Atheists' Diversity Woes Have No Black and White Answers

[Stuckinthebush]

http://www.christiancentury.org/article/2011-01/atheists-diversity-woes-have-no-black-and-white-answers


"Alix Jules is an atheist, but for years he felt uncomfortable at gatherings of nonbelievers. The reason: he's black.

"I got really tired of going back and forth to free thought events and being the only black person there," said Jules, 36, who lives in Dallas. "It was not necessarily inviting. I just felt like an outcast ... No one was reaching out to me."

Last year, Jules helped launch a local initiative to address what atheists regard as an international problem for their movement: a lack of racial and gender diversity.

From the smallest local meetings to the largest conferences, the vast majority of speakers and attendees are almost always white men. Leading figures of the atheist movement -- Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett -- are all white men.

But making atheism more diverse is proving to be no easy task.

Surveys suggest most atheists are white men. A recent survey of 4,000 members of the Freedom from Religion Foundation found that 95 percent were white, and men comprised a majority."

<SNIP>

I received this article from a theist friend of mine. She was wondering what I thought about the issue of non-diversity in atheism. My first thought was, "Are we a really a membership-type group?". But, the article (even though it is from Christian Century) does have an interesting question. Why are we so white and male? I think it is a societal issue. White males are giving more allowances by society to declare autonomy in religious issues. Women and minorities not so much. What do you think?

[Goblinmonger]

1. If they start letting blacks in, I'm out.

I have my limits.

[BlueJazz]

4. LOL!

[realisticphish]

2. quite possibly

In terms of race, I think there is a larger religious pressure in the black community compared to the white community in general, especially considering the lingering consequences of segregation, etc. That's purely anecdotal, but the black community in general seems to be more religious inclined, in terms of culture.

edit: Also, I don't know the stats, but I'm curious what the statistical differences are re: college attendance. I know that higher education is correlated with non-belief, or at least that's the common assumption, and I wonder if a lower rate of college attendance would impact the difference.

[yellerpup]

3. Until Madelyn Murray O'Hare was murdered

there was always a female representative speaking out for non-believers. From the time I was a young teenager, she inspired me with her intellect and debating skills and I found that I agreed with her on everything except her approach. As a product of the "y'all be nice, now..." Southern culture I wished that she could have been more charming when making her points. That being said, she was still tough and inspiring. I don't think that it's that atheists are cold, it's just that we don't try to recruit others to our way of thinking.

[onager]

5. Uh-oh...

More US blacks declare their atheism (Article from May 2010)

http://freethinker.co.uk/2010/05/31/more-us-blacks-declare-their-atheism/

Oprah and Sherri Shepherd will be pissed to hear that...

A few noted black atheists/agnostics/freethinkers, from a discussion over at Infidel Guy:

A. Philip Randolph - "We consider prayer as nothing more than a fervent wish; consequently the merit and worth of a prayer depend upon what the fervent wish is."

Bayard Rustin - Principal organizer of the March on Washington in 1963. He was openly gay, anti-communistic, a socialist, a civil rights activist and also a freethinker.

J. A. Rogers - "The slogan of the Negro devotee is: Take the world but give me Jesus, and the white man strikes an eager bargain with him."

George S. Schuyler - "On the horizon loom a growing number of iconoclasts and Atheists, young black men and women who can read, think, and ask questions, and who impertinently demand to know why Negroes should revere a God who permits them to be lynched, jim-crowed and disfranchised."

John G. Jackson - The family minister once asked John G. Jackson when he was small, "Who made you?" After some thought he replied from his own realization, "I don’t know."

John Henrik Clarke - "As a grade school child in Columbus, Georgia, Clarke recalled inventing notes from local white people to allow his access to library books in his quest for knowledge."

Yosef ben-Jochannan - "The churches can’t help the people when the chips are down because their interest is with the power structure."

Bobby E. Wright - "Guess what you talk about when you go to church? Everything but what to do, you talk about some God that nobody ever did find."

James Forman - Civil Rights Activist

Lorraine Hansberry - Playwright known for her drama, "A Raisin in The Sun".

Butterfly McQueen - Maid in MGM's 1939's Gone with The Wind.“As my ancestors are free from slavery, I am free from the slavery of religion.” Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Oct. 8, 1989

Charlie "Bird" Parker - A PBS special quoted his widow as criticizing Parker's family for giving him a Christian funeral even though they knew "he was irreligious".

Deborah Clark
James Baldwin
W. E. B. DuBois
Richard Wright
Gregory Gross
Zora Neale Hurston
Alice Walker
Frederick Douglass
Dr. Carter G. Woodson - (started Negro History Week)
Gwendolyn Brooks
Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes is an interesting case (at least to me). He spent the 1930's and Forties as an outspoken Communist and atheist, expressing his feelings in powerful poems like "Christ In Alabama." He toned down his rhetoric a few years later, when Red Panic hit the USA and Hughes was targeted by America's National Watch Queen, J. Edgar Hoover.

[Stuckinthebush]

6. Thanks, onager...great link

Indeed it must be a difficult journey for African American non-theists due to the church connection to the community.

[Goblinmonger]

9. Langston Hughes is awesome. One of our strongest poetic voices.

I'm happy to be in any group he belonged to, however tenuous a connection.

[immoderate]

7. I belong to an atheist group.

It's hard to hold on to minority* members. One of our leaders is female, as are several members, but white males dominate oops, I mean outnumber, females. A few Africans, Arabs, and Hispanics. But those folks, if they have family, are very attached to the church.

At the first atheist meetup I went to, (we meet weekly, in a pub) one of the members announced that he was quitting and going over to the Pagan church because they had women. They do. I have some Pagan friends and I see him there occasionally.

---

*Weird to talk about minorities when you're an atheist. Our group, in south Florida, has more than its share of New Yorkers.

--imm

[toddaa]

8. Here's a good start