This Week in White Atheism

When white atheist Islamophobe poster child Bill Maher referred to himself as a house nger in an interview with Senator Ben Sasse, he was not only demeaning black bodies but doing a familiar minstrel danceappropriating a term with deep cultural and historical symbolism in black speech. Maher has prided himself on the kind of f-you outlaw irreverence and establishment-bashing that only a cis-het white male with the reward of a multi-million dollar HBO contract can enjoy without censure. Supposedly docile and less black, HNs have been characterized as complicit with white massa; a distortion that erases the painful history of black female domestic slaves who were often subject to rape and other forms of ritualized violence in the so-called plantation Big House.

Mahers racist vitriol is not new to atheists and humanists of color who have long pushed back against the unapologetic Islamophobia, Eurocentrism and misogyny of him and his fellow alpha males Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens. His identity as an atheist is relevant to this latest flap because hes long been a golden boy of the white New Atheist clique; slobbered over for the dudebro swagger with which hes skewered right wing and liberal sacred cows. This kind of stagecraft pimping black experience has become a hallmark of the dudebro white atheists. In 2013, white atheist You-Tuber Dusty chastised black Christians on being House Negroes and Uncle Toms because of their religious indoctrination and was called out by black atheists like myself and Foxy Jazzabelle. Prior to that, American Atheists trotted out the black enslaved body in a 2012 street billboard campaign to boost its activist cred with a lily white donor base that didnt give a damn about segregated African American communities.

Some are starting to learn. I recently received an outlier email from a white donor to the Black Skeptics Los Angeles First in the Family scholarship fund who acknowledged that his primary mission should be to let humanists and non-believers of color lead without white intervention. This was the recurring theme during a May forum featuring black, feminist, trans and indigenous activists across the religious spectrum at the Humanist Institute in Minneapolis. Ashton Woods , Diane Burkholder , Andrea Jenkins , Desiree Kane and Sincere Kirabo spoke out powerfully on the right to self-determination of people of color in radical, progressive and intersectional movement organizing, and the necessity of getting white folk hell bent on being allies to sit down, shut up and retreat.

This issue of white incursions into intentional, as well as institutionally segregated, spaces of color is magnified by the seismic shift occurring in urban communities of color pushed to the brink by gentrification. As black and brown neighborhoods are increasingly under siege from white homebuyers, developers and speculators, communities of color are in even greater peril. Housing and rental affordability has plummeted, and the unemployment rate for African American youth has continued to skyrocket (with the unemployment rate for black male youth ages 16-24 hovering around 20% as of July 2016, in comparison to approximately 9% for young white males). The malign neglect of neoliberal democratic policies is symbolized by the Obama administrations piecemeal attention to black youth employment under the anemically funded My Brothers Keeper Initiative, which shut out African American girlsbased on the erroneous premise that their status was better than that of black boys. Since his election, Trumps Orwellian misinformation about 59% black unemployment has only fueled the familiar narrative of pathological inner cities overrun with lazy, shiftless violent black men.

Taken in this context, Mahers minstrel-esque appropriation of the term House N is even more infuriating as it implies insider-outsider status within a power structure based on white supremacy. Outsider or outlaw status has been a card frequently played by white atheists fronting as though their non-believer status makes them an oppressed class bereft of race and class privilege. Now, as they bemoan the Trump administrations latest assaults on secular rights and womens rights, more of themas Diane and Desiree noted to the Humanist Institutes mostly white audiencehave become freshly galvanized as freedom fighters and allies when the liberation struggle of people of color was never on the menu before. Mahers use of the black body to front is yet another reminder of why atheist identity politics will always be a sham.

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