By Frederick Sparks

There’s a quaint but common assumption that those belonging to a group subject to discrimination and inequality have an automatic sympathy for others in the same boat.  History has not proven this assumption consistently true.  One need only watch the end of Gangs of New York, where working class white immigrants violently take out their frustrations on New York’s African-American population, to get a refresher. For  downtrodden white ethnics, the response to marginalization was not sympathy but a fierce determination to define themselves as white in contradistinction to blacks, who were clearly the lowest of the low.

As a black gay man I observe this phenomenon from the cat bird seat when it comes to the discussions of racism in the (white) gay community and homophobia among African-Americans.  “Black people can marry each other, they aren’t legally discriminated against, and people aren’t beaten in the street for being black. Besides I support your issues (I voted for Barack Obama) and you don’t support mine (Black people are responsible for prop 8)”, says the white gay.   “You can’t choose to be black, but you can choose to be gay,  the police don’t shoot you because you’re gay and you aren’t followed around department stores because you’re gay. And besides, the bible says that’s wrong/homosexuality is a European perversion that didn’t exist in pre-colonial Africa”, says the black straight.  Of course one of the many flawed assumptions in this us vs them dialectic is that all the gays are white and all the blacks are straight.

The blind spot towards the privilege one enjoys (which is the hallmark of said privilege) is exacerbated when one enjoys privilege on one dimension of ontology yet experiences marginalization on another dimension. The accusation of bias is somehow seen as a marginalization of bias endured by the accused.  So when a black gay writes about the lack of coverage of Trayvon Martin in the gay media or about the marginalization of blacks within the larger gay community the response is often along the lines of incredulity and counter-accusation of bias.  The same can be said of discussions of racism within the feminist movement or the ongoing conversation about the blind spot to social justice issues in the white male dominated secular/atheist milieu (because of course white male secularists experience their own marginalization…)

Then we get into the Oppression Olympics…who has had it worse.  My freshman year in a college, a Jewish woman professor in a world history and culture class stated that the holocaust was the worst crime ever committed against a race or group of people, “including slavery” (making it a point to look at me, one of a handful of black students in the class, when she said that).  Now if I were the same person then as I am now, class would’ve ended differently that day, but at the time I could only feel insecure and ponder why it was important for either side to “win” that battle, even if the two were quantitatively comparable.

So that is what constitutes out group privilege…an assumption that experiencing discrimination makes one immune from bias, a defensiveness when said bias is raised, and an impulse to counter accuse bias/and or to win the Oppression Olympics.  None of this leads to an actual examination of biases and privileges and leads to narrowly focused conceptions of political movements related to gender or racial or sexual orientation equality that do not incorporate a prioritization of broader social justice issues.

By Frederick Sparks

Finally breaking his silence on the Trayvon Martin killing, President Obama personalized the issue while introducing Dartmouth president Jim Kim as his nominee to lead the World Bank (video link here).  The president asserted his reluctance to impair an ongoing investigation but highlighted that federal, state and local authorities were working together in the investigation. And in an apparent reference to the “stand your ground” law offered as justification for the handling of the case, the president said “I think all of us have to do some soul-searching to figure out how does something like this happen.  And that means we examine the laws and the context for what happened, as well as the specifics of the incident.”

Meanwhile Seminole County State Attorney Norman Wolfinger removed himself from the case, stating “In the interest of the public safety of the citizens of Seminole County and to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest, I would respectfully request the executive assignment of another state attorney for the investigation and any prosecution arising from the circumstances surrounding the death of Trayvon B. Martin…This request is being made in light of the public good with the intent of toning down the rhetoric and preserving the integrity of this investigation.”  Because of course the most important thing here is toning down rhetoric.

By Frederick Sparks

Commissioners actually split 3-2 in a no confidence vote over police chief Bill Lee’s handling of the Trayvon Martin case.   The vote followed a call for resignation from commissioner Mark McCarty.  It is the most incremental of incremental steps.

House minority leader Nancy Pelosi released a statement Wednesday asserting that the tragic story “spurred many leaders, including members of Congress, to call for action.”  Pelosi praised justice department involvement in the case.  President Obama has not commented officially on the case; White House press secretary Jay Carney deflected specific commentary, referring to the case as a matter of local law enforcement. While many have criticized the President’s lack of commentary (specifically given his comments in the Henry Louis Gates controversy),  attorney B.J. Bernstein (who represented Genarlow Wilson and most recently two of the plaintiffs in the civil suit related to sexual abuse allegations against Bishop Eddie Long) asserted that it would be inappropriate for the president to comment on a case subject to an ongoing Justice Department investigation.

Meanwhile,  in Manhattan’s Union Square, demonstrators took part in a Million Hoodie March in memory of the murdered youth and to call for justice.  Martin’s parents addressed the gathering.  “We’re not going to stop until we get justice,” said the teenager’s father, Tracy Martin. His mother, Sybrina Fulton, told the crowd: “My heart is in pain, but to see the support of all of you really makes a difference.”   The march was organized largely on Facebook and Twitter, and many social network users posted pictures of themselves wearing hoodies as a  virtual show of support.

By Frederick Sparks

I’m especially not here to talk to black people, an important target audience of mine, about how great religion is, and specifically, how African-Americans took a religious paradigm that was a significant factor in justifying enslavement and encouraging complacent acceptance of a repressive status quo and flipped it into a liberation theology. That narrative is already ascendant within my target community.  How Jesus has been good for black folks is still largely un-debated, and those who have debated it in the past have had their words whitewashed in historical revisionism or wholly ignored. I and others are here to provide a much needed counter narrative.

And as much hoopla and prominence as the new atheist movement has received, it’s still not the ascendant narrative generally.  So I view many of the critiques of new atheism with a mixture of bemusement and annoyance, in part, because I think some of the critics are simultaneously pissed they didn’t write the End of Faith or The God Delusion first, while at the same time owing whatever attention they receive to the very phenomenon they critique; because of course where would they be without defining themselves in contradistinction?  Wouldn’t it be just as easy to proselytize the ecumenical atheist vision of “interfaith” cooperation without tearing down other atheists?

Those of us who are atheists/secularists and interested in issues of social justice (many of the bloggers here on freethoughtblogs) are fully aware of and engaged in the struggle to bring these issues to the forefront of the “secular movement”, facing resistance from those who think such subjects are not in the purview of skepticism, or those who feel that raising issues of race, gender or class inequality is too “political” and risks alienating those neoconservative neo-libertarians who might otherwise be attracted to the conversation. We are fully aware of the need to provide avenues of community support that religion at its best provides.  And we don’t appreciate accomodationist straw man construction that ignores our efforts and awareness, particularly when the straw man constructors turn victim when called on their intellectual dishonesty.

By Frederick Sparks

In case you’re short on *facepalm* moments today, check out this video of  an odd coronation of scandal plagued pastor Eddie Long as a Hebrew king by a fellow who appears to follow some variant of Messianic Judaism and who, because he has dual citizenship with Israel, speaks on behalf of the “Jewish people”.

In the sea of inanity that is this video, the stretch I found particularly interesting was the segment on the number 22: 

 “There are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet…22 chromosomes in the human body (the 23rd was added by man)..22 amino acids…Jewish doctors say if you look at cells through a microscope, they look like Hebrew script.” 

OK……

An associate professor of Hebrew critiques the scriptural claims here.  I’ll leave the rest to those with a working knowledge of biology and biochemistry.

By Frederick Sparks

Given that I may have talked to more atheists and religious people of color than even Be Scofield, I thought it appropriate to add my two cents.

I’ve observed a few the written exchanges between Scofield and Greta Christina and agree with the assessment that he is either sloppy or downright dishonest in his characterizations of what she says.  And Greta of all people least deserves to be a target of criticism on the issue of diversity and the “atheist movement.”

Scofield quotes from Sikivu Hutchinson’s critique of the New Atheists blind spot with respect to social justice issues, and the interplay between African American religiosity and these issues of social justice. Yet if he bothered to read the rest of the book besides the passages criticizing new atheism, he’d see that Hutchinson hardly argues for walling off god belief and African-American religious institutions from criticism. Her critique is aimed at presenting atheism/secularism to African-Americans in a way that makes it relevant because it addresses issues of racial and economic inequality. Specifically she states:

“Those seeking to forge the same kind of community resonance and interpersonal connections as faith-based institutions (without the element of fear, superstition, profiteering and exploitative charismatic leadership)have a long uphill but winnable battle….Humanist community based organizations can provide…social welfare resources that have traditionally been delivered with supernatural strings attached by faith-based organizations.”

In referring to Dr King and the civil rights movement, Scofield also falls into the trap of “the Civil Rights Movement, Brought To You By Black Church”…a bit of historical revisionism that ignores, as professor Anthony Pinn points out, the secular philosophical influences, and that King himself complained that most the black churches were not involved and were not supportive. When Scofield, in a follow-up comment says “Imagine if much of the passion and fire that characterizes much of the New Atheist community could be directed towards the racial, class and patriarchal oppression that believers experience rather than their beliefs about God or heaven”, he appears ignorant of the degree to which specific beliefs about God or heaven reinforce racial, class, heterosexist and patriarchal oppression. When he speaks approvingly of the work of the Metro Community Church with respect to AIDS, he misses the other side of the coin, in which the black church virtually ignored the AIDS crisis unfolding in its own choir pews.  African Americans are most likely to believe in literal interpretations of the Bible; this phenomenon buttresses homophobic and sexist dynamics within the black religious community.  The beliefs are therefore not separate from the social justice issues, they are part and parcel, and challenging them is most definitely relevant.
Yes African Americans have to some degree adapted religious institutions to positive purposes. At the same time,  the $65 million West Angeles Church of God in Christ monstrosity on Crenshaw Boulevard has hardly brought $65 million worth of improvement to the lives of the residents of South Los Angeles.  The presence of churches on every corner in black communities certainly hasn’t done much to cure the social ills. And this phenomenon, and the beliefs that undergird it, are most definitely appropriate targets of criticism.

When the Scofields and Karen Armstrongs of the world talk about how the new atheists just aren’t aware of the liberal, tolerant, sativa smoking, feminist, genderqueer god concept, my response is “I don’t believe in that motherfucker, either.” She’s just as poorly evidenced as the old fashioned patriarchal god. She’s also not the predominant god concept impacting the African American community.

I don’t see an either or proposition between advocating for rational thought, where beliefs are based on evidence, and confronting issues of social justice. The idea that black people should be left alone in their clinging to Jesus due to their history of oppression smacks of just as much paternalism as what Scofield accuses the white new atheists of here.

By Frederick Sparks

In their infinite wisdom, the Supremes have decided that the long recognized “ministerial exception”, which bars employment discrimination claims by ministers against churches, also applies to anyone within a church who “holds a title representing a significant degree of religious training followed by a formal process of commissioning”, has “accepted the formal call to religious service”,  and has  “job duties reflected a role in conveying the Church’s message and carrying out it’s mission.”

The plaintiff in the case was a Lutheran school “called Teacher” (distinguished from lay teachers)  who developed narcolepsy and took a medical leave.  At the end of the leave she notified the school that she would be returning and was told her position had been filled by a “lay teacher”.  She subsequently filed claim with the EEOC under the Americans with Disabilities Act.  The school/church raised the ministerial exception, with which the District Court agreed and granted summary judgment in favor of the school.  After the 6th Circuit claimed the ministerial exception was applied to the plaintiff in the lower court too broadly, the supreme court “clarified” the issue in favor of the school.

In addition to this troublesome expansive definition, the ministerial exception in its previous form rested on a specious Free Exercise basis.  Understandable if a minister (or minister-lite) questions or contradicts the tenets of the faith.  But to bar discrimination claims on grounds not having to do with religion is another example of excessive deference to free exercise.

By Frederick Sparks

This was the first Hitchens piece I read, and it blew me away. Who was this man with the intellectual courage to challenge the popular conception of Mother Teresa? It was seminal in inspiring me to develop and enhance my critical thinking skills. From there I discovered his previous contributions, which were intimidatingly impressive in their depth and breath and substance.

I didn’t always agree with him (the Iraq War for instance), but I always admired his honesty and intellect. I’m glad he was here.