Antitheism | Always Question Authority

. . . A strain of unbelief runs across African-American history, said Anthony Pinn, a Rice University professor and author of a book about African-American humanists. He points to figures like Hubert Henry Harrison, an early 20th- century activist who equated religion with slavery, and W.E.B. DuBois, founder of the NAACP, who was often critical of black churches.

“Lorraine Hansberry, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes— they were all critical of belief in God,” Pinn said. “They provided a foundation for nontheistic participation in social struggle.”

But they are often ignored in the narrative of American history, sacrificed to the myth that the achievements of the civil rights movement were the accomplishments of religious — mainly Christian — people. . . .

African American Atheists

Sunday’s [annual] “Day of Solidarity for Black Nonbelievers”, will include a remembrance of African-American atheists of the past, including:

James Baldwin (1924-1987), poet, playwright, civil rights activist
W.E.B DuBois (1868-1963), co-founder of the NAACP
Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965), playwright and journalist
Hubert Henry Harrison (1883-1927), activist, educator, writer
A. Philip Randolph (1889-1979), labor organizer
Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950), journalist and historian
Richard Wright (1908-1960), novelist and author

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In barely a century’s time, the population of the United States has more than tripled, to 313 million. We are a clattering, opinionated cluster of nearly all the world’s races and religions, and many of its languages, under one flag.

You would not know any of this looking at who is voting in one of the strangest presidential primary campaigns in history. There is no other way to put this without resorting to demographic bluntness: the small fraction of Americans who are trying to pick the Republican [i.e., Reactionary] nominee are old, white, uniformly Christian [i.e., willfully ignorant literalists] and unrepresentative of the nation at large.

None of that is a surprise. But when you look at the numbers, it’s stunning how little this Republican [i.e., Reactionary] primary electorate resembles the rest of the United States. They are much closer to the population of 1890 than of 2012.

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