Black, Atheist and Living in the South
Posted for our new member Bravenak, who is in Alaska IIRC, not the South. But I thought the feelings of isolation might be similar.
Also for any other lurkers in here who may be feeling that same isolation. And I'm including a couple of links to specifically Black Atheist websites.
I'm a white geezer and often find it easier to talk about atheism with black atheists who grew up in the South. We usually have a shared background, in that religion was jammed into our heads from birth as a given. And no questions about it or else!
Sometimes it's hard to get that across to people from normal...er, other parts of the country/world. In the South religion is SO incredibly pervasive. You can generally forget about a social life if you don't go to church. Especially where I grew up, way out in the country.
And of course, a lot of us Southern whites had an equally stupid idea implanted from birth - racism. That OTHER irrational BS was often reinforced by the religion. Yes, I know, I'm not supposed to say that. (Puzzled Newcomers - that's a DU in-joke. Just ask.)
Black, atheist and living in the South - By Kim Chakanetsa, CNN
...For Mario Dorsey, an Atlanta native, Black Nonbelievers of Atlanta helped him feel comfortable with moving away from that tradition.
“I joined because I felt that in the black community religion was much more of a social movement, almost like a mass hypnotism,” Dorsey says. “It felt pretty cool to be part of a group that actually thought like I do.”
Like many black atheists, Dorsey does not announce his atheism loudly.
“For the most part I don’t walk around with atheist on my shoulder," he says. "Most people won’t know unless they ask me, but when I am asked I get this really weird reaction as if I’d said I torture monkeys for a living or something...”
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/08/black-atheist-and-living-in-the-south/
Black Atheists of America - http://blackatheistsofamerica.org/
Black Atheists on Wordpress - http://blackatheists.wordpress.com/
= new reply since forum marked as read
I met an old good friend I hadn't seen in over 30 years. He's black, Atheist, gay and has a white partner.
He lives in Arizona. He says it's "interesting".
The in-joke: it's a reference to the "Religion" group. Some of the believers over there always credit Xianity with (a) ending slavery and (b) leading the civil rights movement of the 1950's/60's.
So far, in all the times they've done that, I've never seen an answer to (a) exactly what Xianity was doing for all the years slavery was perfectly legal in the U.S. or (b) why so many freethinkers/secularists were part of the civil rights movement but got little credit for it. e.g., W.E.B. Du Bois, A. Philip Randolph, Langston Hughes, Bayard Rustin, etc. etc.
The believers like to huffily remind us that the most famous civil rights leader was REVEREND Dr. Martin Luther King.
OK, granted. But Dr. King was also a humanist. And I think sometimes even he got fed up with the professional Bible-thumpers.
In Susan Jacoby's book Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, there's an anecdote where King was asked about the Supreme Court decision banning official school prayer. That decision was a shocker in the early Sixties and remains a sore point to this day among many believers.
King said: "It would be very nice if the school day across America could begin with a reading of the Bill of Rights. After all, we Negroes know our Bible."
In his 1965 Playboy interview, King was asked about the decision and responded: "I endorse it. I think it was correct. Contrary to what many have said, it sought to outlaw neither prayer nor belief in God. In a pluralistic society such as ours, who is to determine what prayer shall be spoken, and by whom? Legally, constitutionally, or otherwise, the state certainly has no such right. I am strongly opposed to the efforts that have been made to nullify the decision."
Thank you!
That explains it very well. Also, I did not know about the King Quote. Im soooo going to use that the next time I get into a school prayer discussion! 
