After the embarrassment of firing Kavin Senapathy and removing all of her previous contributions, it finally got through to the board that that was unethical and they have restored her articles. This being CFI, though, they couldn’t let it go and sent out a memo insulting Senapathy and asserting that they were not a racist organization because they knew some brown people.

Gah.

So of course Senapathy has fired back.

Speaking of caricatures, they boast that they work alongside “a vast array” of non-white people. As someone who has been committed to learning about the legacies of white supremacy, slavery, colonialism, and imperialism over the past few years, I quickly saw the dehumanization in this statement — whether or not it was intentional, this is tokenism. Do not refer to minorities as “a vast array.” And do not parade associations with non-white people as if it’s praiseworthy. Period. (Not to mention that this is a gross exaggeration; they don’t actually work with many non-white folks.)

Where has CFI used its platform to expose these fallacies? How? Evidence suggests otherwise. For instance, CFI let the African Americans for Humanism domain expire. As I observed in Undark, their magazine Skeptical Inquirer published a one-off “race issue” with articles written exclusively by white men. Contrary to their claim that they are “committed to diversity and to bring more people of various racial and ethnic backgrounds into its community of secular people and skeptics” they have refused several generous and well-referenced attempts to convince them to take the basic step of adopting a formal Diversity & Inclusion policy.

Some of the influential white men who shape the policies of CFI get serious criticism.

Dawkins does not remotely confine his criticism of Islam to sexism, homophobia, or any other injustice that might plausibly demonstrate altruistic intent. Instead, it is often frivolous, gratuitous, and designed to insult rather than reform. Dawkins’ shallow argument that he isn’t stoking Islamophobia and racism because “Islam is not a race” is a reductionist and disingenuous argument that has been thoroughly refuted time and again. As a brown American who was raised Atheist, I know firsthand the effects of people like Dawkins labeling Islam as “evil” — Islam is not a race, but I’ve been called slurs due to the assumption that my brown skin and dark hair mean I could be Muslim. I can only imagine what it’s like to be a hijabi woman in America. Based on hate crimes against Muslims alone (and racist hate crimes that wrongly target non-Muslims, like the Sikh temple shooting), it’s clear that Islamophobia stokes racism. And it’s frankly nauseating that the so-called “Center for Inquiry” continues to defend this.

Then let’s get into the consequences of CFI’s long-term neglect of social justice issues. We’re in a crisis situation right now, where American racism has made the problems worse, and you would have thought a leading organization dedicated to scientific skepticism would appreciate the importance of the issues…but all they provide is a few token statements while firing one of the few writers they had who had taken race seriously.

We agree on one thing — scientific thinking is crucial during this pandemic. It’s too bad that CFI’s efforts to help address this pandemic will be hindered by its dire lack of understanding of how Black communities and other non-white communities in the U.S. were already been dealing with epidemic levels of hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, and a slew of other conditions, beginning at birth. They don’t try to understand the sociopolitical factors that will influence the development and deployment of treatment and prevention strategies, including vaccines. They haven’t begun to understand the legacies of colonialism, imperialism, and slavery, and the history of racist pseudoscience that’s alive and well today — a history that runs a direct line to how the pandemic has run its course. Gestures like Skeptical Inquirer deputy editor Ben Radford writing that “it’s important to recognize that the measures taken to slow the spread of the coronavirus in America and around the world — while necessary and effective — have taken a disproportionate toll on minorities” hardly make a dent.

CFI has simply lost all credibility.

If you want to see what the capitalist ideal for America is, just look at our for-profit prisons. They exploit prisoners ruthlessly.

Last year, West Virginia contracted with a company, Global Tel Link (GTL), to provide free tablets to prisoners. These kinds of initiatives are rapidly becoming more popular, as states grapple with the legacy of four decades of tough-on-crime policies and renewed public calls for more rehabilitative prisons.

And it sounds great. Until inmates realize the company charges users every time they use the tablets, including 25 cents a page for emails and 3 cents a minute to read e-books. By that calculation, most inmates would end up paying about $15 for each novel or autobiography they attempt to read. To people who have little to no money, that’s not a benefit. That’s exploitation. The only beneficiary, aside from Global Tel Link, is West Virginia, which receives 5% of the profits.

I imagine some team of piggy middle-managers in a corporation that realizes they’ve got the capitalist ideal: captive customers who have to buy what you’re selling, in an environment where competition is not allowed, and they get to charge whatever they want for whatever service they offer. They go hog wild. Let’s charge them for reading! After a trivial investment to pay the ridiculous demands of authors and publishers for royalties, the greedy bastards, we can demand a reasonable recompense for allowing them to view a book.

What else can we charge them for? How about taking the Vimes theory of socioeconomic unfairness and cranking it up to 11?

Many prisons now ban in-person visits, then allow companies to charge $12.99 or more for video calls. Prison phone calls can cost up to $3.99 a minute. Prison shoes fall apart within weeks, and replacements are only available from a special catalog. Only sweatshirts are provided for the winter. Meals are nutritionally insufficient and, over time, must be supplemented to maintain good health.

All these necessities — shoes, jackets, phone calls, canned tuna from the commissary — rack up fees well above the market rate on the outside. But they often aren’t paid for by prisoners, who have little or no means to earn income. They are paid primarily by families who are often among our poorest. This hidden tax drives already vulnerable communities deeper into poverty and hopelessness.

Oh, yeah, let’s punish people by depriving them of their liberty and gouging every penny we can out of their families, and disincentivize that absurd idea of “rehabilitation”. Prison serves the leeches.

This company, Global Tel Link, calls itself the “Corrections Innovations Leader”. Their only innovations, though, involve coming up with new ways to suck profits out of the pockets of those on the lowest rung of the socioeconomic ladder. They see a poor person, they see someone they’ll have power over to steal their last dollar. This is their lying mission statement.

At GTL, our mission is to create impactful connections and provide industry-leading service. We give incarcerated individuals the ability to stay engaged with their support networks by making meaningful connections through our products and services.

If you work for GTL, I hope you are deeply ashamed. If you work for GTL, you’re probably not…because you have to lack a conscience to work for that soul-sucking evil company.

That poor woman. Heidi Klum was savagely abused.

Klum told us, “A lot of people got mad at me. I was called, for example, ‘a white woman.’”

I am reeling in shock. How dare anyone slander her by accusing her of have a light-skinned ancestry and certain female attributes. It’s cruel and vicious, possibly the worst thing you can ever say about anyone.

Except…she was at least spared the ignominy of being called a “white man”. Those guys are the worst. I may be one, but it would be mean to remind me of it.