and …

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By Sikivu Hutchinson (Excerpt from Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels, March 2013) For the past several months, Crenshaw Boulevard in predominantly black South Los Angeles has featured a series of striking billboards condemning homophobia and its role in the HIV/AIDS epidemic.  The billboards are the work of the black gay activist group In the Meantime …

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By Sikivu Hutchinson When I was five years old I was sexually assaulted by neighbors.  Ours was a tranquil post-white flight neighborhood of beautiful single family homes, obsessively tended lawns and keeping-up-with-the-Joneses home improvement.  It was the mid-seventies; before black women’s experiences with rape had come into broader public consciousness through works like The Color …

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