You commit social suicide as a black person when you say you’re an atheist.
Those of the words of Jamila Bey, who attended the first African Americans for Humanism conference hosted recently in Washington by the Center for Inquiry.
According to this report, Bey and other black atheists, agnostics and secularists are struggling to openly affirm their secular viewpoints in a community that’s historically heralded as one of America’s most religious.
Norm Allen
Said Norm Allen, a former Baptist and now the Executive Director of African Americans for Humanism:
We need black non-theists to gather in one place and say, ‘Look at her or look at him: he looks like me and they’re atheists. And that’s OK.
A 2009 study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that African-Americans were more religious in a variety of areas than the US population as a whole, with 87 percent of African-Americans describing themselves as belonging to one religious group or another.
Nearly eight in ten African-Americans said religion was very important in their lives, compared with 56 percent of the general US adult population.
Said Bey:
You renounce your blackness. You almost denigrate your heritage and history of the people if you claim atheism.
Howard University graduate student Mark Hatcher says African-Americans are largely invisible in a secular movement that has long been represented by white male thinkers.
Concerned that black religious skeptics were alienated on campus, he started a humanist student group this year.
It is extremely important to get these people in one room and say, ‘Hey, you’re not crazy’.
Jamila Bey speaking at the conference. Photo credit: African Americans for Humanism
Mia Fite, a student at Johnson & Wales University in Colorado, attended the conference for that assurance. She counts herself as one of the few non-religious people among her predominantly black circle of friends.
You expect it from white people, but it’s rare for African-American people to talk critically about religion.
Butterfly McQueen
Not surprisingly, these tentative steps towards rationality don’t please black religious leaders. For example, The Rev Kenneth Fowlkes of Kingdom Builders Church of God in Christ in Hanover, Md, moans:
Humanists are encouraging African Americans to go to hell.
Such condemnation is why many black Humanists say the journey to secularism can be a lonely one. Engineering student Duen McLean, a soft-spoken Jamaican-American who once thought of becoming a Southern Baptist missionary, traveled from Florida to attend the conference said:
My family, my friends, my co-workers, my identity Â- everything was ripped away from me when I left Christianity.
Jonathan, a 29-year-old Washington resident who wouldn’t reveal his last name out of fear of backlash among friends and family, said his lack of religion has been nearly paralyzing.
If I want a second date or a job in the community, I won’t say I’m an atheist. It’s like we’re fighting for our rights all over again.
James Baldwin
Joel Augustus Rogers, a prominent Jamaican-American author, journalist, and historian who contributed to the history of Africa and the African diaspora, especially the history of African Americans in the US, once wrote:
To enslave a man, then dope him to make him content! Do you call THAT a solace? . . . The honest fact is that the greatest hindrance to the progress of the Negro is that same dope that was shot into him during slavery. . . . The slogan of the Negro devotee is: Take the world but give me Jesus, and the white man strikes an eager bargain with him. . . . Another fact — there are far too many Negro preachers. Religion is the most fruitful medium for exploiting this already exploited group. As I said, the majority of the sharpers, who among the whites would go into other fields, go, in this case, to the ministry.
You can see a list of famous black atheists here.
American actress Butterfly McQueen (1911-1995), best known for her role as Prissy, the maid in MGM’s 1939 movie Gone with The Wind, declared in 1989:
As my ancestors are free from slavery, I am free from the slavery of religion.
And influential gay author, James Baldwin (1924-1987), wrote in Letter from a Region in My Mind:
Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty – necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on those who have discovered the true faith the spiritual duty of liberating the infidels.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
May 31st, 2010 at 12:12 pm
Good luck to them. Can’t be easy coming from a background like that.
May 31st, 2010 at 12:24 pm
Sounds to me like African slaves adopted xianity as coping mechanism for their predicament, encouraged by their masters as a means of control. Now it’s deeply entrenched in their culture much the same as in muzzie countries where we know it’s hard to be different.
I’ve just realised, I don’t know any African Americans.
May 31st, 2010 at 1:57 pm
What an inspirational report, these guys are to be applauded for standing up for what they don’t believe in.
Religion is probably the most influential force in holding back the advancement of Black people, as religion has hindered equality for women and gays.
May 31st, 2010 at 2:40 pm
Tremendously encouraging and I guess it is difficult for atheists here to appreciate the pressures these blacks face. However, like much else when the first logs give way the water flows faster. I admire their efforts.
I remember reading James Baldwin many years ago: The Fire the Next Time and Go Tell it on the Mountain come to mind. May many follow his courageous example of speaking his mind.
May 31st, 2010 at 3:22 pm
Broadsword said:
“I’ve just realised, I don’t know any African Americans.”
Let me start by saying you spell like a brit.
I know it’s sad, but out of fact that christianity was imposed upon the abducted Africans, gospel music was born. Even though the white assholes made them worship “over there” out of sight, they found something they could take pride in. Some may disagree, but they’re full of shit, blacks invented Blues, Rock and Roll, Jazz, and Soul music. The only indelible stain on their resume is rap/hip-hop. That shit sucks in every color of the spectum.
One must understand that the person who inflamed the civil rights issue was a preacher. And that’s sad when you think about it. Wouldn’t you think that it would have been a freethinker out there demanding rights for our fellow human beings? We just missed the que, it should have been us. So I guess its no surprise that they read their bible instead of paying attention to our lame asses. We dropped the ball.
NeoWolfe3
May 31st, 2010 at 5:30 pm
Am I glad not to be living in the USA, but in Holland, Europe. Most people I know hardly care about their colour or religion, it’s just not an issue, and I know quite a few non-whites. It’s as if being ‘black’ is what makes or breaks you, when you read this article, which is sad.
African American Atheists: maybe it’s time to get out of the ‘black’ box and start looking for like-minded people who may look a bit different.
May 31st, 2010 at 6:11 pm
NeoWolfe – I don’t think it an inappropriate question to ask whether an atheist leader COULD have emerged victorious in America at the time. Even now, to admit atheism is near political suicide.
You’re absolutely correct about the music. Many don’t realize just what a departure from previous music the blues genre was, or how much influence it has had on all subsequent genres. It really was a turning point in the world of music.
May 31st, 2010 at 6:34 pm
While the churches did have a strong role in the civil rights movement, I remember reading that there were also some humanists involved. Asa Philip Randolph was an atheist who was influential. I know he had talked of a march on Washington many years before the one in the ’60′s and when that one happened he spoke along with Martin Luthor King.
There was also an anti-religious poet who wrote a poem that was supposed to have inspired part of King’s famous ‘I have a dream’ speech though I can’t remember what his name was.
I think that Randolph did join a church later in life. Not because he believed but he thought it would be counter-productive to attack religion and still be able to rally people for the cause of civil rights.
May 31st, 2010 at 8:22 pm
I’ve posted a number of photos from the AAH “New Directions for African American Humanists” Conference held at CFI-DC on Flickr for anyone interested in seeing them.
May 31st, 2010 at 9:05 pm
Urmensch,
See, that’s why I come here. I get smarter every time. But, it’s spelled “Phillip Randolf”, and Martin “Luther” King. Don’t mind me, I spell like a kindergartner. I’m just playing
NeoWolfe
May 31st, 2010 at 9:40 pm
I don’t get why so many people are so beholden to a system that was used as an excuse to keep them enslaved, as a reason to restrict their civil rights as recently as a few decades ago, and is still used to control them today.
May 31st, 2010 at 11:55 pm
@Buffy
I dunno. I think perhaps we should focus on why there are so many gays that are so beholden to a system that continues and appears like it always will be used as justification of restricting civil rights as well as motivation for violence against them. Then we can move on to why blacks are so religious. And before we reach that question we may want to tackle why there are women that are religious.
People don’t make sense. Thinking is hard and I find that most people try to avoid it.
June 1st, 2010 at 12:12 am
Thanks so much for the link Brian. I have updated our post by adding a pic of Jamila
June 1st, 2010 at 5:12 am
Good christian people (such as ML King) may have ended slavery and segregation, but they were christians animated by enlightenment humanist ideals. Xtianity itself was more than content to let slavery continue for 1500 years.
June 1st, 2010 at 7:41 am
NeoWolfe,
You’re right about Doctor King’s name. Perhaps he’s named after that German anti-semite. I did go check the spelling and found Randolph spelt (or for you, spelled) with a ph.
June 1st, 2010 at 7:49 am
That was weird. I went to the link supplied by Brian on Flickr and it said it was outside the safesearch filter and did I really want to go there.
As if it were porn or something possibly offensive.
Is this to protect those who attended the meeting or is black atheism so taboo that it is handled like something x-rated?
June 1st, 2010 at 2:47 pm
It appears to be Asa Philip Randolph! A remarkable man:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._Philip_Randolph
His religious views varied over his lifetime. In 1973, he signed the Humanist Manifesto II.
June 1st, 2010 at 3:18 pm
More here:
http://www.nyupress.org/books/.....-3822.html
A. Philip Randolph, founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, was one of the most effective black trade unionists in America. Once known as “the most dangerous black man in America,” he was a radical journalist, a labor leader, and a pioneer of civil rights strategies. His proteg Bayard Rustin noted that, “With the exception of W.E.B. Du Bois, he was probably the greatest civil rights leader of the twentieth century until Martin Luther King.”
Scholarship has traditionally portrayed Randolph as an atheist and anti-religious, his connections to African American religion either ignored or misrepresented. Taylor places Randolph within the context of American religious history and uncovers his complex relationship to African American religion. She demonstrates that Randolph’s religiosity covered a wide spectrum of liberal Protestant beliefs, from a religious humanism on the left, to orthodox theological positions on the right, never straying far from his African Methodist roots.
And here:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.....ndolph.htm
http://www.first-unitarian-pgh.....-02-26.pdf
June 1st, 2010 at 3:35 pm
Speaking of music: Mahalia Jackson was one of Martin Luther King’s supporters, and it has always irked me that she restricted her repertoire almost exclusively to religious music! To me she has to be one of the greatest, if not THE greatest, female vocalists of all time, and you can almost hear her in many singers who followed her. I was a young teenager when I first heard her sing, and I can remember the electrifying effect that it had on me to this day. It is obvious that when religion forms such an important part of a person’s life, and of a particular group’s culture, it is not going to lose its influence and power overnight!
Here’s an absolutely amazing rendition of We Shall Overcome!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmR1YvfIGng
June 2nd, 2010 at 2:18 am
Urmensch,
Not that it really matters, maybe the dude couldn’t spell his own name, but I have evidence that it was Phillip, with two l’s, and Randolf with an f.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_is_A_Phillip_Randolf
Ugh!!! Mental masturbation. Did I spell that right?
NeoWolfe
June 28th, 2010 at 6:15 am
Free at last, free at last, … thank the thinkers before me … cause I’m free at last!