You’re welcome and thanks for the feedback!

Absolutely and thanks for the feedback. Unfortunately dismissiveness of the very real socioeconomic and cultural complexities of women of color in faith-based, segregated communities continues to be the norm within mainstream atheist contexts/discourse.

(The more I peel the onion of cultural atheism to reveal its -ismatic innards, the less I regret being so uninvolved with the movement, such as it is.)

There haven’t been any serious appraisals vis-a-vis racism, freethought history and feminism. Michele Louise Newman’s excellent book “White Women’s Rights” dissects the intersection of white supremacy and first wave feminism, with extensive analysis of Stanton and other white female abolitionists. However, the book isn’t coming from a freethought feminist historical perspective. I also address Stanton and Rose’s (different) perspectives in Moral Combat. Rose disagreed with Stanton’s xenophobia and paternalism.

For example, I have yet to see an appraisal that seriously addresses the racism and xenophobia of forerunning 19th century freethinker Elizabeth Cady Stanton (who touted the cultural and intellectual superiority of white women over immigrants and people of color in her vehement opposition to the 15th amendment granting black men the vote)

I’ve linked to this talk in the past. I think it’s worth watching.

Within the context of slavery and, later, Jim Crow, women like Stanton, Ernestine Rose, and other first and second wave white feminist freethinkers would not have had the license to be secular were it not for the dialectic between the civilized white Western subject and the degraded amoral racialized sexual other.

It should be noted that Rose was a Jewish-Polish immigrant.

It occurs to me that churches have a significant advantage there that humanist groups are going to have to work hard to match: They’ve got an established infrastructure in place. They’ve got physical premises to hold events and meetings in, they’ve got established social networks in place to organize when needed, etc. etc. Humanist groups that want to make any headway are going to have to address/match that.

I’m not much of a philosopher and never thought about this before. I’m going to have to think it through some more.

But, aside from that, I learned a helluva lot from this article. Well written and making me think hard. Thank you!

I’m female but also white, and one thing I’ve found is that it’s a lot easier to identify white privilege in hindsight than when you’re in the middle of being supported by it.

Well that brings the picture into focus, dodinit? How many +’s do we need behind the word atheism to redress that?

Exactly. Just read a piece on the racial harassment of an Afr-Am family (father is in law enforcement too!)in Orange County and the first comment is from a local minister speaking out against the inveterate racism blacks experience in this lily white burb. Whether it’s prisoner re-entry, voter registration, scholarship assistance etc. local progressive churches are involved. There is no humanist/atheist counterpart and that is precisely the problem for communities of color.