The Unbearable Whiteness of Secular Studies

[rug]

BY SIKIVU HUTCHINSON
DECEMBER 26, 2016

I recently submitted a course proposal entitled “Going Godless: Challenging Faith and Religion in Communities of Color” to a School of Religion at a prominent university in California. After many gyrations, it was shot down due to “lack of funding”. The course focuses on the intersectional politics of secularism, atheism and humanism, as well as the work of secularists of color like Anthony Pinn, Mandisa Thomas, Heina Dadabhoy, Juhem Navarro Rivera, Sincere Kirabo, Candace Gorham and the D.C. group Secular Sistahs.

The uptick in Americans identifying as secular Nones has led to the creation of more secular courses, many of which are housed in Religious Studies departments. Despite the much ballyhooed “Rise of the Nones” there is currently only one bonafide Secular Studies department (based at Pitzer College and helmed by secular scholar Phil Zuckerman) in the U.S.

For the most part, Secularism in the American academy is a cobbled together affair, featuring one-off courses dominated by white academics with the book contracts, privilege and ivory tower “cred” to do secular work without worrying about censure or professional ostracism. Although social media bustle with black folks tweeting, blogging and sounding off about embracing atheism; the same handful of white faces preside in the academic industrial complex as “authentic” scholars of the secular, atheist, humanist experience. As a result, scholarship, classes and curricula that capture the lived experiences, politics and world views of secularists of color, especially those of women of color, are still scant to nonexistent. To date, the Humanist Institute is the only organization in the country to feature an online course I developed entitled “Women of Color Beyond Faith”.

Why is it important that secular people of color teach, write and publish book length scholarship, analyses, narratives and fiction on our social history? The hijacking of rock music from the African American composers and musicians who originated the genre is a case in point. African American scholar/historians like Maureen Mahon and Jeffrey Othello are among the few in the white male dominated field of rock and roll musicology and music history. This dearth, combined with the whitewashing of rock by white male critics, musicians and the music industry, has ironically marked the genre as “in-authentically” black.

https://www.laprogressive.com/black-secular-studies/

[AtheistCrusader]

1. Cultural difference.

This is religion.


This is atheism.


One has more baggage to study*. Atheism is an intensely personal decision and doesn't carry a lot along with it. There's humanism and various other larger piles of things to study, and if you are interested in atheists throughout history, there's some delving to do there, but it's not deep and most of them get covered in mainstream history anyway. Bayard Rustin, W. E. B. DuBois, Gwendolyn Brooks, Frederick Douglas, Dr. Carter G. Woodson, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes. All people of color who happened to be atheists, but their intertwining with history and culture is much deeper and more broad than the simple fact they didn't believe in god(s).

One can simply stand there and think 'do I believe in god?' and answer 'nope' and move on with their life. It's that simple. Not so simple for someone who chooses catholicism. There's some baggage, some rituals, some dogma and doctrine to digest, confirmation, etc.

You know everything you need to be an atheist, the moment you decide you don't believe in god(s). There's nothing more to it.

*There are some religions with LESS baggage than others, UU's, deists, agnostic theists of all stripes, etc.

[rug]

2. A BMW, naturally.

QED.

[AtheistCrusader]

3. That's right. I like air-cooled motorcycles and i'm not impressed by any american models.

So what.

Mine's over 100k miles, runs like a champ.

[rug]

5. So what? The article's not about you. It's about white privilege.

Enjoy your BMW.

[AtheistCrusader]

7. I got it used for 4,000$ and it's my primary commuter when I'm not in the carpool.

Jealous much? it's a bike with an engine design I am familiar with maintaining. Unlike most bikes, it has an alternator. It's basically a two-cylinder vintage 70's VW bug motor. Stone simple and cheap to maintain.

[rug]

8. "Jealous much"? Lol!

No, I have all my hair.

[AtheistCrusader]

9. The article seems to misidentify a 'dearth' of secular POC in secular studies as

a lack of depth in secular studies.
it's not. Secular studies itself is shallow. There's not much to talk about at all.

I also take issue with this irredeemable nonsense:

When it comes to secularism, even when secular people of color appear in academic spaces, the range of lived experience that they are allowed to represent is limited and reductive. The standard caricature that bubbles up into mainstream consciousness is one of smug atheist blacks and Latinos condemning God and Tyler Perry-esque evangelicalism among folk of color.

That is patently absurd. An example I frequently give (and gave upthread) of Frederick Douglass, absolutely defies this 'caricature'. I don't know what books or courses the author actually experienced, but all I've seen of Mr. Douglass can be described as 'hero worship' in secular circles. It's bordering on the verge of a cult of personality. (Which may not be an entirely good thing) Smug, no. Defiant? Hell to the yes.

But Douglass is an icon and a cornerstone of American History from any viewing angle, and I would not expect too terribly deep a treatment of him in a secular studies course, because as I said earlier, his impact was deep and wide in cultural significance, far beyond his lack of faith in god(s).

Ok. Curious now what you 'know' about my hair then.

[rug]

11. Frederick Douglass was not an atheist

http://www.pbs.org/thisfarbyfaith/people/frederick_douglass.html

The people she refers to in her article are. Are you dismissing their experiences in American secular circles?

To answer your question, you've described yourself as "follicly challenged".

[AtheistCrusader]

15. Perhaps there is room for secular studies for POC in american history after all.

Since you are apparently not aware.

Suggested reading: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave: Written by Himself.

Mr. Douglass is very much a bedrock component of African American secularism. You'll note I did not call him an Atheist. Nice try though.

[rug]

17. If you think escaping slavery in some way makes him a pioneer of secularism, you need to read.

[AtheistCrusader]

20. No, that's not what I think. One of us needs to read though. That's for sure.

I'm not going to spoil the content of that book, you might retain it better to discover it yourself.

[rug]

21. I did.

Mr. Douglass is very much a bedrock component of African American secularism.

[AtheistCrusader]

24. Yet you retained nothing, apparently.

I repeat; I did not call him an atheist.


Stephen Hawking is not a subatomic particle, but he has contributed mightily to our understanding of subatomic physics. So too, has Douglass contributed to the topic of African American secularism.

Mightily.

[rug]

25. You called him "a bedrock component of African American secularism".

Of all the descriptors of this great man and his astounding life, I don't see that.

[AtheistCrusader]

27. http://www.bing.lmgtfy.com/?qFrederic+Douglass+Secularism

http://www.bing.lmgtfy.com/?q=Frederic+Douglass+Secularism

Have fun reading.

[rug]

29. 28.

[AtheistCrusader]

42. 41

[AtheistCrusader]

10. This actually goes deeper into it.

Rejecting religion becomes an end in and of itself, and not merely symbolic of a more politicized belief system based on social justice, ethics, black liberation, black feminism and serving black communities within the context of heightened anti-black state violence, segregation and misogynoir.

I would like to think that secularism leads directly into a belief system based on social justice, for instance. (As she apparently expects to see)

It does not. Secularism is just a starting place. Building a construct of social justice is the journey beyond that starting point. In fact, it does not necessarily follow 'secularism' at all. It can. It is my hope that it does. But one does not irrevocably lead to the other.

It just has fewer obstacles to getting there, than some religions.

[hrmjustin]

39. .

[edhopper]

4. Was secularism hijacked

from people of color?

That whole analogy is so skewed and inane.

[rug]

6. The question is not hijacking; it's excluding.

[edhopper]

12. Are people of color being excluded

or are they interested in other areas.

Is secular studies "more white" than many other areas of academia?

[rug]

13. From the article, it's pretty clear they are being excluded.

"Tu quoque" is an excuse, not a defense for this.

[edhopper]

14. Fromm the article

Last edited Wed Dec 28, 2016, 07:02 PM - Edit history (1)

I see the writer is outraged at white America and everything about it. She throws around buzzwords like Academic Industrial Complex and lily white.

Not that there isn't enough around to be outraged at.

But I am sure this article pleases those who need to find fault with secularism.

[rug]

18. Sikivu Hutchinson is well-respected and quite accomplished.

It would be, kindly, a mistake to marginalize her or her works.

[AtheistCrusader]

22. Yet you offhandedly marginalize Frederick Douglass's contribution to secularism(TM).

Specifically within the African American audience.
Without any knowledge of WHAT he contributed.

Fascinating.

[rug]

23. I repeat: what does escaping slavery have to do with secularism?

[AtheistCrusader]

26. In the context of his time, you might be surprised.

Is it so hard to either google 'Frederic Douglass Secularism', or just read the book I referenced and answer it?

This isn't difficult.

http://www.bing.lmgtfy.com/?q=Frederic+Douglass+Secularism

[rug]

28. I don't know what's worse.

Getting a list of links instead of an answer or knowing that you use Bing.

[tblue37]

30. Bing is the default search engine on my Kindle tablet. I bet that is how he ended up suing it, too--

because he is using a device that has Bing as the default.

It takes extra typing and clicks to get to Google, and I can't type (never learned how), besides which fact, the little virtual keyboard on a 7" tablet is hard for my clumsy old finger to hit precisely.

[rug]

31. That makes sense.

[AtheistCrusader]

33. That's actually not the case here.

[AtheistCrusader]

32. MISSED AGAIN

That's got to get old.

Try clicking on the link.

[rug]

34. You don't have to resort to CAPS. Preferring Bing is not the worst thing in the world.

Besides, Bing and Google are both corporate subsidiaries.

[AtheistCrusader]

35. You brought it up and were factually incorrect in doing so.

[rug]

36. I brought it up because you posted it.

http://www.bing.lmgtfy.com/?q=Frederic+Douglass+Secularism

[AtheistCrusader]

37. It's not bing

[rug]

38. Whatever the search was, I've scanned some of those links.

Many of them remind me of the sites that claim Jesus Christ was a socialist, or an anarchist, or a revolutionary, or whatever the ideology of the site seeks. And none of them bear any relevance to what Hutchinson's observed 150 years later.

[AtheistCrusader]

41. It's not 'whatever', it's Let Me Google That For You.

They own the domain and the landing site. Likely they used to have separate landing pages (the 'bing' component of the URL you saw) for each major search engine. They changed the page to a user-configurable search for all the major search engines, and to prevent dead links, stuck it in an IFrame. so that any user landing on any of their old page links gets the full user experience. For whatever reason, the bing landing page was higher in the search ranking than the others, and that's where I ended up. But I selected google for the search, and it is not bing's page/site/domain.


To get back to the main issue, I see from your analogy that you are still fixated on some kind of strawman you've maybe unknowingly constructed of my argument. I repeat; I am not saying Douglass was an atheist or a secularist. You 'objected' that Douglass "wasn't an atheist" when I wasn't claiming he was. Now your 'jesus' analogy talks about people attributing socialism or other attributes to him, personally, when that isn't the scant historical narrative at all.

Please stop doing that. I did nothing of the kind.

In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave: Written by Himself., you will, if you can be bothered to read it, find Douglass lays out a case for African American secularism as a viable social option. He never claims to be secular/atheist himself. That doesn't mean he can't possibly have laid the groundwork for such a scenario. He did, and he did it well, spending much of the book attacking pro-slavery christians and their ideals. Being returned to a christian slave master was his personal worst-case scenario.

My point with the web search was merely to show that I am hardly alone in picking up on that. There are secular humanist orgs founded in his memory, for his freethinking ways, even though he was a christian himself.

Pursuing that search, one can find an interview with Sikivu discussing this:

This hypocrisy is exemplified by the U.S.’ unrelenting demonization of non-Western non-Christian nations as moral cesspits. African slaves stepping into the courtroom to protest their enslavement invoking both the framers’ secular ideal of individual liberty and Christian morality: black soldiers fighting in the American Revolutionary War of liberation from “bondage” despite British promises of black emancipation: Frederick Douglass’ attacking the evils of Christian slavocracy in his epic “What, to the Slave, is the Fourth of July?” speech: Harriet Jacobs protesting the institutionalization of rape as a cornerstone of the plantation economy—all of these acts of resistance shaped American national identity. To paraphrase Toni Morrison, American freedom couldn’t have existed without black slavery.

[Bretton Garcia]

16. "Secular Sudies" is a tiny, tiny, TINY field

It's not surprising there is no funding. No one has heard of it except a few religion schools.

It's so unique, there aren't enough courses to usefully generalize.

It would be nice to have some classes taught with an emphasis on minorities.

In the meantume? We're talking about probably 1/40,000 of academic classes.

Why would someone make a huge issue about thus, Rug?

[rug]

19. You must have missed the $2.2 million endowment to the University of Miami.

http://news.miami.edu/stories/2016/05/gift-establishes-chair-in-atheism-humanism-and-secular-ethics.html

Oh, look who's at the link, a "white academic with the book contracts, privilege and ivory tower 'cred'”.

I don't see anyone making a "huge issue" over this but I see yeomen flailing to deny it.

[Bretton Garcia]

40. Thanks. Maybe I'll apply for that one faculty position

After I publish a few books.

By the way? The vast majority of the faculty at U Miami, 43%, is Hispanic. Only 24% is white.