Bronze Magazine: "Moral Combat Explored: A Chat with Dr. Sikivu Hutchinson"

FROM BRONZE MAGAZINE
She’s black; she’s a feminist; and she’s an atheist. Author and lecturer Dr. Sikivu Hutchinson makes no pretense about her progressive “non- beliefs.” In her book, Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars, Dr. Hutchinson reveals how atheists of color are challenging the whiteness of “New Atheism” and its singular emphasis on science at the expense of social and economic justice. The book also highlights the cultural influence of African American humanist and atheist social thought in America. Dr. Hutchinson spoke with us more about the foundation of her “non-beliefs” and how they influenced the writing of her book.

BM: Hello Sikivu, it is an honor to be able to speak with you today. Atheism is a term that is not usually acknowledged within the Black community. Can you tell us what it means (to you) to be an African American female atheist?

SH: It means being able to question the orthodoxies and conventions of mainstream African American experience, particularly when it comes to how black women are supposed to behave and what they are supposed to believe.

BM: When/how did atheism enter your life?

SH: I grew up in a secular household. My parents were progressive and politically conscious. They were both steeped in the radical activism and intellectual foment of the Sixties. My upbringing was very black-identified; black literature, black social history, black activism. There were no Bibles on our bookshelves Prayer and God talk was never a part of the home culture of my immediate family. Because there was no indoctrination into God belief I had no authentic emotional connection to this idea of a supernatural omnipotent being manning the universe’s puppet strings. Naturally though most of my extended family and friends were religious so my limited church connections came through them. In retrospect however, my parents were no doubt mindful of the stigma black communities attach to non-believers and non-belief. So although there was never any explicit talk about atheism in our household I began to self-identify as one after enduring the hostile cultural backwater of my Catholic high school, where writing Beatle lyrics on your paper (as I did in 9th grade) got you branded a reprobate. MORE@

http://bronzemagonline.com/moral-combat-explored-a-chat-with-dr-sikivu-hutchinson/

Return of the White 'Right Hand of God'

By Sikivu Hutchinson

It’s the best and worst of times to be a citizen in God’s favorite nation. That’s one of the reasons why nearly all of the GOP presidential hopefuls descended onto the recent Faith and Freedom Conference panting after the blessing of aging phoenix boy wonder Ralph Reed. Once dubbed the “Right Hand of God,” by Time Magazine, the godfather of Christian fascism has blazed back onto the national scene after his double dealings with disgraced lobbyist and convicted felon Jack Abramoff led to a high profile fall from grace in 2006. Coming on the heels of the similarly themed Values Voters and Conservative Political Action Conference, the Faith and Freedom Conference is one of the most visible platforms for the GOP candidates to establish their Religious Right bona fides.

Reed has reemerged at an especially crucial juncture for the Religious Right. In 2008 and 2009 mainstream pundits from Newsweek to James Carville sounded the death knell of Christian fundamentalist activism, declaring it to have been eclipsed by the Tea Party’s “populist” message of jobs, lower taxes, and small government. Yet the Religious Right’s influence never waned, it was merely reconstituted. It fired the debate over the U.S.’ status as a “Christian Nation,” fueled the birther movement, and brokered key anti-abortion legislation nationwide. It was further exemplified by the nexus of Old Testament justice and morality, American national identity, global capitalism and imperialism.

Capitalizing on these themes, Reed has sought to wed the Tea Party’s political momentum with the considerable grassroots apparatus of the Christian right. Reed personifies the Golden era of Religious Right activism, an era in which Operation Rescue thugs terrorized abortion clinics with impunity and Pat Robertson’s America-as-liberal-cesspit screeds helped animate the culture wars. When the Christian Coalition ruled in the ‘80s and ‘90s it was at the height of a national backlash against affirmative action. Racial animus over downsized jobs fueled the rise of the so-called angry white male. It was not a coincidence that white economic discontent and the perceived loss of white social status drove the Christian Coalition’s Reagan-Bush brokered push for theocracy. Culture war battles over school vouchers, prayer, abortion, and anti-sodomy laws were only the frontline of an agenda squarely focused on dismantling social welfare. Then as now, the perception that white males had lost ground informed the backlash against civil rights in general and women’s right to self-determination in particular.

Highlighting these themes, a recent survey by researchers from Harvard University and Tufts University concluded that many whites believe that they are now the primary victims of racism in the U.S. A 2010 poll from Public Religion Research reached similar conclusions, establishing a firm link between the Tea Party and white Christian evangelicals. Nonetheless, mainstream media never identify these allegiances as bellwethers of a deepening white nationalist movement whose “spiritual” center is Christian fascism.

Rumored presidential hopeful and Texas Governor Rick Perry captured this sentiment recently when he called for a national day of prayer on August 6th. Sounding the theme of imperiled American exceptionalism, Perry declared that “America is in crisis…As a nation, we must come together and call upon Jesus to guide us through unprecedented struggles, and thank Him for the blessings of freedom we so richly enjoy." As governor, Perry presided over deep cuts in childcare services for poor children, passed a law requiring sonograms for pregnant women seeking abortions, championed allowing states to opt out of Medicare and Social Security and publicly pined for a return to the Confederacy. His platform is indistinguishable from the rest of the GOP faithful (including Uncle Tom sideshow act Herman Cain), who have all carefully grounded their personal relationship with Jesus in the thinly veiled language of white supremacy—evoking a white American dream trampled by illegals, government handouts, and abortion on demand.

The media’s decoupling of the Christian right’s values wars from the Tea Party’s so-called populist focus deflects attention from the continuity between their agendas. They speak with the same voice, pull from the same purse, and ensure that “repentant” scoundrels who pimp for Jesus loud, long, and hard enough invariably find a soft bed and a willing toady in the middle American public.

Sikivu Hutchinson is the author of Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars.

Feminist and Women of Color Readers Dig Moral Combat

"It is refreshing to have a writer and scholar affirm, as I too believe, that social justice and morality is not solely the domain of religious institutions. Hutchinson makes no pretense of 'holding your hand' in her discussion of the state of religiosity and secular options. What she does is clearly, astutely and sharply present her arguments...Normally shuttled to the back of the American consciousness, Hutchinson locates it within the rich legacy of African American secular theorists and social justice activism from the antebellum period to the present. She speaks of and to her communities about her fieldwork and daily walk and work in these communities to present an alternative to the dominant religious belief system."

--Kamela Heyward-Rotimi, anthropologist and researcher

Wet Dreams of Apocalypse

By Sikivu Hutchinson

On the other end of the receiver Lloyd told me that he had wandered for eighteen years through the abyss of drug addiction until he found the Lord. Perhaps it was a revelation made driving one of L.A.’s Olympian freeways, addle-brained in a 3 a.m. pile-up, where thoughts of divine providence, frontier justice, and Armageddon inevitably lurk. Lloyd was the grizzled voice of a Robo-call confessional on the redemptive power of prayer. His vibe was hangdog sweet, elemental, authentically rehab. His mission was no crass megachurch soul grab, but a gentle appeal to the lost, the spiritually challenged. A simple prayer ripped from Matthew would grant entry into the kingdom of God, he insisted. If I pressed the pound key I could join his personal prayer club and as well as the fraternity of the saved.

Lloyd’s intervention was timely. For, soon, such random acts of kindness and simple Christian fellowship will be figments of a halcyon past. According to the crusty patriarch of a California-based Christian radio empire, the Rapture will come on May 21st. 200 million-plus God fearing “born agains” will be beamed up to the Promised Land. As for everyone else, the world will become one big giant hibachi grill. Some millenialists believe that scripture foretells a mammoth earthquake erupting in the Pacific. But I prefer to see their biblical charades as a parody of the return of Marvel Comics’ Galactus, the gangsta world devourer, now dispatching his herald the Silver Surfer to scope the sunburned sybarites on Venice Beach. In L.A. County, billboards trumpeting Judgment Day on May 21st are thick as a plague of locusts. They stretch all the way from South L.A. to the porn capital San Fernando Valley to foreclosure glutted Antelope Valley.

Southern California has always been the epicenter of cataclysmic endings. In his 1998 book Ecology of Fear, writer Mike Davis chronicled how Los Angeles has earned a special place in the ranks of literary and cinematic sadism. Over the past few decades L.A. has been done in by a thousand celluloid volcanoes, floods, earthquakes, and chemical plagues, fueling a multi-million dollar disaster porn industry. Yet its schizoid “innocence,” the lure of golden sun, surf, and possibility, still endures for many of the homeless youth I work with, who flee nightmare lives for a moribund Hollywood. Writing during the turbulence of the Vietnam War era, Jim Morrison, L.A.’s adopted poet laureate of apocalypse, lamented the end of laughter, soft lies and “nights we tried to die” in the 1967 song “The End.” It’s a lovelorn rant that has morphed into a call to arms for insomniac frat boys. It has also been interpreted by some as a paean to the end of childhood innocence in the dark descent of lust and mortality. Certainly the Rapture turns on this narrative. Most End Times propaganda evokes the familiar themes of the culture wars, drawing a causal connection between the recent spate of natural disasters and sinning gays, women run amuck, and hijacked freedoms. But the End Times set has merely crystallized the hysteria that birther Confederates and other patriots cultivated after Barack Obama’s election. Their nationalist appeal for racial redemption has always evoked the loss of innocence and the beast stalking the heartland as Eden.

So what do the enraptured tell their children as they tuck them in bed and kiss them goodnight after the evening’s prayers? How do they still the countdown to Armageddon in their heads, quiet the silent scream of dread that their best friend Jimbo or their new cafeteria line crush with the big blue eyes might be unaccounted for? After the lights go out, and the stuffed animals’ shadows deepen, will the little lambs wonder whether they might be caught on the dark side of unsaved souls circling the devil’s drain? Clearly, children can gain some mental rigor from an education in the mysteries of God-ordained massacres of the other. There is a Hitler youth wholesomeness in this Americana ritual. As now, I lay me down to sleep.

Sikivu Hutchinson is the author of Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars.

Teach Your Children Well: Challenging Religion-Based Sexism

By Sikivu Hutchinson

This piece originally appeared in Religion Dispatches

Last week I traveled to Mobile Alabama, the heart of the Bible Belt, a leafy, green college town replete with billboards for mega-churches and imminent apocalypse (according to Christian broadcaster Family Radio Worldwide May 21st is the new time and date). In the northern part of the state poor working class communities dug out from the ravages of the tornados, while southern Alabama escaped largely unscathed. I had been invited by the Secular Students Alliance and the Gender Studies Department of the University of South Alabama to talk about my book Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars. During my lecture I faced a standing room crowd of heretics, fence sitters, curiosity seekers, and true believers bracing for a circus sideshow. Traveling across America to speak on freethought and abolitionism during the 19th century, white feminist atheist Ernestine Rose was smeared as being a “thousand times below a prostitute.” Centuries after Rose, the association of faith with female virtue and morality is still pervasive in our post-feminist post-racial Christian nation. Indeed, for some women of color, being “married to Jesus” is the only lifeline to genuine personal and spiritual validation. As religion scholar Anthea Butler notes, “having a husband meant that they could not give their ultimate all for the number one man on most African-American womens’ lips, and it’s not Denzel.”

As the Religious Right continues to gut women’s rights, its cultural propaganda suggests that the only way a woman can truly be validated as a moral being is through the policing of her body and her sexuality. Tragically, some of the most vociferous defenders of this regime are other women. At the end of my lecture, one woman came up to me and angrily demanded to know where I’d found the passage from Deuteronomy(20:10) which states that believers have the right to capture and enslave other tribes and keep their women and children as spoils that “God has given you.” Similarly, when I read another passage from Deuteronomy (22:28-9) which endorses sexual terrorism and the marriage of raped women to their attackers (after a bride price is paid to the victim’s father), some audience members groaned that it was “taken out of context” and attempted to shout me down. The nuances of context are indeed important where rape is concerned. Perhaps the predator whispered sweet nothings into the victim’s ear and asked her what sign she was before the assault? Perhaps he was just a good old boy next door who hadn’t “had some” in a while and was overcome by his natural manly urges. Yes, the Good Book makes sluts out of women and savages out of men. Instead of self-determination it gives women the holy gift of s&m as a special kind of manifest destiny.

Despite the misguided belief that post-feminism rules the day, sexual terrorism against young women is still a widely accepted norm. According to a recent article in the Root, an increasing number of black girls are being sold into prostitution and sex trafficking. But “in both the international and national anti-trafficking movements, black girls who are victims of prostitution are invisible.” It is no revelation that the lives of black girls are devalued when mainstream media and public attitudes promote the Madonna/whore dualism of innocent white femininity and hyper-sexual black femininity. In her Colorlines magazine review of the new book Girls Like Us by sex trafficking activist Rachel Lloyd, writer Rinku Sen notes, “the black and Latina girls with whom Lloyd works are thought to have chosen their life, to be oversexed or scheming or too lazy to do anything but sell themselves. They are referred to as young adults, even when they are far under 15, and cops call their rapes “theft of services. Even though federal law says that anyone under the age of 18 who is sold for sex is a victim of severe trafficking…if the girl is an American and of color, she will too often be arrested, charged with prostitution and jailed.”

The degraded morality of black and Latino girls is not an abstract concept. Attitudes about sexually impure young women come readymade from biblical scripture and Catholic dogma, the worlds that most of my students are intimately connected with. In this context, any young woman who tries to educate others about feminism and anti-sexism has embarked on a brave and revolutionary journey. As mentor teachers for the Women’s Leadership Project (WLP), a South L.A.- based high school gender justice program, my partner Diane Arellano and I train our students to lead in-class workshops on the everyday impact of misogynistic language, stereotypes, and media imagery. Students develop critical consciousness about their shared struggle vis-à-vis the stereotype of the sacrificial good black/Latina woman of faith.

On several occasions our students have been chastised by girls who argued that sexual violence and high rates of HIV/AIDS contraction in communities of color was simply the fault of “slutty” girls. The good girl bad girl mentality is legion. For some high school girls compiling and circulating virtual “slut lists” as leverage against “bad girls” is a popular past time. But endorsing misogyny is, of course, how we roll. It is no accident that sexual violence against women is epidemic in religious fundamentalist societies. Ultimately piety only cuts one way, i.e., right down the impure bodies of women as the fount of original sin. Misogynist authoritarianism demands that women be complicit in their own dehumanization. So when black recording artists rake in millions dehumanizing black women we become willing consumers. We masochistically rush to justify and excuse. Why? Because despite all of the strong-backbone-of-the-black-community post-feminist rhetoric, black women are still accustomed to seeing themselves through the lens of the oppressor.

During one session on reproductive justice, many of the girls in the class averted their eyes in shame when our students spoke about the basic human right to choose when to have an abortion or plan a family. They literally refused to respond to the WLP students’ challenge to the male voices dominating the discussion. Unaccustomed to frontal critique of masculinity and male violence, some of the boys accused the WLP students of “male-bashing.” Of course, centuries after it was enshrined in the Old and New Testaments woman-bashing as law and public morality is still a cornerstone of the West’s unshakeable faith. And as the pro-death, anti-abortion, anti-family values fascists of the right drive their biblical stake through women’s bodies our young black and Latina revolutionaries will be prepared to face them.

Defending ‘Our Mother’s Gardens’

By Sikivu Hutchinson

In her landmark work In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens, Alice Walker wrote: “What did it mean for a black woman to be an artist in our grandmother’s time? Our great-grandmothers’ day? Did you have a genius of a great-great-grandmother who died under some ignorant and depraved white overseer’s lash? Or was her body broken and forced to bear children (who were more often than not sold away from her)—eight, ten, fifteen, twenty children—when her one joy was the thought of modeling heroic figures of rebellion?” Many of my students do not know who Walker is. But as they listen to me read her words during a discussion of Women’s History Month they are quiet as death, contemplative, and, perhaps, newly enflamed. As students of female sacrifice, many of them know the savage politics behind her canvas. They are intimately aware of the blood price women of color must pay to be free in this so-called post-feminist society in which white male lawmakers trivialize sexual assault with dangerous tautologies like “forcible rape.”

Recently, the mainstream media buzzed with news reports that a Libyan woman had reported being gang-raped to a group of foreign correspondents. A MSNBC reporter described the victim as middle aged, well-spoken and respectable (the victim was actually estimated to be in her 20s or 30s), implying that her credibility was beyond reproach. As a “respectable,” upstanding woman, her rape would surely be an affront to her community. Preemptive reference to rape victims’ social station is a now familiar device in the rape reporting game. Over the past few weeks, the gang rape of an 11 year old Latina girl also made headlines, eliciting controversy over the girl’s portrayal in both mainstream media and in the community where the assault occurred. Whenever a rape case becomes high profile, the inevitable questions about the victim’s reputation, race, whereabouts, and alleged complicity in the assault are trotted out. Yet seldom is there any analysis of the sociopolitical conditions that legitimize rape and the connect- the-dots rape reporting game. And seldom is there any analysis of what gives men license to violently occupy women’s bodies. There is never any connection made between this kind of sexual terrorism and state power. Hence, these connections are especially urgent now given the unrelenting wave of anti-choice anti-abortion legislation that has swept the nation since the midterm elections.

South Dakota recently passed a law requiring pregnant women to wait three days before they made a decision about terminating their pregnancies. Under the new mandate, championed by the state’s governor, women must receive counseling from a doctor before they have an abortion. It is the only state in the nation to impose such a requirement. Other pending legislation includes requiring that women receive ultrasounds before they make a decision to terminate. Health care reform foes have also spearheaded legislation that restricts private insurers who participate in new government mandated health exchanges from providing abortion coverage.

One of the most pernicious civil liberties’ rollbacks is HR.3, the House-sponsored legislation that would give the I.R.S. the right to question women who had abortions about whether they became pregnant by rape or incest. The bill has been dubbed “Stupak on Steroids,” after Democratic Congressman Bark Stupak, who crusaded against abortion coverage under health care reform. According to Mother Jones magazine, the bill “extends the reach of the Hyde Amendment—which bans federal funding for abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is at stake—into many parts of the federal tax code. In some cases, the law would forbid using tax benefits—like credits or deductions—to pay for abortions or health insurance that covers abortion.” Women who are audited could be forced to reveal why and how they had an abortion, further ensuring Big Brother’s reign over their bodies and destinies.

There is a connection between this kind of state-sponsored terrorism and the brutal occupation of women’s bodies through rape. Yet in the U.S., the term terrorism is only used when dark-skinned racial others are the perpetrators of “strategic” geopolitical violence. Violence against women can be isolated to aberrant male predators, not the predatory terroristic human rights violations of the state.

Recently, a student in my Women’s Leadership Project group expressed her vehement opposition to abortion. She argued that a woman who has sex should be prepared to accept the potential consequence of an unplanned pregnancy. Like most young women she was taught that going through with an unplanned unwanted pregnancy is a supremely moral decision. After all, self-sacrifice under inhumane conditions is what is expected and required of women. Validation through a baby that one cannot take care of is ok, while validation through sex is not. In this regime, the consequence of pregnancy for women is a biologically determined life sentence, one that males cannot and will not be forced to serve. Women who don’t agree to this life sentence are immoral, rather than the society that does not provide for every child regardless of class or race. Some of the most vitriolic responses I’ve ever gotten to my writing were from anti-abortion foes, primarily men, who see a white supremacist plot behind black women’s support for abortion. But it is not white supremacy that dictates black women’s allegiance to the legacy of female ancestors who could not control their own destinies. And this is perhaps the profound power of Walker’s work. In search of her mother’s garden, she “found (her) own.” Honoring the great grandmothers whose artistry and personhood were denied symbolizes the revolutionary right of women to control their own destinies, tend their own gardens, to ensure that terrorism cannot continue to disguise itself as legitimacy and law.

Sikivu Hutchinson is the author of Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars (Infidel Books).

Spring Book Tour and Appearances

March 16, Freedom From Religion radio interview, ffrf.org, 12:00 p.m. EST

March 20th, Center for Inquiry, Costa Mesa, CA, 4:30 p.m. (Hollywood appearance rescheduled to June 5)

March 23, USC Center for Occupation and Lifestyle Redesign, 3:00 p.m. (Imagining Transit)

March 29, Interfaith Voices, interfaith.org, EST tbd

April 1, Michael Slate Show, KPFK 90.7FM, 10:00 a.m.

April 3, Revolution Books, Los Angeles, CA, 2:00 p.m.

April 16th, Institute for Humanist Studies Conference, NYC

April 17th, Brooklyn Ethical Society, NY, 11:00 a.m.

April 20th, Zion Hill Baptist Church, Black Skeptics & Faith Community Roundtable, L.A., 6:30 p.m.

April 28th, University of South Alabama, Mobile, AL

April 30th, L.A. Times Festival of Books, Atheists United table, 12-2 p.m.; Revolution Books, 2:20-3:30pm

May 13, Eso Won Books, Los Angeles, CA, 7:00 p.m.

May 15, San Diego Humanist Society, 6:00 p.m.

May 27, Revolution Books, Berkeley, CA 7:00 p.m.

May 28, San Francisco Atheists, 5:00 p.m.

June 5, Center for Inquiry, Los Angeles, 11:00 a.m.