NUBIAN KNIGHTS NETWORK: The Invisibility of The Black Atheist, BUT What About The Black SGL Collective???

QUOTATIONS OF "BLACK"

"Whenever I use BLACK it relates to some history of Africans in that particular place. It’s the idea of the color BLACK as a metaphor, or as a representation of African-Americans. It’s the notion of BLACK- BLACKNESS - and all its other meanings in relation to the history of race..."

- Fred Wilson

"Most of my fortitude to continue doing the work comes from the moral outrage I feel about the injustices that Black people endure disproportionately daily."

- N. Abdul-Wakil

"In the end, what matters is not skin shade but pan-African consciousness. Loving your complexion, your nose, lips, hair length and texture, no matter what the politics or trends decide, and simply be. That's the problem with us (African folks). We're still learning how to love ourselves. So used to glorifying others and putting others first..."

- Dredlocks Tree

Monday, July 20, 2009

The Invisibility of The Black Atheist, BUT What About The Black SGL Collective???

The Invisibility of The Black Atheist
http://wordsofwrath.blogspot.com/2008/05/invisibility-of-black-atheist.html

EXCERPT:
It can be argued that in most African American communities it is more acceptable to be a criminal who believes in God and goes to church on Sunday while selling drugs to kids all week than to be an atheist who has a good job, a good education, who contributes to society and supports his family. In these communities you find more tolerance towards gangbangers, drug addicts, and prostitutes, who pray to God for forgiveness than for honest productive citizens who deny the existence of God. This, for me, is one of the most embarrassing elements of Black culture, our zealous embracement of the God of our kidnappers, murderers, slavemasters and oppressors...

Hey Black Family,

Click the link above to continue reading the blog posting, but the first paragraph above is as much context as I wanted to show you in reference to my argument below. Read on...

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Wil,

Thanks for posting the original blog posting my man!

This posting caught my interest because I am a Black male who is an atheist. And this also caught my attention because the original blogger posted it on my birthday last year, which is May 28th, so I had to respond to this. LOL!

But more importantly, what resonated the most with me was the entire first paragraph of his post (above) regarding the Black community's intolerance toward certain things, ideas, actions or particular people in the African Diaspora.

And I wanted to add that a large part of the "African-American community's" (James White's quote) INTOLERANCE is with Black "same gender loving" people ("SGL" for short, and SGL folks are aka Gatekeepers). I've had this conversation with other SGL bruthaz and it's quite frankly a F**KING JOKE how some of us (SGL folk) can be model citizens to our community (but not limited to having a) "good job, a good education, who contributes to society (church is a major area) and supports his family" (for example), but yet all of that good stuff is nullified if certain people within the community are aware that you're same gender loving (homosexual, bisexual & transgendered). Who I'm attracted to, or even sleep with has no bearing outside the boundaries of my personal space and who I interact with; and it doesn't hurt anyone within the sphere of the African Diaspora. So why are some Black folks trippin' over this besides what?... the bible bearing bombardment or their personal insecurities??? I just think some of our priorities are really screwed up and we're not being inclusive of each other which keeps us apart and compartmentalized in many ways.

Historical Case in Point 1: We can go all the way back to the civil rights era of the 60s where Bayard Rustin, arguably the architect of the March on Washington was asked to manifest a strategic plan of prowless, yet he was shut down and given a back seat AFTER the implementation of his ideas because the Black community didn't want to deal with his "homosexuality" getting in the way of the so-called greater good of the civil rights bullet point agenda items.

Historical Case in Point 2: We can go even further back to the Harlem Renaissance era of the 1930s or so, where same gender loving literary artists' Langston Hughes, Wallace Thurman, Zora Neal Hurston and Richard Bruce Nugent (to name a few) caught massive political hell (as well as the blocking of their distribution) for publishing their infused SGL perspectives and ideologies in their Black magazine periodical called FIRE (I have a reprint of one of the original issues and you can obtain one as well at the following link ---> http://firepress.com/fire/fire.html

So, although there's never going to be a general consensus and agreement upon everything the Black community does, this backlash of the same gender loving collective is unwarranted especially since we can be forgiving people for a number of things. I work in and serve the community, and I do so with respect, not to be marginalized with someone else's tolerance or intolerance.