Crommunist celebrates Black History Month

So it’s Black History Month once again. For those of you who haven’t really “done” the whole Black History Month thing before, this is required reading:

So, for those of you who are unaware, tomorrow marks the start of Black History Month. I am so not looking forward to this. Since this year is a leap year, I have 29 of whitewashed history and white people complaints and tears to look forward to. Hip hip hoo-fucking-ray. I fucking hate Black History Month with a god damn passion.

In school, it was nothing but a fucking joke. The history teacher would pull out a specialized lesson plan for a few weeks. We would do reports on the same few people and hear the same bullshit stories. If you were lucky, you might have watched a movie.

(snip)

I love Black history. Real Black history is a thing of beauty. When you learn about what Black people really had to face, you see that it’s a damn near miracle that we’re still in this country and surviving. The whitewashing that goes down during Black History Month is a damn shame. It’s not bad enough that we have the shortest fucking month of the year, but you have to dilute our history too???

I just want this to be over already. If you’re Black in America, February is probably not a good month for you.

I will add my own list of complaints about how Black History Month is handled. We will inevitably be treated to a number of (overlapping) lists of things that black people have invented. I could not possibly care less about who cultivated peanuts or invented the straightening comb and the traffic light. I’m more interested in actual history. Narratives. Stories. Experiences. Instead we get a “hey look, here’s a list of black people that have done a thing.” How utterly banal and useless.

Two years ago, I wrote a series of Facebook notes (this was in my pre-blog days) for Black History Month. Those notes formed the underpinning of the race discussions on this blog, which was launched the following month: [Read more…]

Kiva Project: Second Donation

Hello Cromrades,

Once again, we have the opportunity to spend some of our money to make the world a slightly better place. We’ve already made our first loans, and now we have another chance to do it again. So fly, my pretties! Go to Kiva.org, pick out your favourite loan (please keep it to a single loan per person, otherwise it’s way too much for me to comb through). I will make a decision and an announcement next Friday.

For the month of October (the first month this site went live), we made $46.38, and loaned $50.
For the month of November, we made $65.81

Total amount loaned so far: $50
Total loan funds repaid: $0
Fund balance: $62.19

Let’s see your wish list, folks!

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CFI greases your palm

So who’s looking for a little nudge to get them to attend Imagine No Religion 2? Michael Payton sends this:

Dear Members,
Imagine No Religion 2 is one of the largest and best freethought conventions in North America, bringing together voices from across the world to discuss issues in science and religion for a special three day event.
Speakers include:
– Lawrence Krauss
– Chris DiCarlo
and many others!
CFI Canada is proud to be an active sponsor to this event and to in return we are offering our Members a special discounted rate for a limited time.
CFI Canada members in good standing as of February 1, 2012 can purchase a fullregistration ($280) at a discounted price of $200.00. This gets you full access to all sessions as well as the Banquet and Comedy Show on Saturday Evening.  This is a LIMITED TIME offer for CFI Canada members only so hurry before this offer expires: http://imaginenoreligion2.com/imaginenoreligionkamloops/CFI_Members.html
If you have already signed up for the event CFI will be offering a free renewal of your existing membership as our way of saying thank you for attending the
conference.
Please spread the word and help to make this conference a success!
–Michael Payton
Interim National Executive Director | Centre for Inquiry Canada
2 College Street | Suite 214 | Toronto, Ontario M5G 1K3 | CANADA
Follow CFI Canada on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/cficanada

Silly Michael forgot that I will be there too, but that’s fine. I’m not speaking; just hanging out and being awesome.

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We Are African Americans for Humanism

I am very pleased to provide my modest signal boost for a new campaign called ‘We Are African Americans for Humanism’ launched by my colleague and (new) friend, Debbie Goddard:

Today I’m proud to announce the new African Americans for Humanism campaign, just in time for Black History Month!

Billboards and transit shelter ads fearing historic and contemporary black humanists are going up—in black neighborhoods!—in New York City, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Dallas, Washington DC, and Durham NC. The ads highlight historic black humanists Frederick Douglass, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston, as well as eight contemporary activists and organizers representing local AAH-affiliated groups in each city.

I’m very excited to see how this campaign takes off. There is a chance that I will become a contributor to the project’s blog (I’ve already expressed my interest), so I will keep you updated if that happens. For now, go check out the website and say hello.

Incidentally, it has not escaped my notice that this announcement comes right on the heels of Be Scofield’s completely moronic swipe at “New Atheists” for promoting racist ideology. I am deliriously happy that Frederick Sparks over at Black Skeptics is on the case and does a great job blasting a hole right through Scofield’s central straw-man. The timing of these two events is entirely coincidental, but it’s nice that the ground for this discussion came pre-softened.

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The religion that cried “wolf”

Those of you new to the blog may be unaware that I also contribute to Canadian Atheist, a group blog made up of a diverse group of atheists from across the country. It’s a good group, and I often get a chance to go full anti-theist and vent there in a way that I don’t like doing here. Today, I wrote this:

Okay, this is just getting ridiculous now. Those of you that know me best from my work decrying racist attitudes and unraveling the code of “politely” racist statements know that I have a fairly well-developed radar for bigotry. I am not one to shrink from making the call, even in those circumstances where the room is against me and I am forced to explain myself in excruciating detail. Racism is a serious problem, and I think we should be devoting more time and attention to it, not less.

If you’ve been involved in discussions of race-based (or really, any other kind of) bigotry, it’s a good chance that you’ve been accused at some point of being “the real racist”. The argument goes something like this: if everyone just acted like race wasn’t important, it would all of a sudden cease to be a factor. I will not bother detailing the number of reasons why this position is stupid – it’s the Wile E. Coyote school of debate…

Go read the rest of the article, and be sure to check out the high quality contributions of my co-authors. Since I don’t have to be impartial, I will take this opportunity to give a particular shoutout to Ian Bushfield, a fellow Vancouver skeptic whose writing I always find insightful and persuasive.

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Kiva Project update

I received this e-mail last night:

This is an update on your loan to Gulshan Mammadova in Azerbaijan.

Thanks to you and 95 other Kiva Lenders, the $2,550.00 loan request in Azerbaijan has been 100% funded.

This loan will be used for the purpose of: to purchase cleaning solutions

Over the 20 months of this loan, Kiva’s Field Partner in Azerbaijan, Komak Credit Union, will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

Thanks for lending to the world’s working poor on Kiva!

Start dreaming up plans for the next project, Cromrades! I will have information about how much revenue your hits have generated coming in the next couple of weeks.

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Welcome a new friend

It brings me great pleasure (and no small amount of personal satisfaction) to welcome Natalie Reed to the FTBorg collective:

My name is Natalie Reed, and I’m newly arrived here to Freethought Blogs. Before this move, I was a writer for the Skepchick network, and managing editor for sister siteQueereka. I’m young and grossly unqualified, but people seem to enjoy what I do. “What I do” generally being posts on trans and queer issues, gender, sexuality and so on from a skeptical, secular perspective.

I’m probably just going to go right on doing more or less the same sort of thing here at FTB, though the fact that I now have my own little niche, and will be posting on a more regular basis, will allow me to quickly start branching out into other areas as well. I’d love to start discussing LGBTQ issues in a more general sense, and also start covering other areas of particular interest to me, such as addiction and mental health issues, Canadian stuff (helping out my lovely colleagues Crommunist and the Lousy Canuck), feminism in general, some of my “hobbies” like linguistics, literature and neuroscience, and also some of my own takes on atheism, skepticism, humanism and related subjects. Maybe even some “traditional” skeptic topics like alt-med, God, conspiracy theories and cryptids, too!

Natalie is a fellow Vancouverite (I can already hear the mid-western USA contingent quaking with fear and anger as the left coast crew makes its presence known), and a personal friend of mine so I’m thrilled to have her as a colleague here. Warning: she is very good at what she does. Second warning: if you desert me for her I will be very sad.

Anyway, it’s a good day for FTB, a good day for Natalie, and a good day for all of you. Go say hello AND THEN COME RIGHT BACK BECAUSE I WILL MISS YOU WHILE YOU’RE GONE *pant, pant*. Wow… went a lil’ nuts there.

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Getting by with a little help from my friends

One of the coolest thing about being at FTB is getting to know many of my co-bloggers as people. Before moving here, I knew of pretty much everyone here, but through our extremely silly back-channel e-mail threads, I am getting to know what everyone’s like as a person (for example, behind his tough-as-nails exterior, JT is actually much tougher than nails #jtmeme). I don’t usually consult with my fellow FTBorg on issues of content, but I felt like I was leading with my chin a bit with Monday afternoon’s post and I wanted to make sure I hadn’t ignored anything important.

Well, wouldn’t you know, several of them not only liked the post, but posted about it themselves. If you don’t read all of FTBlogs (and you really should, because they’re all quite excellent), you may have missed some of these:

  • Mano Singham offers another anecdote and his perspective on identifying and dealing with racism
  • Richard Carrier talks about his own experiences with accommodation for the fear in others
  • Stephanie Zvan summarizes her reactions (and the reactions of a couple of others) to my piece and explains why diversity is of value
  • Greg Laden shares a post he had previously written on a similar topic
  • Daniel Fincke does his usual meticulous job exploring the topic (and, as an aside, I so wish I had thought of the phrase “Schroedinger’s Racist”)
  • PZ sends his horde (school? do squid travel in schools? is it ‘squid’ or ‘squids’?) my way
  • Hank Fox bigs me up (and by the way, if you haven’t read his post Thank you Mr. Darwin. Again. you need to. It’s an eye-opener. I have it bookmarked)

This is in addition to a bunch of back-channel encouragement through e-mail from other co-bloggers. Words are insufficient to express how privileged (in the good way) I feel to be part of the FTBorg, especially when I am made to feel welcome with such an overwhelming show of support.

I should also point out that the folks over at The Good Men Project have cross-posted Monday’s piece. The comments are… not encouraging, to say the least. But hey, people are reading it. Sort of. Parts of it.

And my final thanks go out to the legion of commenters, particularly those who have been around for a while, who have been policing the threads. I was not expecting that kind of flood, and was not equipped to deal with it. Y’all stepped up big time to help smooth out the wrinkles for me, which I appreciate. I’ve left a present for you below the fold.

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Shuffling feet: a follow-up

Okay, first of all: wow. I have written more than 700 posts on this blog, and I have never seen a response like I had on Monday afternoon. At the time of writing, my post about my objection to anti-black racism being used to deflect the “Shroedinger’s Rapist” argument has elicited 330 comments, and received nearly 20,000 hits. I’ve been quickly outed from my quiet little obscure hideaway at the middle-bottom of the FTB frontpage, and have been placed in front of many fresh pairs of eyes.

So, hi.

Second of all: there is apparently a need for some clarification. I was trying to make two separate points in that piece, and there seem to be a number of people who simply did not pick up on them. The first point is that connecting Shroedinger’s Rapist to anti-black racism fails to address the central question of whether or not we want women to feel more comfortable in freethinking circles; if we do, then we need to make some changes. Men being aware of how their (our) seemingly-benign behaviour may be seen as threatening is one specific change we can make.

The second point is that linking the argument to anti-black racism ignores many of the experiences of black folks who are constantly making similar adjustments to make white folks feel more comfortable. Failing to recognize this fact only highlights the ignorance of the speaker, and it is not particularly pleasant to have my story used in the service of an argument I despise by a person who will never experience it.

There were a number of other comments and misconceptions that I will attempt to clear up in this post. [Read more…]