Is being an atheist a privilege?

I have many friends who are Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Bahais and Hindus. I don't try to convert them away from their religions. I wish them happiness on the holidays they celebrate, and I "like" any social media post they make that calls for social justice and criticizes their leaders for not speaking out about human rights, criminal behavior regarding children, etc. But I steer clear of commenting on their posts celebrating how great it is to be whatever religion they are, or how great their God/s is/are. It can be awkward when they get sick and ask for prayers - I can't offer that, and I feel they don't want what I can offer - or when they praise their God instead of the amazing medical care they have received and the scientists who produced the medicine that has made them better. It's most awkward when they post a testimonial of their love of their religions, and a criticism of those that don't believe as they do. Mostly, I ignore those posts.

Recently, a friend posted to a social media platform saying that to be an atheist is to be privileged and that atheists are arrogant and insensitive to ignore/dismiss the comfort and hope the Christian faith gives black Americans especially. I would love to quote the actual, entire post, but hours later, when I went to look for it, it was gone. I guess he realized he was a jerk thing to say and he deleted it. Or he feared what I would say...

But I haven't forgotten.

I most certainly believe being able to publicly declare one's atheism without fear of being fired, ostracized from family, socially excluded or murdered is a privilege. I am reminded of this as I look at the pixelated photos of the members of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Sri Lanka - they meet in secret and share photos on social media where their faces have been altered beyond recognition. Same for the Humanist Society Pakistan in celebrating World Humanist Day on 21 June. They want to let other atheists in their countries know that they are not alone, and maybe let religious people know that atheists are not monsters, but they must do so in very careful ways, to protect their own safety, jobs and families.

Being able to be open about my atheism with friends and neighbors is a privilege I enjoy, but even my privilege is limited: note that I don't use my real name here on this blog, for fear of what it will do to my professional career (though it's not hard at all to figure out who I am).

But is being an atheist only for the privileged? No.

The first thing that came to mind when I read my friend's diatribe was this quote:

"I'm an atheist, and Christianity appears to me to be the most absurd imposture of all the religions, and I'm puzzled that so many people can't see through a religion that encourages irresponsibility and bigotry. As my ancestors are free from slavery, I am free from the slavery of religion." It's from Butterfly Mcqueen, the actress, honored with the 1989 Freethought Heroine Award by the Freedom From Religion Foundation. I've written about her before.

Black American atheists have always been with us, and their words are some of the most important to me, personally, as an atheist. Probably the earliest evidence of atheism and agnosticism among black Americans comes from 19th-century slave narratives - yes, indeed, there were atheists among enslaved people. These are cited by Christopher Cameron, associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, and the founder and president of the African American Intellectual History Society. He notes that the growth in Black American atheism coincided with the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and ’30s. Atheism and agnosticism have flourished more recently, and as Cameron puts it, "new black atheists are not content to personally reject religion but instead have a goal of spreading freethought to the broader black community. For example, the author Sikivu Hutchinson and the founder of Black Nonbelievers, Mandisa Thomas, argue that religion hurts the black community by promoting sexism, patriarchy and homophobia... These politics demand that black women must be chaste, temperate, industrious and socially conservative. Above all, they must be religious. They must always portray the race in the best light." Cameron also notes that feminism is an essential part of the new black atheists’ humanism, unlike most white atheist "leaders," at least the ones that regularly get cited, and I appreciate that viewpoint in particular. In fact, so much of the leadership I've found among Black American atheists are women, and I find myself following far more of them on social media than the usually cited white atheists "leaders" (all male).

I have been proud to have had the confidence of so many people, of a variety of ethnicities, who want to tell me that, indeed, they are atheists, they do not believe in the religion of their family, and they wish they could be open about it. They are happy to be freed from the mental and emotional limitations of religion, happy to be a part of a universe so much bigger and so much more full of possibilities than any religion has ever described, happy to no longer believe they are being punished or being given some kind of grand lesson as they or those they love suffer, and hopeful for their future as a full, rational human being. I will continue to value their insights and support them, and hope that, some day, they will feel safe enough to declare their belief in reason and the COMFORT they have received by rejecting all ideas of the supernatural, including God.

As the black atheist Sincere Kirabo says of Black Lives Matter: ‘There’s a social activist movement underway continuing the unfinished business of the Civil Rights movement era. Want to make a difference? What we need is grit and involvement in the struggle, not a tribe satisfied with the empty promises of scriptural white noise. Please, for the sake and love of our own futures: abandon your fabled white messiah. Wake up. We are our own salvation.’" Amen. 

Remembering Butterfly McQueen

Not many people know that Atheists / Secular Humanists played essential roles in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. This article in USA Today reviews efforts to recognize the contributions of these Atheist civil rights workers, as well as efforts to focus attention on black Atheists in the USA over the years. Many recent efforts have been in conjunction with Black History Month (February), but efforts are ongoing. For instance, Norm R. Allen Jr. of the Institute for Science and Human Values, a humanist organization based in Tampa, Fla. has promoted recognition for African-American nonbelievers since he founded the group African Americans for Humanism in 1989.

But there's a name I'm not seeing in all these efforts, and it needs to be there. And that name is Butterfly McQueen.

Butterfly McQueen was "Prissy" in Gone With the Wind. That's all most people know about her, and goodness knows we've all imitated her famous line, "I don't know nuthin' 'bout birthin' no
babies."

But there's soooo much more you should know about her.

I got an inkling that there was a lot more to this person than I had imagined when a friend of mine back in my home town, obsessed with Gone with the Wind, found addresses for various people who were in the movie and still alive, including for Butterfly McQueen. She wrote all
of them. Butterfly McQueen wrote back a terrific, full-page, hand-written letter that was so full of enthusiasm and charm and a geniune warmth and kindness. My friend had it framed. We gawked over it on more than one occasion.

I cobbled together information about her from various Internet searches a few years back, and I was shocked at what I discovered the more I read about her:

After playing maids in the movies, on TV and the stage over many years, McQueen took a break from acting and worked a succession of jobs, including as a taxi dispatcher, a saleslady at Macy's, and a seamstress at Sak's. She told The Guardian during a visit to Great Britain in 1989: "Any honest job I have taken." She returned to acting occasionally; I remember her from an "ABC Weekend Special", a really charming story called The Seven Wishes of Joanna Peabody that I adored. She also had a tiny role in Mosquito Coast with Harrison Ford.

But she was also a continual student, taking classes at five universities and even reading Gone with the Wind in Spanish. In 1975, at the age of 64, she received a bachelor's degree in political science from New York City College.

And in 1989, she received the first ever "Freethought Heroine" award from the Freedom from Religion Foundation at its national convention in Atlanta, coincidentally held during the 50th anniversary of Gone With the Wind. McQueen had been a member of the Foundation since 1981. After brief remarks and a poetry recitation before that audience at the convention, she sang Paper Moon, accompanied by piano. I now can't hear that song without thinking of her and imaging her child-like voice singing that song. If I had a time machine, it would be one of the moments I would like to go back and witness for myself.

She told Gayle White, a reporter for the Atlanta Journal and Constitution (Oct. 8, 1989): "As my ancestors are free from slavery, I am free from the slavery of religion."

McQueen was raised a Christian, but questioned the value of organized religion even as a child - something I can most definitely identify with. She related one eye-opening experience with clergy as a youngster, when she was riding a train to New York and offered to share her lunch with two young preachers. Instead of taking "one sandwich and one piece of cake, they took the whole thing."

She also said Christianity and studying the bible has "sapped our minds so we don't know anything else."

She said she tithed not to religion but to friends and neighbors. This included "adopting" a public elementary school in her beloved neighborhood of Harlem, where she patrolled the playground, picked up litter and looked after the children. "They say the streets are going to be beautiful in heaven. I'm trying to make the streets beautiful here. At least, in Georgia and in New York, I live on beautiful streets."

"If we had put the energy on earth and on people that we put on mythology and on Jesus Christ, we wouldn't have any hunger or homelessness."

Sadly, she died of injuries suffered in a kerosene-heater accident at her Augusta, Georgia home on Dec. 22, 1995. And it surprised many people when it was revealed that she remembered the Freedom From Religion Foundation in her will.

Her life is fascinating, full of dignity, grace, compassion, a love of learning and a passion for critical thinking. If Black Atheists are going to be recognized, then let's make sure Butterfly McQueen is there as well.