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Seven  bills are  moving through the legislature that will dramatically improve  educational and life chances for California’s youth.  Because of your  support…  SB 458 – Senator Wright – which will require notification to youth and their families when they added to local or the statewide (CalGang) Database – is on its way to the Senate floor. ACR 30 (Assembly Resolution) – Assemblyman V. M. Perez – which calls for the adoption by the state of a Youth and Student Bill of Rights, outlining human rights for all youth in education, justice, employment, health, housing and environmental protection – is on its way to the Assembly floor. Please make calls today to move the other 5 bills out of Appropriations: SB 260 – Senator Hancock – will enable youth who were transferred to adult court and sentenced to more than 10 years to petition to have their sentence reviewed for possible re-sentencing. AB 549 – Assemblyman Jones-Sawyer – will require school districts to have a memorandum of understanding between school districts and police departments that operate in schools and requires school districts to define the role of law enforcement and other adults on campus. Encourages spending for counselors and intervention workers over additional school police and school resource officers. SB 744 – Senator Lara – severely limits the use of involuntary transfers that force thousands of California youth every year onto the streets or into under-resourced community day and continuation schools. SB 61 – Senator Yee – will severely limit the use of solitary confinement for youth in county and state custody. Solitary confinement has led to increases in suicide, PTSD, mental illness, violence and recidivism among youth. AB 420 – Assemblyman Dickinson – eliminates the use of willful defiance as a reason for suspending students in elementary schools and minimizes the ability to suspend middle and high school students for that reason. In 2012, 56% of student suspensions in California were for willful defiance – a category that is vague, subjective and usually reflects minor disagreements between youth and staff. For  AB 549 and AB 420, call members of the CA Assembly Appropriations  Committee and urge them to pass these bills through Appropriations and  on to the full Assembly for a vote: Committee Members District Office & Contact Information Mike Gatto (Chair) Dem – 43 Capitol Office P.O. Box 942849, Room 2114, Sacramento, CA 94249-0043                                     (916) 319-2043 Diane L. Harkey (Vice Chair) Rep – 73 Capitol Office P.O. Box 942849, Room 6027, Sacramento, CA 94249-0073                                     (916) 319-2073 Franklin E. Bigelow Rep – 05 Capitol Office P.O. Box 942849, Room 4116, Sacramento, CA 94249-0005                                     (916) 319-2005 Raul Bocanegra Dem – 39 Capitol Office P.O. Box 942849, Room 4167, Sacramento, CA 94249-0039                                     (916) 319-2039 Steven Bradford Dem – 62 Capitol Office P.O. Box 942849, Room 5136, Sacramento, CA 94249-0062                                     (916) 319-2062 Ian C. Calderon Dem – 57 Capitol Office P.O. Box 942849, Room 5150, Sacramento, CA 94249-0057                                     (916) 319-2057 Nora Campos Dem – 27 Capitol Office P.O. Box 942849, Room 3013, Sacramento, CA 94249-0027                                     (916) 319-2027 Tim Donnelly Rep – 33 Capitol Office P.O. Box 942849, Room 2002, Sacramento, CA 94249-0033                                     (916) 319-2033 Susan Talamantes Eggman Dem – 13 Capitol Office P.O. Box 942849, Room 2003, Sacramento, CA 94249-0013                                     (916) 319-2013 Jimmy Gomez Dem – 51 Capitol Office P.O. Box 942849, Room 2176, Sacramento, CA 94249-0051                                     (916) 319-2051 Isadore Hall, III Dem – 64 Capitol Office P.O. Box 942849, Room 3123, Sacramento, CA 94249-0064                                     (916) 319-2064 Chris R. Holden Dem – 41 Capitol Office P.O. Box 942849, Room 5119, Sacramento, CA 94249-0041                                     (916) 319-2041 Eric Linder Rep – 60 Capitol Office P.O. Box 942849, Room 2016, Sacramento, CA 94249-0060                                     (916) 319-2060 Richard Pan Dem – 09 Capitol Office P.O. Box 942849, Room 6005, Sacramento, CA 94249-0009                                     (916) 319-2009 Bill Quirk Dem – 20 Capitol Office P.O. Box 942849, Room 2175, Sacramento, CA 94249-0020                                     (916) 319-2020 Donald P. Wagner Rep – 68 Capitol Office P.O. Box 942849, Room 2158, Sacramento, CA 94249-0068                                     (916) 319-2068 Shirley N. Weber Dem – 79 Capitol Office P.O. Box 942849, Room 5158, Sacramento, CA 94249-0079                                     (916) 319-2079 For  SB 744, SB 260 and SB 61, call members of the CA Senate Appropriations  Committee and urge them to pass these bills through Appropriations and  on to the full Senate for a vote: Senator Kevin de León (Chair) Capitol Office:                         State Capitol, Room 5108                         Sacramento, CA 95814                         Tel: (916) 651-4022 Senator Mimi Walters (Vice Chair) Capitol Office: State Capitol, Room 3086                         Sacramento, CA 95814                         Phone: (916) 651-4037 Senator Ted Gaines Capitol Office: State Capitol, Room 3070                         Sacramento, CA 95814                         Phone: (916) 651-4001 Senator Jerry Hill Capitol Office:                         State Capitol, Room 5064                         Sacramento, CA 95814 Phone: (916) 651-4013 Senator Ricardo Lara Capitol Office:                         State Capitol, Room 5050                         Sacramento, CA 95814 Phone: (916) 651-4033 Senator Alex Padilla Capitol Office:                         State Capitol, Room 4038                         Sacramento,  CA  95814 Phone:  (916) 651-4020 Senator Darrell Steinberg Capitol Office: State Capitol, Room 205                         Sacramento,  CA  95814                         Phone:  (916) 651-4006

 

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Call For Papers

NEW ANTHOLOGY

Women of Color Beyond Faith: Freethought, Feminism and Social Justice

Editors: Sikivu Hutchinson and Kimberly Veal

Historically, women of color have been more religious than white women.  According to the Pew Research Survey, at 87% and 85% respectively, African American and Latino women represent the largest and most committed group of believers in the United States.  Women of color have long used the church as a vehicle for political organizing, coalition-building, social uplift, and personal growth.  For many women of color, faith plays a huge role in therapeutic healing and emotional restoration.  Bucking male dominated patriarchal institutions such as the Black Church, the Catholic Church, and Latino Pentecostal denominations, women of color have assumed leadership roles in faith-based movements.  Progressive religious traditions have informed women’s resistance to and complicity with the dominant culture; often providing a means of redressing the effects of racism, white supremacy, segregation, and economic injustice.  The absence of alternative secular spaces and sites of political agency in communities of color is directly related to race, class, income, wealth, and geographic inequities.  Because of these factors, secular community organizing has not been an avenue that women of color could pursue in any significant numbers.  Consequently, there is very little documentation of early women of color freethinkers, atheists or humanists in the U.S.  What little scholarship has been done focuses narrowly on the Harlem Renaissance and, to a far lesser extent, the civil rights and Black Power movement eras.  While the work of Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, Lorraine Hansberry, and Alice Walker offer rich insight into the world view of African American humanist women writers, Larsen and Hurston have virtually no contemporaries in either academia or the literary world.  Nonetheless, women of color have emerged as some of the strongest voices in American atheism.  This anthology will offer an important corrective to this lacuna.  Going beyond basic questions of the challenges women of color non-believers face, it will articulate a vision of humanist social and gender justice that is firmly situated in the politics of anti-racism, anti-heterosexism, and anti-imperialism.  The essays in this collection will address some of the following questions:

1. How do feminist and humanist social thought converge?

2. What is the historical scope of women of color secularism?

3. What are  the historical tensions between white/European American feminism and women of color feminism, especially as they pertain to humanism and secularism?

4. How do  women of color secularists coalition-build across lines of race, gender,  sexual orientation and religion?

5.  What tensions exist between women of color feminism, the Black Church, the Catholic Church and other religious institutions?

6. How can humanism be made culturally relevant and what does humanist education look like in K-12?

7. How can secular and humanist pedagogies redress institutional heterosexism and hetero-normativity?

8. What role do freethought, humanism and/or atheism play in articulating lesbian/same gender loving and queer women of color subjectivities?

9. What role do humanism and secularism play in reproductive justice in communities of color?

10. How can a humanist stance inform struggles against economic injustice and racial segregation?

ABSTRACT SUBMISSION DEADLINE: September 30, 2013

For more information contact: shutch2396@aol.com

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Over the past several years, the Right has spun the fantasy of colorblind, post-racial, post-feminist American exceptionalism. This Orwellian narrative anchors the most blistering conservative assault on secularism, civil rights, and public education in the post-Vietnam War era. It is no accident that this assault has occurred in an era in which whites have over twenty times the wealth of African Americans. For many communities of color, victimized by a rabidly Religious Right, neo-liberal agenda, the American dream has never been more of a nightmare than it is now. Godless Americana is a radical humanist analysis of this climate. It provides a vision of secular social justice that challenges Eurocentric traditions of race, gender, and class-neutral secularism. For a small but growing number of non-believers of color, humanism and secularism are inextricably linked to the broader struggle against white supremacy, patriarchy, heterosexism, capitalism, economic injustice, and global imperialism. Godless Americana critiques these titanic rifts and the role white Christian nationalism plays in the demonization of urban communities of color.

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By Sikivu Hutchinson

High stakes test question: A female science student conducts an experiment with chemicals that explodes in a classroom, causes no damage and no injuries.  Who gets to be the adventurous teenage genius mad scientist and who gets to be the criminal led away in handcuffs facing two felonies to juvenile hall? If you’re a white girl check Box A, if you’re an intellectually curious black girl with good grades check Box B.  When 16 year-old Kiera Wilmot was arrested and expelled from Bartow high school in Florida for a science experiment gone awry it exemplified a long American-as-apple pie tradition of criminalizing black girls.  In many American classrooms black children are treated like ticking time bomb savages, shoved into special education classes, disproportionately suspended and expelled then warehoused in opportunity schools, juvenile jails and adult prisons.  Yet, while national discourse on the connection between school discipline and mass incarceration typically focuses on black males, black girls are suspended more than boys of every other ethnicity (except black males).  At a Georgia elementary school in 2012 a six year-old African American girl was handcuffed by the police after throwing a tantrum in the principal’s office.[i]  Handcuffing disruptive black elementary school students is not uncommon.  It is perhaps the most extreme example of black children’s initiation into what has been characterized as the school-to-prison pipeline, or, more accurately, the cradle to grave pipeline.  Stereotypes about dysfunctional violent black children ensure that the myth of white children’s relative innocence is preserved.

Nationwide, black children spend more time in the dean’s office, more time being opportunity transferred to other campuses and more time cycling in and out of juvenile detention facilities than children of other ethnicities.  Conservatives love to attribute this to poverty, broken homes, and the kind of Bell Curve dysfunction that demonizes “welfare queens” who pop out too many babies.  Yet there is no compelling evidence that socioeconomic differences play a decisive role in these disparities.[ii]  The fact remains that black children are criminalized by racist discipline policies regardless of whether they’re privileged “Cosby kids” or are in foster care or homeless shelters.  According to Daniel Losen and Russell Skiba, authors of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Suspended Education” report, “ethnic and racial disproportionately in discipline persists even when poverty and other demographic factors are controlled.[iii]

National research such as the Southern Poverty Law Center’s study and the Indiana Education Policy Center’s 2000 “The Color of Discipline” report has consistently shown that black students do not, in fact, “offend” at higher rates than their white and Latino counterparts.[iv] Middle class African American students in higher income schools are also disproportionately suspended.  This implies that black students are perceived by adults as more viscerally threatening.  “The Color of Discipline” report found that black students were more likely to be referred out of class for lower level offenses such as excessive noise, disrespect, loitering and “threat.”[v]  According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, “race and gender disparities in suspension were due not to differences in administrative disposition but to differences in the rate of initial referral of black and white students.”

When it comes to black girls, the widespread perception that they are dangerous, hostile and ineducable is promoted and reinforced by mainstream media portrayals.  Historically, black women have never been regarded as anybody’s “fairer sex” because white women have always been the universal standard for femininity, humanity, and moral worth.  On contemporary TV and in film, heroic white women abound as “new” models of bold, adventurous, breakthrough femininity.  Writing on “women’s” TV portrayals recently in the L.A. Times, Mary McNamara gushed about how the current crop of small screen female protagonists were complexly layered, daring departures from the typical crone, slut and mother roles of the past.  According to McNamara, “TV’s female leads are breaking ground with their unexpected choices. Thanks to the feminist revolution and TV’s increasing ascendancy, women are allowed to make mistakes without paying the ultimate price. It’s all quite refreshing.”

Yet once again the “feminist revolution” is lily white and over-exposed.  The article hails characters from “House of Cards,” HBO’s swaggering white-fest “Girls” and “Homeland,” then blithely acknowledges that the female protagonists of these shows are all white and mostly middle class.  Previous pieces from both the L.A. Times and the New York Times have saluted the rise of ass-kicking female adventurers like those in the “Hunger Games”, “Zero Dark Thirty” and (even) Pixar’s animated movie “Brave” as evidence that Hollywood is becoming more receptive to strong independent female characters.

But back in the image ghetto, substantive, much less starring roles, for women of color are still less abundant than Aunt Jemima’s head scarf.  The endless parade of reality show swill featuring hyper-sexual “out of control” brawling black women has long dwarfed dramatic mainstream portrayals of black women’s lived experiences, ambitions and narratives.

Thus, Kiera Wilmot’s arrest and expulsion is a national travesty.  It is an indictment not just of the inveterate racism and sexism of American public education but of an image industry that still loves to see black women doing mammy, Jezebel and welfare queen to white women’s heroic explorers.

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“I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay.”

In case you hadn’t heard, NBA journeyman center Jason Collins has declared to the world that he is a gay man.   Collins entered the NBA twelve years ago, along with his twin Jarron, after the two played collegiate basketball at Stanford.  He is being hailed as the first out active male athlete in a major professional team sport in the U.S. (though some may argue that late baseball player Glenn Burke was the first).

Collins says he was inspired to come out after his former college roommate, current Massachusetts congressman Joe Kennedy, marched in a Boston gay pride parade:

I’m seldom jealous of others, but hearing what Joe had done filled me with envy. I was proud of him for participating but angry that as a closeted gay man I couldn’t even cheer my straight friend on as a spectator. If I’d been questioned, I would have concocted half truths. What a shame to have to lie at a celebration of pride. I want to do the right thing and not hide anymore. I want to march for tolerance, acceptance and understanding. I want to take a stand and say, “Me, too.”

The reaction across the twitter verse and blogsphere, with some exceptions, has been positive, with Kobe Bryant and other current and former players and coaches offering support.  ESPN analyst Chris Broussard, apparently troubled by Collins’ reference to his Christian upbringing and respect for Jesus Christ and how that fits into a viewpoint of tolerance and acceptance,  stated (on a sports show) that Jason couldn’t be a Christian and an “active” homosexual at the same time.  Also, some seem to believe that the fact that Jason’s twin Jarron is not gay means that homosexuality is a choice.

Collins is a free agent (meaning not under contract with any team), having done stints this season with both the Boston Celtics and Washington Wizards.  Now the question moves to whether his coming out will affect the decision making of team owners who would otherwise be interested in adding Collins to their rosters.   Golden State Warriors coach Mark Jackson, who works for an openly gay team President, felt the need to point out that he is a Christian man with a sense of right and wrong before saying that Collins would be welcome on his team “if he had game. If he could help this team”.

Beyond the reaction of people in the sports world, what intrigues (and annoys) me is the reaction of commentators who wonder why this is a big deal and throw out inane chestnuts about how straight people don’t announce that they are straight.  This is the blind spot of social privilege..not recognize that straight people quite often announce their sexuality in many ways (wearing wedding rings, referring to wives and husbands) that go unnoticed because it is the expected norm.  It also smacks of the sentiment that the problem is not with bias, but with discussing bias, and with discussing issues of identity that are related to bias.

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WLP & Paula C.

By Sikivu Hutchinson

In all my years of “post-Jim Crow” public education no one ever handed me a book written by a black woman and said that what she wrote is universal truth.  I was never told that so-called civilizations rose and fell on the power of her words, or that entire belief systems sprung from her ideas.  I was never taught that the world’s greatest intellectuals worked plantations, were herded onto reservations, or traveled everyday from barrios and “ghettoes” to keep white people’s children.  Intellectuals and philosophers—serious thinkers—were white men, with no need for a living wage job.  They did not ride public buses or clean houses or go to schools where stop-and-frisk was a routine practice.  They did not have to worry, like my students do, about being assigned to special education classes because they were chronic discipline “problems” or didn’t speak “proper” English.  They were never told that they would be more likely to drop-out and get pregnant than go on to a four-year college.  These vaunted intellectuals and philosophers were certainly not seventeen year-old East L.A. girls like Paula Crisostomo, a Mexican-American Filipina activist who helped spearhead the Chicano student walkouts of 1968.  As a student at Lincoln High School in East L.A. Crisostomo was influenced by social studies teacher Sal Castro, who recently passed away at the age of 79.  Castro’s fierce commitment to culturally relevant education inspired generations of youth social justice activism in the LAUSD.  His guidance of Crisostomo and other youth leaders helped make the 1968 walkouts the largest high school student protests in this nation’s history.  Thousands of students boycotted their classes in protest over lack of college access, tracking policies, prohibition of Spanish in the classroom, and racist curricula.

I did not learn about the walkouts in high school.  In the march of great Western liberal democratic traditions there were no textbook portrayals of the homegrown activism in our own communities or link between the apartheid legacy of the past and its echoes in the present.  Instead, “social justice” history consisted of canned recitations of how Martin Luther King “led” the civil rights movement.  Then, as now, many of us disengaged from these token classroom discussions because activism was framed as though it was a distant, hallowed phenomenon propelled by charismatic god-status heroes.  Racism equaled the Klan, black people getting hosed down and spit at, black men being lynched, and the indignity of segregated water fountains.  Racism wasn’t the systematic sexual terrorism of black women in the Jim Crow South and the de facto segregationist North or the demonization of black women as welfare queen matriarchs.  Then, as now, there was no room for analyses of sexism, racial apartheid, heterosexism, and patriarchy and how our lived experiences diverged from the corrupt pedagogy of the American dream.

Last year, Crisostomo came and spoke to a group of my students at Washington Prep High School in South Los Angeles.  She drew parallels between the racism she’d encountered during the Vietnam War era and the de facto segregation of the Obama age.  Girls like Ms. Crisostomo were not supposed to go to college.  Homemaking, caregiving, becoming a maid in a white household on the Westside—these were the common life expectations for young Latinas.  For Crisotomo’s generation, the military was pervasive.  Youth of color died in disproportionate numbers fighting and killing other dark-skinned peoples in Vietnam because college was not an option in the “ghetto.”  Despite an increase in the number of students of color in college, aggressive military recruitment continues to be a reality for black, Latino, and Native American students.  For many, college preparation and equitable college access are still a distant dream.  For some, simply graduating from high school at campuses where less than 50% of the entering freshman class makes it to graduation is an accomplishment.  This has become the standard in an era in which the Education Trust estimates that only “one of every 20 African American kindergartners will graduate from high school and go on to a four-year California university” in the next decade.  While predominantly black and Latino schools in South and East L.A. are besieged by military recruiters, the more affluent white schools get the college recruiters, college prep classes, and highly qualified teachers. The Americana fever pitch of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines is unheard of on predominantly white campuses in Los Angeles.  It is a given that these students will be going to college, not dying on the frontlines.

Forty-five years after the walkouts, high drop-out rates, black student suspension rates and low four year college-going rates undermine the illusion of post-Jim Crow progress.  The conditions that walkout activists like Crisostomo and Castro protested are still in place, just with a “kinder gentler” post-racial varnish, buffed to blinding.

*Excerpted from Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels

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Laurie James

By Naima Washington

To be sure, many assumptions are made about atheists. Some of the assumptions about atheists are made by atheists, and African American atheists are among the easiest people to stereotype: we are all in the closet; and/or have one foot in the secular world and the other in a pew; and/or due to so many years of religious brain-washing, unlike white people, black people aren’t authentic atheists. On March 28, 2013, I went to Austin, Texas for the 50th anniversary of the founding of the American Atheists. It is at secular meetings, large or small, where I try to meet every black person in attendance, and I was in for a secular surprise when I introduced myself to Laurie James, a beautiful, dreadlocked, fiery, unapologetic atheist. As a courageous truth-teller who defies all stereotypes, Laurie is both sensitive and uninhibited representing open-hearted, honest-to-goodness, Caribbean womanhood at its best!

Laurie studied and trained to be an evangelist, and no doubt evolved into a believer who apparently took no prisoners. Born in Jamaica, she arrived in NYC the divorced mother of four small children and recalls the loneliness of having no family members or friends in her newly-adopted country; she had no one but Jesus as most committed Christians would say. She recounted the endless time spent preparing her small children for the arduous journey to and from church, three times a week. Hurriedly making her way along the sidewalks, she’d push the double-stroller containing her two smallest children with one hand; and would pull along the other two children with her other hand. By the time she fought her way in and out of trains and subways stations, she’d finally arrive at church drop-dead exhausted only to have to reverse the process for the trip back home. This insane routine carried out three times a week clearly took a toll on all five of them, and although very much a believer, she continued making these treks until she just couldn’t do it any longer.

Laurie’s brand of theology also included faith healing. The majority of theists say that their gods can heal illness, yet at the first sign of a serious illness or injury, any praying that they do for healing takes place in their doctor’s office! In Laurie’s case, faith healing meant faith healing and there was to be no medical intervention. If someone was ill church members would ‘gather in a circle around the person; pray, lay hands on the person’ and plead to the gods for an intervention. If no church members were around, prayer for healing could take place over the phone. I’ve read stories about faith healing and all of them left me feeling depressed, but the unfortunate reality is that many people who practice faith healing coincidentally have little to no access to medical care. People with serious illnesses who don’t receive medical treatment will experience tragic consequences regardless of their beliefs. Laurie nearly lost one of her children who had become seriously ill, and tragically members of her family died after receiving no medical treatment. Their deaths, extremely painful and probably preventable, have no doubt left her with horrific memories and permanent emotional scars.

Laurie abandoned both faith and faith healing less than three years ago, and her recollections struck me as both devastating and ironic because her tee shirt had the quote of one of her heroes, Madlyn Murray O’Hair: An atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. But, some believers even at the moment they’re experiencing extreme pain may also experience moments of extreme clarity regarding the limitations of their gods. Apparently Laurie also experienced such clarity when she ‘woke up one morning, took a good look’ at the horrific state of the world, and asked herself what kind of ‘god’ would allow this? She questioned the ‘goodness’ of a god who permitted illness, poverty, suffering, etc.; she questioned the power of a god who could not prevent these things. She expressed deep compassion towards those who suffer and is willing to help others. She’d eliminate all suffering if she had the power to do so, therefore, she had to question the goodness, power and/or existence of a god who tolerated the ‘suffering of his children’. As she likes to point out, “There is no one watching over us!”

The convention in Austin marked Laurie’s first time to be surrounded by likeminded people, and because she currently lacks atheist connections in the community where she lives, she was absolutely ecstatic. I’m hoping she’ll move beyond the convention experience by seeking out other atheists in Florida and try to organize a group of atheists in her own community. She’s willing to give it a try, and hopefully, atheists in Florida will seek her out as well. She’s a repository of information and rich life experiences; is well-read, and clearly is an independent thinker. During the convention, Laurie was happy to finally meet face-to-face some of the atheists she’d learned about through the internet. She, like many black atheists, was proud to be able to meet other black atheists so when she saw a group of African Americans standing outside of the hotel in Austin, she walked up to them and said, “Are you my people?’ Some of them looked at her, perhaps noted her American Atheists tee shirt and just stared. She said, “Excuse me, but are you atheists?” Well, apparently they were not! They were theists, and as she attempted to enter the hotel, one man boldly stepped in front of her blocking her entrance to the hotel. Laurie, who’s also a weight-lifter, has a voice that is as soothing as any melodic contralto’s or as menacing as a machete; and I can imagine which characterization came forth when she told the man, “Look, you need to get out of my way,” and, he did!

Personable and full of energy, she made the rounds at the convention where she met key-note speakers, vendors, authors, entertainers, and countless convention attendees. Black or white; gay or straight; if you demand proof for all claims, exercise and defend the right to say that there are no gods; and should you experience her carefree attitude, or are ever caught-up in her friendly embrace, you will know that you’re one of her people!

Laurie let me know that we have something in common because she’s also a feminist and a socialist who cannot see the role of the atheist disconnected from the promotion of social justice and human rights. I think we must do more than declare that there are no gods. We must demonstrate what disciplined, compassionate, and rationale human beings can do by boldly creating new systems which focus on the eradication of injustice, poverty and war, and which utilize humane methods for reversing the devastation perpetuated by corrupt, oppressive leaders along with ignorant priests, rabbis, imams, swamis, etc.

I encourage Laurie and other atheists of color to consider writing their own stories in their own words. This is one way we may be able to combat stereotypes especially those which wrongly conclude that all black people have identical theological experiences and that we all experience atheism in the same way. Laurie struggles with many people about her de-conversion and no doubt she is fighting the good fight, but I think that her decision to become an atheist may actually take a backseat in the eyes of relatives and friends who were absolutely flabbergasted at her decision to grow dreadlocks. She was begged and warned not to wear her hair like that because she’d be mistaken for a Rastafarian! Yet, many of her challenges are the result of her being outspoken. Some black atheists may be labeled ‘race traitors’ but not necessarily because we simply no longer believe in any of the gods; but because we have the audacity to say so! Besides, every community including the black community has its own self-appointed authenticators! People receive their identity primarily from their families and often that identity comes with inflexible boundaries. Stretching and/or refusing to be defined, confined, and contained by those boundaries is part of the very complex process of self-discovery as well as self-improvement. However, I’ve yet to find any atheist with a religious background who regardless of their ethnicity, didn’t anger, annoy, disappoint, antagonize, or enrage at least one family member, friend, and/or loved one.

Because of the historical, political, and cultural involvement with the Catholic Church, an Italian or Hispanic who rejects Catholicism even for another denomination may also be seen as ‘traitors’ and accused of abandoning their religion, ethnic and family heritage. Many families go bonkers if someone says they’re gay; or want to marry someone of a different ethnicity, color, nationality, or religion. Many people try to challenge the nonconformists in their communities in an effort to gain control over those who refuse to be controlled, but more importantly, to maintain a false picture of community cohesion. There are an extraordinary number of people even in the African American community who seldom, never, or no longer attend religious services; who may or may not believe in any of the gods; and whose indifference towards religion is indistinguishable from that of atheists! So while, it is easy to make authoritative-sounding statements which claim that the entire black community will issue a wholesale rejection of every African American who rejects the gods, that claim is patently false. So far, the overwhelming majority of rich and complex narratives exploring the journeys of black atheists have yet to be articulated. Besides, the penalty for leaving the Jehovah’s Witness Protection Program for any reason dwarfs the rejection of atheists on the part of regular black folks!

Laurie returned to the hotel on [Easter!] Sunday morning, and ran into a film crew! A documentary was being made; she was asked to explain how she became an atheist, and so she said, “I told my unscripted story!” Having met her, I hope I have a chance to see it. When we last spoke via telephone, she planned to go dancing that evening. Earlier she had described her dancing style as ‘sultry’ among other things. Now, let’s see: she’s a beautiful person, a militant atheist, a feminist/socialist; wants to start an atheist group in her community in Florida, and is a sultry dancer. Global warming notwithstanding, expect things to really heat up as Laurie and her people turn Florida into the Sunshine State of Reason!

Continue reading »]]> “So much conversation regarding atheism and humanism gains no traction, and does little to push beyond areas of comfort and well worn arguments. Sikivu Hutchinson’s work offers an important corrective to this. With clear and sharp insights, Hutchinson pushes readers to recognize and tackle the patterns of thought and action that limit any real ability to respond to issues of race, gender, and sexuality from a transformative and humanist perspective. Read her work, but fasten your seat belt first!”

– Anthony Pinn, author, African American Humanist Principles and The End of God Talk: An African American Humanist Theology

From Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels (forthcoming May 2013):

Christianity was one of the primary means by which African Americans learned the lexicon of becoming subjects through otherness. This is a uniquely American dialectic, borne of the soul-killing terrorism of slave ships, and, later, the plantation, a gulag awash in the new republic’s corrupt gospel of individual liberty. When my students traveled to the California African American museum last year, they had a chance to see and imagine the terror of these spaces. They walked through galleries with floor-to-ceiling inscriptions chronicling the birth dates, family lineages, appearances, habits, and idiosyncracies of slaves. They marveled at the relevance and medievalism of the notorious Willie Lynch manifesto. Their blood ran cold at the military assemblage of black bodies in the slavers’ hull. They stood mesmerized, contemplating the sheer number, weight, and scope of intertwined bodies, twinned in the endless sea voyage, hour after murderous hour. Enraged, many of them wondered how these obliterated ancestors made it out alive. How they resisted the gnashing white turbine of the sea and the urge to rise up against their savage captors.

Often did I think many of the inhabitants of the deep much more happy than myself. I envied them the freedom they enjoyed, and as often wished I could change my condition for theirs.

Olaudah Equiano, 1789

Later, in the classroom, we read Alice Walker on the spirituality of art-making. She wonders about the enslaved “genius” great-grandmothers denied the right to their own bodies. The space of the transcendent artist is that of the white male, the universal subject, the hero, the kingmaker, the muse chasing romantic. Their art hangs timelessly on museum walls funded by billionaires and corporations. Their art demands time, self-presence, self-possession, insularity, a privileged distance from the relentlessness of everyday life and the oppressive inconvenience of the body. The caricature of the masturbatory white male artist is one of the crazy booze swilling, dick swinging, T&A besotted libertine whose creativity is powered by testosterone and angst. Within the Western artistic canon, the woman exists to provide sex, inspiration, and succor, to be a pious sacrifice at the altar of male genius.

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Janeth Silva

Clay Wesley

WLP leaders on racism, feminism, school climate and media images of women of color in the Teen Skepchick Interviews series, “where TS writers talk with amazing women

Jamion Allen, 12th grade

scientists and skeptics about life, the universe, and everything. These three women are part of the Women’s Leadership Project, a feminist service learning program in South Los Angeles. The WLP has been in operation since 2006, and helps encourage and guide young women of color in their own advocacy projects, including activism around race, gender, and LGBT equality. The WLP is sponsored by the L.A. County Human Relations Commission and the Gardena Healthy Start collaborative…http://teenskepchick.org/2013/03/28/teen-skepchick-interviews-jamion-janeth-eclasia/