Sikivu Hutchinson | |
---|---|
Born | United States |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | UCLA, NYU |
Known for | Author of Humanists in the Hood: Unapologetically Black, Feminist, and Heretical, (2020), Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels, (2013) Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars (2011) Imagining Transit: Race, Gender, and Transportation Politics in Los Angeles (Travel Writing Across the Disciplines) (2003) |
Scientific career | |
Institutions | USC Center for Feminist Research |
Website | www www |
Sikivu Hutchinson is an American author, playwright, director, and musician. Her multi-genre work explores feminism, gender justice, racial justice, LGBTQIA+ rights, humanism and atheism. She is the author of Humanists in the Hood: Unapologetically Black, Feminist, and Heretical (2020), White Nights, Black Paradise (2015), Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels (2013), Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars (2011), and Imagining Transit: Race, Gender, and Transportation Politics in Los Angeles (Travel Writing Across the Disciplines) (2003). Her plays include "White Nights, Black Paradise", "Rock 'n' Roll Heretic" and "Narcolepsy, Inc.". "Rock 'n' Roll Heretic" was among the 2023 Lambda Literary award LGBTQ Drama finalists. Moral Combat is the first book on atheism to be published by an African-American woman. [1] In 2013 she was named Secular Woman of the year [2] and was awarded Foundation Beyond Belief's 2015 Humanist Innovator award. She was also a recipient of Harvard's 2020 Humanist of the Year award.
Her grandfather Earl Hutchinson Sr. and father Earl Ofari Hutchinson are both authors. [3] [4] Hutchinson graduated from New York University with a Ph.D. in Performance Studies in 1999. [5]
Hutchinson has written articles for The Huffington Post, The Feminist Wire, thehumanist.com, the LA Progressive , and The L.A. Times and the Washington Post. [6] She is a Senior Fellow with the Institute of Humanist Studies and founder of the Women's Leadership Project program for girls of color in South L.A.
She has taught women's studies, urban studies, cultural studies, African American Humanism and education at the California Institute of the Arts, UCLA, Pitzer College, and Western Washington University. [6]
In her book, Moral Combat, she examines what she views as the hijacking of civil rights by the Christian Right; the connections between humanism, feminism and social justice; the importance of humanism for pre-college education; the backlash of religious fundamentalism, in the vein of the Tea Party, against progressive public policy; and the efforts of atheists of color to challenge the "New Atheist" movement, which values a narrow conception of science and disregards both social and also economic justice. Hutchinson frames her critique in the contemporary realities of working- and middle-class African-American communities which are just as steeped in the tradition of religiosity-due to capitalism and de facto segregation—as they are in the cultural trappings of the Black Church. Hutchinson highlights Nella Larsen's work as a touchstone for black feminist humanist thought. Hutchinson also explores the emergence of black atheist and freethought activism and spotlights the voices of African American non-believers from around the country. [7]
Formed by Hutchinson in March 2010 she explained to KTYM radio the reason she formed the group was a "response to the emergent need amongst African-American non-believers to have some kind of community and interpersonal connection to each other, in real time". She believes that there is a large community of black non-believers on social media sites, but it is important for these people to find a "sanctuary from the hyper-religiosity that African-Americans are seeped in". [8] The group was featured in a May 2012 article [9] that chronicled how greater numbers of African Americans were leaving religious faith and adopting atheism and freethought.
Hutchinson has stated that "While black male non-believers are given more leeway to be heretics or just MIA from church, black women who openly profess non-theist views are deemed especially traitorous, having 'abandoned' their primary role as purveyors of cultural and religious tradition." [10] Much of Hutchinson's work focuses on the cultural and social history of African-American secular humanist thought and its role in black liberation struggle. [11] Hutchinson's work also challenges the social conservatism of the Black Church with respect to abortion, gay rights and women's rights. [12]
Hutchinson has challenged the lack of racial diversity and attention to institutional racism in the secular and New Atheist movements. [13] She has championed the inclusion of anti-racism, anti-sexism, and anti-heterosexism in mainstream secular humanist and New Atheist discourse. She has also written extensively on the role of freethought and secular humanism in black women's liberation and gender justice. [14]
In 2016, Hutchinson criticized the merger of the secular organizations Center for Inquiry and the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science which gave Richard Dawkins a seat on the board of directors of the Center for Inquiry. Her criticism was that both organizations had an all-white board of directors. [15]
Hutchinson subscribes to a radical humanist vision that eschews religious and social hierarchies of race, gender, sexuality, class, and ability status because they undermine the universal human rights and self-determination of oppressed peoples. For communities of color, radical Humanism reinforces the cultural legitimacy, visibility, and validity of non-believers of color within the context of a white supremacist, heterosexist, patriarchal, economically disenfranchising ideological regime that equates morality with Abrahamic religious paradigms and beliefs. Radical humanism rejects the notion that there is only one way to be black or Latino, and that women and the LGBT community are marginal and morally aberrant. [16]
Hutchinson has argued for the articulation of a culturally relevant humanism based on secular social, racial, and gender justice that eschews notions of colorblindness and post-racialism, focusing instead on the lived experiences, cultural knowledge, social histories and social capital of diverse communities She has argued that the racist and white supremacist objectification of women of color as hyper-sexual "Jezebels" has made African American and Latina women especially vulnerable to paradigms of femininity that emphasize self-sacrifice and obeisance to conservative Christian mores. Hutchinson has written that the heterosexist ideal of the "sacrificial good woman" of faith straitjackets women of color and effectively contributes to high rates of intimate partner violence, sexual assault and HIV/STI contraction in communities of color because masculinity and femininity are viewed as oppositional to each other. [17] Hutchinson considers her activism in the humanist sphere to be inextricably bound to the other identities. [18]
In 2012 Hutchinson was featured in a national billboard campaign of prominent black non-believers launched by African Americans for Humanism. She was paired with author Zora Neale Hurston, a folklorist of African-American culture who wrote of being a skeptic in her essay "Religion." [19]
Secular humanism is a philosophy, belief system or life stance that embraces human reason, secular ethics, and philosophical naturalism while specifically rejecting religious dogma, supernaturalism, and superstition as the basis of morality and decision making.
Freethought is an epistemological viewpoint which holds that beliefs should not be formed on the basis of authority, tradition, revelation, or dogma, and that beliefs should instead be reached by other methods such as logic, reason, and empirical observation. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a freethinker is "a person who forms their own ideas and opinions rather than accepting those of other people, especially in religious teaching." In some contemporary thought in particular, free thought is strongly tied with rejection of traditional social or religious belief systems. The cognitive application of free thought is known as "freethinking", and practitioners of free thought are known as "freethinkers". Modern freethinkers consider free thought to be a natural freedom from all negative and illusive thoughts acquired from society.
The American Humanist Association (AHA) is a non-profit organization in the United States that advances secular humanism.
The Center for Inquiry (CFI) is a US nonprofit organization that works to mitigate belief in pseudoscience and the paranormal, as well as to fight the influence of religion in government.
The Godless Americans March on Washington (GAMOW) occurred on the National Mall in Washington, DC, on November 2, 2002, with the participation of many atheists, freethinkers, agnostics and humanists. The public cable network C-SPAN documented the event on video.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to humanism:
The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science is a division of Center for Inquiry (CFI) founded by British biologist Richard Dawkins in 2006 to promote scientific literacy and secularism.
Margaret Downey is a nontheist activist who is a former President of Atheist Alliance International and founder and president of the Freethought Society. She also founded the Anti-Discrimination Support Network, which reports and helps deal with discrimination against atheists.
Matthew Wade Dillahunty is an American atheist activist and former president of the Atheist Community of Austin, a position he held from 2006 to 2013. Between 2005 and October 2022, Dillahunty was host of the televised webcast The Atheist Experience.
Atheist feminism is a branch of feminism that also advocates atheism. Atheist feminists hold that religion is a prominent source of female oppression and inequality, believing that the majority of the religions are sexist and oppressive towards women.
Andrew James William Copson, FRSA, FCMI, MCIPR is a Humanist leader and writer. He is the Chief Executive of Humanists UK and the President of Humanists International.
Pitchstone Publishing is a publishing company based in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Kurt Volkan in 2003, Pitchstone Publishing has published numerous books by leading academics and scholars, particularly in the fields of secular humanism, new atheism, applied psychiatry, and psychoanalysis.
Debbie Goddard is an American atheist activist and speaker, and the director of African Americans for Humanism (AAH). In 2019 she took on the role of vice president of programs at American Atheists. Since 2020, she has been on the board of directors of Humanists International.
Leo Igwe is a Nigerian human rights advocate and humanist. Igwe is a former Western and Southern African representative of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, and has specialized in campaigning against and documenting the impacts of child witchcraft accusations. He holds a Ph.D from the Bayreuth International School of African Studies at the University of Bayreuth in Germany, having earned a graduate degree in philosophy from the University of Calabar in Nigeria. Igwe's human rights advocacy has brought him into conflict with high-profile witchcraft believers, such as Liberty Foundation Gospel Ministries, because of his criticism of what he describes as their role in the violence and child abandonment that sometimes result from accusations of witchcraft.
Irreligion in Ghana is difficult to measure in the country, as regular demographic polling is not widespread and available statistics are often many years old. Most Ghanaian nationals claim the Christian (71%) or Muslim (18%) faiths. Many atheists in Ghana are not willing to openly express their beliefs due to the fear of persecution. Most secondary educational institutions also have some form of religious affiliation. This is evident in the names of schools like Presbyterian Boys School, Holy Child School and many others. Atheists form a very small minority in Ghana.
The secular movement refers to a social and political trend in the United States, beginning in the early years of the 20th century, with the founding of the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism in 1925 and the American Humanist Association in 1941, in which atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, freethinkers, and other nonreligious and nontheistic Americans have grown in both numbers and visibility. There has been a sharp increase in the number of Americans who identify as religiously unaffiliated, from under 10 percent in the 1990s to 20 percent in 2013. The trend is especially pronounced among young people, with about one in three Americans younger than 30 identifying as religiously unaffiliated, a figure that has nearly tripled since the 1990s.
Mandisa Lateefah Thomas is the founder and president of Black Nonbelievers Inc. She has spoken at secular conferences and events, and has promoted the group's agenda in media outlets.
Atheism in the African diaspora is atheism as it is experienced by black people outside of Africa. In the United States, blacks are less likely than other ethnic groups to be religiously unaffiliated, let alone identifying as atheist. The demographics are similar in the United Kingdom. Atheists are individuals who do not hold a belief in God or gods. Atheism is a disbelief in God or gods or a denial of God or gods, or it is simply a lack of belief in gods. Some, but not all, atheists identify as secular humanists, who are individuals who believe that life has meaning and joy without the need for the supernatural or religion and that all individuals should live ethical lives which can provide for the greater good of humanity. Black atheists and secular humanists exist today and in history, though many were not always vocal in their beliefs or lack of belief.