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“If I hate anything about black culture, it’s that it’s such a victim culture. Almost a victim cult — ‘Our Lady of Perpetual Victimization.’” The Amazing Atheist’s first video responding to black people.

“You know, I was mistaken [when I said black culture was almost a victim cult]. I should have said outright that it was a victim cult.” The Amazing Atheist’s 37-minute response to my blog post, where I said he was racist. I responded to that second video directly here.

Over the past few days, I’ve been addressed by thousands of supporters of The Amazing Atheist, had a four-hour conversation with The Amazing Atheist himself, watched a video he made addressing me directly, and watched a few other videos commenting on the whole exchange.

Most of these interactions have had a common goal: Telling me, as a cult member of black culture (which is obviously, apparently, a victim cult) how to stop being labeled by them as a said member of a victim cult.

So…here, for fellow black people, is a primer on how to get TJ and his supporters to stop calling your culture a victim cult.

First,  stop being part of black culture, as black culture is a victim cult.  This may be difficult if you are black, but apparently it’s important.

Then, realize that the old saying “those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it” may apply to most of culture, but not black culture. So no, you don’t get to talk about slavery or segregation as if they are remotely relevant to the struggles we face now.  It’s probably best for you not to read about the history of racism, because if you do you might read ridiculous historians claiming that many of the slums and education inequalities and poverty and so on we have today can be directly linked to hundreds of years of hammered in, consistent racism in this country, and stop feeling adequately responsible.

You have to take responsibility for the racism in this country — don’t look to anyone else to help. You’re not in a position to point to how you got here as if that’s relevant; that will annoy TJ and his friends.

Try to frame any racism you experience as your fault. Take some goddamn responsibility. And if you can’t really do that, it’s obviously not serious enough to give you any significant barriers in your life; it’s something we should leave alone. Stop complaining about it, because if you do you’ll force TJ and his friends to complain about the fact you’re complaining about it.

Get your son or daughter educated, and when you see articles like this  that say your kid will be as likely to get a job with a college degree as a white high school dropout, smile approvingly, because that’s the way it is and should be.  Or be ashamed by that statistics, because that’s the way you made it, black culture. Or better yet, ignore it. This may be difficult if you want your son or daughter to have a fair shot at life, so that desire is something you should get rid of, too. Just be happy for the white high school dropout, and stop caring so much about your kid being treated fairly. Life isn’t fair; accept it and stop complaining.

And don’t you dare look at any of the teachers when you find out that in preschool, as in at four years old, your child is going to be more than twice as likely to be suspended than a white child, black culture. No, you’re not allowed to say that has anything to do with racism — and, if you do, you should admit that this racism is your fault. And if it’s too hard for you to admit that this is all your fault — at least admit that the fact’s insignificant. It doesn’t make a goddamn difference — that is, if you’re not weak. If you don’t want to be part of TJ et al.’s victim cult, don’t ever believe bring shit like this up as if you have the slightest problem with it:

During the 2011 school year, more than 3 million public school students were suspended and over 100,000 expelled. These students were overwhelmingly black. According to the Department of Education, black students are suspended and expelled at three times the rate of white students. Save for American Indians, no other racial group experiences such outsized racial disproportionality in exclusionary discipline. Indeed, the federal government has said that the racial disparity in punishment levels can’t be explained by differences in kids behavior alone. Importantly, just one of those suspension can double the likelihood that students will drop out of school, and increase the likelihood that students end up in prison [you might really want to omit that italicized part, or at least explain it away as not that important. Just a tip.].

Don’t think about the implications of these statistics.

You’re not allowed to say that maybe these trends were worse in the previous generation, leading to a higher percentage of student dropouts and a higher amount of dropouts in prison, which led to father-free homes that perpetuated the cycle. Remember, you have to say that that’s irrelevant to the struggles we face now. And if you do admit there’s some relevance, you have to admit that it’s your fault, one way or another, how the teachers are treating your child.

I don’t care how tough that may be, because the important thing is to keep TJ et al. from thinking that you’re part of a victim cult — that you’re trying to convince teachers to be fair in the school your child goes to. As I’m sure you know (you’re not a victim, are you?) that would be so much worse than telling your son or daughter who is experiencing these so-called “disparities” in preschool to simply suck it up.

Also, if your son does make it to college, don’t let it bother you when you hear that he’ll be three times more likely than his white friends to be pulled over (even though he’s less likely to have something on him), that if he does decide to smoke weed he’ll be more likely to be arrested for it, that he’s more likely to spend time in jail while awaiting a trial than his white friends if he’s accused of a crime (whether he’s guilty or innocent), or that any plea deal he gets is more likely to include prison time.

Now, you can say that the prison and justice system is bad. TJ and his friends are OK with you admitting that. Just don’t say that they negatively affect your son in any race-related significant way, because the moment you bring that up, you’ll be part of a victim cult — and we know how important avoiding that is, don’t we?

For example, you might be able to admit that black people are twice as likely to be struck from a jury pool as white people, but you can’t admit that this indicates any significant racism; the black people were probably just poor or something. And even if they weren’t it’s not a big deal. It’s much more important for you to be OK with the inequality, if you don’t want to be part of the victim cult.

And you should argue in favor of tolerant, rehabilitative prison systems like the one in Norway, but you’re not allowed to complain about the “fact” that your skin tone makes you more likely to get your probation revoked than the skin tone of white people or other minorities, even when controlling for poverty, severity of the crime, and other factors.

I mean, you can bring it up the inequality briefly, as The Amazing Atheist did in one ten-minute video on incarceration in 2011.

Some say that [the reason America has the highest incarceration rate in the world] has to do with race. America has more black and hispanic people in Europe, and therefore more crime. But does America have more black people than South Africa, where blacks make up 79.4% of the population? [show a lower crime rate on screen]

But that’s it, as that’s all he said. It’s all you can say about this discrepancy:

And if someone DOES bring up race as a relevant factor, say that it’s all about poverty and crime and the black victim culture. It’s all black people’s fault, and has nothing to do with the way they are treated. And even if it did, that would be their fault, too.

You can loosen up and blame it on someone else when you’re talking about the general population, though.  As The Amazing Atheist states, you can ask this:

Do you — [points finger] YOU — Mr. Audience, Mrs. Audience, Miss Audience, whatever — Do you accept the idea that 3.1% of Americans are criminals? And if so, then why? Why are there way more criminals in America than there are in any other country?

Like The Amazing Atheist in this video, you can skip the assumption that the general population is just more deserving of prison than any other country’s population, or say that it’s due to the poor population, assuming this is obviously ridiculous, and go straight to the problem of privatization of prisons. That’s not playing the victim card, because then it includes all races (and, of course, mostly white people).

But when it comes to The Sentencing Project’s testimony to Congress here:

If current trends continue, one of every three black American males born today can expect to go to prison in his lifetime, as can one of every six Latino males—compared to one of every seventeen white males.

If you don’t want TJ et al. to say you’re part of a victim culture, you have to say that it’s all black people’s fault for being in a victim culture.

Don’t you dare suspect that’s inconsistent.

If you do, then you’re probably part of a victim culture.

Now, one thing you can say is that Black people are just…poorer.

But be careful: this may prompt some to wonder how much poorer black people in America are than black people in any other country in the world, seeing as how they ALL have lower incarceration rates. Don’t.

And why are black people poorer? You’re allowed to say it’s because they’re lazy. You’re allowed to say it’s because the shitty fathers were absentee (just don’t bring up unequal prison rates creating more absent fathers, because that would be looking at the past, which is not allowed).  You’re also allowed to say it’s because they play the victim card.

Don’t bring up the “unequal” education aspect or any other aspect or any history or anything to “explain” the predominance of black poverty by any other factors, because then you’d experience the terrible fate of being condemned by TJ et al. as belonging to a “victim cult.”

When The Sentencing Project says, “Today, people of color make up 37% of the U.S. population but 67% of the prison population,” you just need to accept that that many blacks are criminals, even when it’s not right to accept the idea that 3.1% of Americans are criminals.

And don’t pretend that racial inequality has any psychological consequences that may lead to a fear that might drive crime. It may help not to get schooling in the whimpy field of psychology these days, for this one, because these psychologists are just big enablers nowadays. As this psychologist states:

 People get depressed and they get afraid, fearful and anxious. It can come up physically with high blood pressure and heart disease. There are big studies being done on how even sleep is affected by racial inequality, because racism keeps victimized people from being able to settle down. They are always hypervigilant because someone or something in the environment is going to threaten them based on their race. They are fearful all the time.

Ugh. What a member of a victim cult. What does her face look like? Does she have a double chin? Look at the shape of her nose! And she’s a woman. How could we trust anything she said? Stupid fucking victim.

Just look at the goddamn crime rates, by themselves (of black people; rules change when you switch to the general population) and say it’s because black culture is a victim cult. How hard is that, black people? Stop with all those extra statistics and studies that claim you’re a victim. And fix the problem by…………just following this advice on not being part of a victim cult. Nothing else. Don’t do studies, don’t read studies, and if you do, don’t use the facts from them to actually fix anything in the system. Rely on TJ et al.’s truthiness; it’s ALL your fault.

And please don’t hurt the tender sensibilities of TJ and his crew by bringing up racism in the medical system, and if you do bring it up, don’t admit that you’re bothered by the fact that you have a bigger chance of dying in the hospital than a white person. TJ et al. would say you’re in a victim cult. You should, rather, just be OK with it. Don’t be like this physician, ignorantly joining TJ et al.’s victim cult by spouting studies claiming to show that:

Health care organizations must be held accountable for the shameful and embarrassing data that screams out that blacks and other minorities are not receiving equal treatment. The data tells us that if you are black, Hispanic, Asian, American Indian, Alaskan native or another minority, then your health care outcomes are worse. For black people, this is true regardless of income, zip code, profession or educational status.

Only members of a victim cult would bring up that “fact.” What you’re supposed to do is just accept the fact that your father is more likely to die when you have to rush them to the emergency roo. Or better yet, look at the way your father is treated in shame for yourself and your mistakes. This unequal treatment is YOUR fault. I mean, we couldn’t find how it’s your fault in your income, zip code, profession, or education, but if you don’t want to be in TJ’s victim cult you have to admit that there’s SOMETHING that you did that’s your fault, making this happen. TJ and his friends know it in their gut. It’s your fault, somehow.

To say anything else is to engage in a victim cult mentality that might offend TJ and his fans. You wouldn’t want to do that, right? You wouldn’t want to make them upset just to demand equal medical treatment, you oversensitive fucking prick. You need to make sure you take better care of TJ et al.’s feelings.

Don’t do something contrary to their guts. Try to look at it from their perspective. They might get offended at your victim attitude. I mean, seriously. Why the fuck would a member of such a victim cult have a right to care about their father so much they’d think drastically unequal treatment in the hospital — even when controlling for income, zip code, profession, and educational status — is maybe racism’s fault…and become part of the victim cult!

This is not saying you can’t care about black people. You can have black friends. You just can’t care about any claims that they experience racism. Don’t question whether that’s actually being their friend. The best way to be a friend to a black person in America is to tell them to follow these steps to leave the victim cult.

And employment. You’re allowed to say, maybe, that there is racism in employment. But you’re not allowed to say it’s in any way a substantial barrier in getting a job. I mean, Obama’s President (after 43 white Presidents, but that doesn’t matter) so that proves that racism isn’t a thing.  I mean, racism against Obama, contrary to member-of-black culture (aka the victim cult) Jamelle Bouie, has nothing to do with someone as “outrageous” as Trump winning the Republican nomination.

And you never want to bring up whether racism cost Obama points in the election, because studies indicate…well, it doesn’t matter, because studies are, as I am sure you can tell, done by the victim cult.

But it’s fun to laugh at studies! So here are some studies for you to laugh at:

But the political science literature suggests that in reality, Obama lost votes in 2008 due to white prejudice.

Political scientist Spencer Piston finds that whites who negatively stereotype Black people were dramatically less likely to vote for Obama. Importantly, he finds that stereotypes don’t reduce support for Biden, Clinton or the Democratic party in general.

By using racially charged Google searches, economist Seth Stephens-Davidowitz estimates that racism cost Obama 4 points in the national popular vote. He finds that the racially charged search rate affects Obama’s performance in 2008, but not John Kerry’s performance in 2004.

Political scientists Jason Windett, Kevin Banda and Thomas Carsey find that racially prejudiced Whites viewed Obama more negatively and were less likely to vote for him. They estimate that racism cost Obama between 2.2 million and 5.7 million votes.

Political Scientist Michael Tesler [found that] “the effects of racial resentment on support for Republican presidential candidates were roughly twice as large in Obama’s two elections as their average effects were between 1988 and 2004.”

Oh, victim cult studies. So hilarious. So ignorant. What we need to do is get out of the victim cult with studies and annoying facts, and just get in touch with TJ Kirk et al.’s gut, their truthiness, because it…well, it might fly in the face of a few dozen “facts,” but it will help you keep out of the victim cult, so long as you find a way to get out of black culture (which might be hard because of your skin, but that’s your fault).

And also, don’t bring up that study that those with black-sounding names are less likely to get a job than those with white-sounding names.  It probably just revealed, at the most poverty-based employment discrimination, anyway.  Even though the study claimed that the gap was still there when black people were placed in better neighborhoods:

First, since we randomly assign applicants’ postal addresses to the resumes, we can study the effect of neighborhood of residence on the probability of callback. We find that living in a wealthier (or more educated or more White) neighborhood increases callback rates. But, interestingly, African Americans are not helped more than Whites by living in a “better” neighborhood.

Typical victim cult rhetoric, saying that even when black people lived in a better neighborhood, they still were less likely to get a callback than whites.

What they need to realize is that it’s black people’s fault.  Black people need to start giving their kids different names, haha. Or something like that. Somehow. Get in a better neighborhood, and if the study is right and it doesn’t help…er, I mean, anyways, the solution is that you’re hurting yourself.

You got the rhetoric? Get it right. You can say there’s racism, but you’re not allowed to say racism is a significant cause because then you’ll be part of the victim cult, and you don’t want that. I mean, that would lead to tragedies like convincing companies to look at resumes blind or something. What a ridiculous idea, fostered by white guilt. I mean, look how brain-dead Britain looks when doing it:

HSBC (HSBC), Deloitte, Virgin Money, KPMG, the BBC, the National Health Service, local governments and civil service have all signed up for the “name blind hiring” initiative promoted by the U.K. government.

“[The program] will help prevent unconscious bias and ensure that job offers are made on the basis of potential — not ethnicity, gender or past personal circumstance,” said David Sproul, CEO of Deloitte.

Deloitte said it would go further and interview candidates for its graduate intake without knowing which school or university they attended.

Prime Minister David Cameron said last month it was “disgraceful” that people with “white-sounding names” were twice as likely as others to be shortlisted for jobs.

But the name bias is not just a British problem. OECD researchers found that a foreign name makes the job search harder for applicants across all 17 developed countries it surveyed.

In the United States, the situation is the worst for people with distinctively “black names,” such as Jamal and Lakisha, researchers noted.

Isn’t that a stupid, enabling solution for the victim cult crowd? What needs to happen is that black people need to change their names to sound more white. And when you change it, don’t fucking go on about how you miss your old name black people. This is the fucking price — TJ and his crew don’t want you to dare mouth a complaint about being in a victim cult, so you’re just gonna have to deal with it.

And don’t say studies done recently are relevant, either. Like these:

Students with stereotypically “black”-sounding names tend to be labeled as troublemakers by teachers. Job applicants with such names are less likely than their white-sounding counterparts to get called in for interviews. When residents with “black”-sounding names contact their local government for information about schools or libraries, they are less likely to receive a response.

Adding to this troubling compendium of results is a disturbing new study, published Thursday in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior. The study of mostly white participants shows that men with black-sounding names are more likely to be imagined as physically large, dangerous and violent than those with stereotypically white-sounding names.

Dr. Colin Holbrook, a research scientist at the UCLA Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture and lead author of the study, said that he has “never been so disgusted” by his own data.

Hahahahaha. “Colin” sounds like “colon.” How could you trust someone whose first name sounds like “colon”?

Sorry, I know that was weak. I’ll get there. In all fairness, I didn’t have a pic of his nose, eyes, or mouth handy to show he was wrong.

Also — pro-tip — you can make fun of these studies by pointing out that some white people have “black-sounding names” like “Jamal,” too. Because it’s totally about the names, and has nothing to do with the people possibly being black. Don’t think otherwise, because it doesn’t. At all.

Because the danger is that if you said that racism did have something to do with it, you would be urging people (black and white and…all races, as the studies are stupidly claiming ALL races are implicitly biased against black people) to think seriously about solving racism. And, worse of all, you’d be part of TJ et al.’s victim cult.

I mean, think of how victim-culty people have been when they have actually tried to do this. Like, the American Bar Association actually was ridiculous enough to ignore TJ Kirk et al.’s advice (I know. Kinda ruins their credibility, doesn’t it?) and actually fight racial bias in the courtroom with this nonsense:

Given the substantial and growing scientific literature on implicit bias, the time has now come to confront a critical question: What, if anything, should we do about implicit bias in the courtroom? The author team comprises legal academics, scientists, researchers, and even a sitting federal judge who seek to answer this question in accordance with behavioral realism. The Article first provides a succinct scientific introduction to implicit bias, with some important theoretical clarifications that distinguish between explicit, implicit, and structural forms of bias. Next, the Article applies the science to two trajectories of bias relevant to the courtroom. One story follows a criminal defendant path; the other story follows a civil employment discrimination path. This application involves not only a focused scientific review but also a step-by-step examination of how criminal and civil trials proceed. Finally, the Article examines various concrete intervention strategies to counter implicit biases for key players in the justice system, such as the judge and jury.

Ten authors. Goddamn. It would take too long to make fun of their skin, eyes and noses. Even their names…*sigh*

Ah well. I’ll leave you to it. What victim culters, though, eh? So wrong to even start thinking this way.

There’s more I could say, obviously. But yeah — I hope this served as a primer to avoid being in the victim cult. For the sake of The Amazing Atheist’s comfort and entertainment, black culture — stop being black culture. Stop caring about “studies” looking to explore “facts.” Feel your world from TJ Kirk’s gut of truthiness.

Unless, of course, you don’t give a damn.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. I have a Patreon, if you want to help me keep doing what I’m doing.

 

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZGghmwUcbQ[/youtube]

Personally, I think that the most beautiful happiness there is in the world is in the beauty of caring about each other so deeply that it feels like caring about ourselves.

I think it’s the best shot we have for a decent world.

There is no God, no happily-ever-after. If we’re going to live in a Utopia, this is it.

Yeah, I know Utopia doesn’t really exist. But I think it’s still possible to see a glimpse of something that reminds me of the way I used to think of heaven when I care about someone else.  When I do something that doesn’t feel like it’s just for me, but feels like it’s for someone else, too.

I know what the cynics say, and I’m one of them. They say we’re selfish, there’s no such thing as altruism, and we should all just admit it.

But the other day I was thinking — why do I spend time typing on this keyboard? Is it because I want to be heard? Or is it because I want to help people?

I think that’s the way a lot of us look at our lives. We put categories on it — are we doing this because we care about ourselves, or because we care about someone else?

Are you going to your job to earn money? Or to help your clients?

Do we make friends so they can help us? Or so that we can help them?

I find the most beautiful parts of my life happen in relationships where those two sides of things blend together. Blogging feels more natural when I’m typing because I want to be heard and because I want to help people — when the two goals intertwine. It’s like — I share who I am because I hate to live alone, but when I come out of my shell, I give others the ability to come out of their shells, too.  Have you ever noticed that? When you succeed in the fight to keep from living alone, your drive to reach out helps others feel less alone, too. When you’re honest, you free other people to be honest, too.

That process feels beautiful. I don’t believe in heaven, but those times when I write something in a post like this that’s close to my heart and that I think I’m alone in feeling, and someone responds by saying thank you and telling me they feel the same way…man. Those moments feel pretty close to heaven to me.

And it’s not just here on the blog; every area of my life kinda works that way. Jobs, too — yes, I’m going to work to earn money, but I’m at my best and happiest when the money motive and the desire to help someone else blends; that strong connection can make the money feel more “earned” — like it’s representative of a real relationship. For an anology, it’s the difference between getting your check via direct deposit from a boss you hardly ever see or hear from, and getting it from a boss who signs it in front of you, shakes your hand, looks you squarely and sincerely in the eye, and says with a grateful smile, “Thank you for helping us so much this week. I’m so grateful and lucky to have you.”

It’s that mutual relationship that’s beautiful. Those places when the line between caring about yourself and caring about other people is blurred. Where helping yourself is helping the other person, and helping the other person feels like helping you.

Maybe this sounds a bit idealistic, but I look for places in the landscape in my life that are like that.

Yes, there’s a tendency to see us all as separated. And in a way there are separations. Some people are Christians, some people are Atheists, some people are Buddhists, some are rich, some are poor, some are liberal, some are conservative, etc. And we get angry with each other — sometimes for good reason.

But I find joy in those places where — even fighting through strong disagreements — you can do the hard work of getting to a place where you can look at things from the other person’s point of view. Sometimes it’s harder, it seems, than climbing Kilimanjaro. But if you ever finally get there and look around at the way they see the world, you may find, even in the most disturbing features of what you see, that your own perspective has grown larger.  The beauty you selfishly live for day in, day out now includes another person, and that other person’s perspective now includes you.

When I get to those hard-fought moments, I feel like I’ve got a little back of the heaven I gave up when I gave up Christianity, and then some.

Partly because it’s based on something real, and partly because it’s not dictated by any God or religion. It’s between me and other people — people I can get to know face to face, as opposed to through an old book that is filled with racism and sexism and the rest. And they can get to know me. The real me, not the one hiding behind Jesus who isn’t alive.

It’s not perfect, and it would be better without all the bullshit life throws my way happening. But the times those connections happen make my life most feel worth it.

So…

Thanks for reading.

P.S. I have a Patreon, if you want to help me do more of what I’m doing.

Update: 

Over the past few days, I’ve been addressed by thousands of supporters of The Amazing Atheist, had a four-hour conversation with The Amazing Atheist himself, watched a video he made addressing me directly, and watched a few other videos commenting on the whole exchange.

Most of these interactions have had a common goal: Telling me, as a member of black culture (which is obviously, apparently, a victim cult) how to stop being labeled by them as a member of a victim cult.

As I’ve listened, a fairly consistent picture seems to emerge, which has prepared me to write a brief guide.

So…here, for fellow black people, is a primer on how to get TJ and his supporters to stop calling your culture a victim cult.

I recently saw The Amazing Atheist (TJ Kirk) make a video I thought was racist, and I wrote why in my last blog post, where I accused him of being racist. He made a response video.

I thought, maybe, it was rational and would make strong arguments against my position. Maybe I was wrong somewhere.

I was disappointed.

Most of what he said seemed like a meandering, seriously flawed diatribe. Like, just more racism.

Apparently, however, a lot of people think he gave me the true smackdown and completely disproved everything in my blog post.

They’re wrong, so I’m setting the record straight.  My apologies. This is long but, in all fairness, it’s a response to a 37-minute diatribe.

WOULD HE MAKE THE KKK BLUSH?

The item that got the strongest response from him is that I said he would make the Ku Klux Klan blush. I’ll admit that, to a degree, that was hyperbolic. No, TJ Kirk is not coming close to saying that we need to hang black people. He’s not a Christian. He’s not advocating a race war. In many ways, the KKK was much, much worse. At least, they were in the 1950s and the 1960s, the period most people think of when they think of the KKK.

But the modern day KKK would blush at some of the things The Amazing Atheist says.  Many may not know this, but the KKK of the 1920s was caught with the black leader, Marcus Garvey, because Garvey wanted to move blacks out from the United States to start an all-black colony in Africa — their goal, they claimed, was not being racist, but being separate. If you listen to modern day KKK members, the focus of the KKK is not so much on how bad black people are, so much as it is on being proud of white culture and keeping it distinct from black people. They are very sensitive to accusations that they are racist, and insist on a carefully cultivated image of being distinct from black people.

For example, David Duke (former leader of the KKK), when asked about his supposed endorsement of Donald Trump, supported Trump’s stance on immigration — it went with the whole theme of keeping black people out. But he would not say that he was racist, later claimed he did not endorse Donald Trump, carefully tried to avoid any insinuation that he was a racist. As he stated in a March interview:

I’m not a white supremacist. I have a long history of condemning white supremacism. I have long history of condemning any kind of violence – and I haven’t been even involved in any Klan organizations for almost 40 years. So, this whole discussion of the Klan and white supremacism is a bogus discussion. It’s a lie. It’s not appropriate – not for Donald Trump and not for me.

…….

Let’s just get one thing straight – this blanket label “white supremacist” is bogus. I don’t even know anybody that calls themselves white supremacists. I know white people who want to preserve their heritage, their country and their rights.

…….

I have no problem with Cubans becoming president. I admire many Cubans, and many of them support European values. But not Cubans who are secretly, actually for open borders that will transform this country and destroy the European-American people and heritage, because of the immigration. I oppose them for that reason. I don’t even have a problem with Obama being president, if he would support the values of the overwhelming majority of the people.

Don’t get me wrong. David Duke is a racist piece of shit. But he is extremely self-conscious, and if TJ Kirk was sitting by him in that interview yelling about how he wished a black person would suck a big white dick…he’d probably blush and scoot his chair away.

Yes, the KKK is unabashedly trying to preserve white culture and separate out black people. But they are very, very insistent in stating that they are not racist.

Here’s another example, where the KKK is trying to argue about their right to adopt a highway:

Today, when speaking to leaders of the Klan, you won’t hear racial epithets or a denunciation of any ethnic groups.

“We do not hate anyone,” said Frank Ancona, the imperial wizard of the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. “The true Ku Klux Klan is an organization that is looking out for the interests of the white race. It is a fraternal organization, and we do good works.”

These articles abound. Now, I think the KKK is secretly more racist than they let on. But they are trying (albeit unsuccessfully) to maintain a more manicured image these days, and if their leader went around waxing eloquent about how black culture was a “victim culture” and how black communities bred high crime and poverty and thus needed to be wiped out, they’d probably blush and tell him to tone things down, at least in public.

Their main goal is to separate black communities from white ones.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT GENTRIFICATION IS DOING IN THE BLACK COMMUNITY?

When I say that The Amazing Atheist is similar to the KKK, that is somewhat intentional, too. Now, he’s not exactly the KKK. Obviously. He has some black friends, and he’s not anywhere near trying to kick black people out of the country. He’s not for segregation, and he doesn’t want slavery to come back.

But he doesn’t seem to have a big problem with the wiping out of black communities via gentrification, which is in line with the goal of separating black communities from white ones. And the reason why is that he looks down on black communities, encouraging others to, as well, by saying many of the people living there are thugs.

Think about it. The question in the original video was, “Do you know what gentrification is doing in the black community?”

Let’s pause there. Do YOU know what gentrification is doing in the black community?

TJ Kirk immediately assumes that when we are concerned about black communities being gentrified, we’re whining because they want to kick black thugs out, making them homeless in many cases, so that they can make neighborhoods look nicer.  Now, to be clear, there are other definitions of gentrification, as well, where people ensure housing is kept affordable for residents in the area even as the community looks nicer. But there are other worse forms of it, which TJ seemed to reference in his first video and definitely referenced in his most recent video, where people are actively kicked out of housing that is not up to a newly made code in order to make room for nicer-looking places.

The ironic thing is that TJ’s attitude regarding black communities is the exact attitude that is the problem the worst, most racist forms of gentrification.

And this makes me red-hot furious. Because you’re perpetuating a stereotype to hundreds of thousands of people who will go and vote people into office who are going to clear out black neighborhoods. By the way, this is what the KKK wants, albeit to a lesser extent — black communities to be cleared out in order to preserve “white culture.” It’s like — black communities = thugs, so we should kick them out.

That’s racist. It’s an attitude that goes back to 1910, as a recent article by Reason points out:

“Blacks,” said [Baltimore] Mayor Barry Mahool [in 1910], “should be quarantined in isolated slums in order to reduce the incidents of civil disturbance, to prevent the spread of communicable disease into the nearby White neighborhoods, and to protect property values among the White majority.”

The whole purpose of this displacement from homes in the first place was to displace blacks so that White neighborhoods could be separate from black people.  It was to get most black people out of white neighborhoods so that they would be out of sight, out of mind from the more pristine white communities. And this stereotype made things worse for black people, and any perceived problem it solved has, it seems, made things worse.

This phenomenon didn’t just happen then. As the article states, this trend continued:

Ancient history? Hardly. Progressivism likes to think of government as defending minorities from discrimination by private enterprise. But time and again, history has shown progressive ideas marching in lockstep with racist motives.

In 1954, the Supreme Court allowed the District of Columbia to use eminent domain to eradicate blight. The court’s language was high-toned: “The concept of the public welfare is broad and inclusive,” it ruled. “The values it represents are spiritual as well as physical, aesthetic as well as monetary.” The victims, however, shared mostly skin tone: The “urban renewal” district to be bulldozed was 97.5 percent black.

But that was the 1950s. Surely it ended then? No.

In the 2005 eminent domain case Kelo v. New London, the Supreme Court allowed government to seize private property for someone else’s ostensibly higher use — condemnation in the name of social progress. Dissenting Justice Sandra Day O’Connor warned that “the fallout from this decision will not be random.” She was right. An Institute for Justice study of 184 eminent domain cases occurring since the 2005 decision in Kelo v. New London found condemnation was used disproportionately against minority property holders.

Another study, in 2009, found “a strong and significant … relationship” between low-density zoning policies and racial segregation. Yet another paper, published [in 2103], found that “over half the difference between levels of segregation in the stringently zoned Boston and lightly zoned Houston metro areas can be explained by zoning regulation alone.”

And that racist bullshit of kicking someone out of their home doesn’t just go away in ten years. The effects of this racism affect how you raise children. It affects whether you send your kid to a nice public school or a public school that’s about to fall apart, with overworked teachers, and no mom and dad at home hardly ever because they have to work their asses off to make the ends meet. And no, that’s not the only outcome. It’s an example of how these things have long-term consequences.

That’s wrong. That’s racist. That’s some KKK bullshit in the way it tries to condemn struggling black people so that white people can go to a nice public park. It’s selfish.

And here’s the worse thing. TJ Kirk AGREES this kind of thing is selfish. He shrugs this off and says, “Yeah, I’m selfish. It’s not wrong to be selfish.”

Fine. Be selfish. But don’t get pissed off when I call you a racist, because that’s what your selfishness is making you when you propagate racist stereotypes that are forcing black people to lose their goddamn homes. Just come right out and say, “Yeah, I’m racist. It’s not wrong to be racist” and be done with it.

When I showed that gentrification happened with white people, he used it as a point to say that it’s equal opportunity for all races — although he later says it’s predominantly black communities, as black communities tend to be poorer. That wasn’t the point. I was hoping that, by showing that a tool commonly used to kick black people out of neighborhoods had ripple effects in the white community, the white community would be concerned. I thought that would help, seeing as how TJ Kirk was selfish and all.

And instead, he doubled down. And he kept calling black communities full of thugs.

Because of the crime rate. Yeah, black people commit crime at a higher rate than white people. This is what happens when you’re poor, and being poor is what happens when people characterize you as a thug so that you’re not able to get a goddamn job, you get shittier medical care, you get harassed by police more often, you are sidelined in social situations, you get inferior education, and you get harsher punishments as far back as kindergarten.

But I don’t think I’m convincing you. I want to drive this home.

Let’s go to NPR for a rundown:

Here’s what the education data show: kids who are suspended or expelled from school are more likely to drop out, and those dropouts are more likely to end up with criminal records. In many places, school discipline pushes kids directly into the juvenile justice system. Take just one example: a school fight can end in an arrest for assault.

Education and civil rights groups have dubbed this phenomenon the “school-to-prison pipeline.” There are big racial differences in how school discipline is meted out: students of color are much more likely to be suspended or expelled that white students, even when the infractions are the same.

A new government study on discipline in the nation’s public schools shows just how very early that gap is present. According to the report, black children make up 18 percent of preschoolers, but make up nearly half of all out-of-school suspensions. (We’re talking mostly four-year-olds, people.)….The report doesn’t specify why there are such glaring disparities in school punishment, much less why those begin in preschool.

But an interesting study released in February suggests a contributing factor. A team of Harvard researchers found that black boys faced harsher punishment because they’re often perceived as older than they actually are.

……..

In one experiment, students rated the innocence of people ranging from infants to 25-year-olds who were black, white or an unidentified race. The students judged children up to 9 years old as equally innocent regardless of race, but considered black children significantly less innocent than other children in every age group beginning at age 10, the researchers found.Researchers used questionnaires to assess the participants’ prejudice and dehumanization of blacks. They found that participants who implicitly associated blacks with apes thought the black children were older and less innocent.

Those are Cliff Notes. There are a shitload more studies, but this blog post is already pretty long and I figure you get the general gist.

Still, I want to break this down.

The question was asked, “Do you know what gentrification is doing to black communities?”

What is it doing? Displacing black people. Gang members and non-gang-members. Since the 1950s, at least. Systematically. Why? Because black people are seen as thugs.

Are black people thugs? Not all of them. But the assumption that black communities are thug communities causes all black people — thugs and non-thugs — to be less likely to get an education, to get good jobs, to get good medical care, to get sentenced fairly (and prison can create criminals), to get more scrutinized by law enforcement (which leads to more convictions, which exacerbates, racism, which – again – leads to even more convictions), and to have decent housing (due to evictions).

But still…not all black people are thugs.

Black communities do not equal black thugs, and the racist myth that they do is what is keeping so many black people displaced, poor, and desperate.

So the WORST response you could have to “Do you know what gentrification is doing to black communities?” is to say that gentrification is justified due to black crime. But that’s what he does when he says:

Yeah, [gentrification] is making [black communities] look nicer and fix the high crime in slums created by the black community.

The best response is to undo the conditions that are causing black crime. To actually, y’know, treat people fairly from preschool to adulthood.

Not to clear people out, but to give people opportunity and fairness. Because after you clear them out — where are they going to go? Honestly. First, homelessness is going to exacerbate, not solve, any crime problems that do exist (because that’s an even lower level of poverty). And second, not all black, newly homeless people are thugs — and the myth that they are hurts them and drives them further into poverty.

And that hurts EVERYONE. Because more poverty results in a worse economy for everyone, and yes, higher crime rates. It’s far better to give people opportunities to thrive.

Racism hurts everyone. It’s better to have a well-educated population.

It’s unfortunate that he doesn’t see it this way. As he states:

I don’t care if [my views on gentrification] are selfish. I AM selfish. I’m more interested in my self-interest than the interests of other people. You got me… I don’t care.

I don’t look at an area and say, “Man, I wish someone would gentrify this area so I could go to the fucking GAP.” I just don’t shed any tears when it happens.

And I say fine. You can be selfish. The KKK is also selfish. They want black communities gone because black people are not good for the communities they want. Because they’re selfish. And they put a polite veneer on it these days, but that selfishness fuels them. And selfishness fuels TJ Kirk. I mean, I’m not seeing things, right? That’s what he said.

And the KKK also plays this game of saying, “We want black communities out because we’re selfish. But we’re not racist.”

Yeah, TJ is different than the KKK in many ways, as I mentioned above. But if you’re going to be selfish in that way — you’re also racist. Because you see black communities as “those thugs.” Because you don’t care and you’re proud of not caring about how to help black people — although you DO care enough to make a long racist video that will hurt them. Because you are perpetuating racism. Because you proudly say that people should not try to fix problems of racism that lead to the problems of poverty that you are perpetuating by perpetually and callously not caring about black people or the potential we could have if you gave us a chance.

IS RACISM BLACK PEOPLE’S PROBLEM?

In his original video (the one I responded to in my last blog post) I said:

[Racism against black people] is not my problem in the first place. What are [the people in the video I’m responding to] going to do to end discrimination against atheists? Right, you ain’t gonna do shit, because it’s not your problem and you don’t give a shit.

Two things about this. He sees atheists, it seems, as a group that is discriminated against, and he wants to fight against their discrimination.

He sees blacks, it seems, as a group that is discriminated against, and he doesn’t really see it as his responsibility to fight against their discrimination — it’s not his problem.

Why? Because he’s part of the first group and not the second.

This was not based on what atheists thought, or what black people thought. This is based on the discrimination in society — the way they are treated.

I criticized that. I basically said that if fighting for racist atheists resulted in making things worse for black people fighting for equality, I would have to stop fighting for the prominence of atheist groups and leaders. We aren’t at that point now. And yeah, of course I want to fight against atheist discrimination. But not to help people like TJ Kirk characterize black culture as a victim cult (something he proudly doubled down on) when we have real, well-documented grievances.

You have to understand that if the predominantly white group of atheists in America go the way of TJ Kirk, I’m given a choice of battles: I can either fight for an atheist group that is intent on saying that black culture is a victim cult when we have horrendous injustices in society, or I can fight against black injustice in the black church. I’d rather go with the latter, if forced to choose.

How do you solve the problem? Stop incorrectly saying that black culture is victim culture. Stop pretending like racism isn’t a serious issue in America. That’s a good start. I don’t want to help you use your prominence as an atheist to make things worse in this culture for me. If this is a taste of the secular community to come, I want out.

He misses this when he says, at the end of his response video to me:

I care about black people when I actually know them as a person, as an individual. I don’t care about black people as a group. Nor do I care about white people as a group. I don’t view people as part of some racial identity. I don’t view people as part of some borg collective, where all they can do is just think the same as everyone else around them.

That was fundamentally moving the goalpost. I wasn’t, and he wasn’t, talking about the way black people and atheists thought in the original statement. We were talking about the way they were treated. They are both discriminated-against groups. And discriminated-against groups hurt everyone, because our misperception of them and our acts against them limits their potential, creates resentment, and makes us as a society less than we have the potential to be.

And tell me this: how can he really not see black people as a group, and at the same time double down on his statement that black culture is a victim culture. I mean, he does this time and time again. He says that he’s not saying something, and then he says it. Which brings me to my next point.

SPEAKING OUT OF BOTH SIDES OF HIS MOUTH

I have a theory.

I think that, like the KKK, and like Donald Trump when asked about David Duke’s endorsement of him, TJ Kirk is speaking out of both sides of his mouth. He can’t say he’s racist, because then he’ll get labeled as racist. So he has to say he’s not racist.  But he can’t have views that are completely against racism, because he knows that’ll alienate a lot of fans and…because he is a bit racist.

He speaks out of both sides of his mouth, and people hear what they want to hear.

For example, he says:

I don’t look at an area and say, “Man, I wish someone would gentrify this area so I could go to the fucking GAP.”

And half the audience is like, “Man, he showed Martin. He’s not happy about making black communities homeless for the installation of shopping malls. Martin straw-manned.”

And while they’re patting themselves on the back, he follows up with:

I just don’t shed any tears when it happens.

There. The racists are happy.

He does this a lot. Here is another example:

All the stuff you point to, as like, “Black people, we’re so victimized” — it’s actually poor people who are victimized. There are more poor black people than poor white people, so black people are disproportionately victimized by society for those reasons. But in actuality it has more to do with poverty than it does to do with race.  There are white people who don’t have two fucking pennies to rub together, and opportunities are not being thrown their way because they’re white. …

It’s all about class. There is no war but the class war.

So racism isn’t a problem. It’s because we’re poor. And yet, he does admit, later (after many may have stopped watching the video) at around 28:12:

White people are more likely to do drugs than black people, but black people are more likely to go to jail for drugs than white people. They’re more likely to get pulled over. They’re more likely to get randomly searched on the street by police. There are certain things that — yeah, if you’re black, you have a certain disadvantage [remember — that other quote was that it’s only about class]. But are those disadvantages such that it’s impossible for a black person to achieve their dreams? No, it’s certainly not.

And for every black person sitting around broke, there’s probably at least one white person sitting around broke, with nothing going on for them [emphasis mine].

Those statements seem to contradict each other. He’s talking about race, not class, there. And in case there’s any doubt, he ends his statement by saying that black people and white people are poor at about the same rates, where right before he said there’s a drastic disparity in poverty.

Now, to be fair, he may come back and say there is a greater NUMBER of poor white people than black people. And yeah, that’s true, because there are far more white people in the United States than black people. But it is disproportionate. So the statement he makes in that last sentence, which seems clearly meant to indicate opportunities are equal, is extremely misleading, because they’re not. And what’s more, I think he knows this. It just is inconvenient for the particular point he is trying to make in that sentence.

And as a side note — no, it’s not impossible for a black person to achieve their dreams. But be honest. Even going by The Amazing Atheist’s words. Two people are at the same lower-class level. One is more likely to go to jail for drugs, get pulled over by police, or get randomly searched (to make this analogy more exact, one is also more likely to be suspended in school for the same behavior, more likely to receive sub-par medical care, less likely to get a job, and so on). Both can succeed. But who are you gonna put your money on?

Sure, you’ll be wrong every once in a while. Barack Obama was President. But how many black Presidents were before him?

I mean…the wages of black people and white people, according to the most recent Pew Research Poll, have stayed about the same $20,000 apart since the 1960s.

Racism isn’t over. The effects have been constant and have changed far less than TJ Kirk would have us believe. Are we getting wealthier? Yes. Is it impossible for us to succeed? No. But it’s a hell of a lot harder, which means fewer of us are going to make it, and those of us who do will have a harder time.  It’s getting better, but it’s still not as good as it could be.

 

I mean — to review, he said that being black or white doesn’t make a major difference. When, to be clear, as the Washington Post shows fairly convincingly — if you look at the stats instead of just listening to a random YouTuber who labels himself “Amazing,” the black-white gap has been about the same for the past 50 years.  Why?  I mean, I’d throw out sample options, but seeing his video, he’ll just take out the two that he doesn’t agree with and see them all as things I’m saying he believes instead of examples of options.  I know this because, in my last post, asked where the homeless black community “thugs” condemned to homelessness were going to go and proposed prison and concentration camps, he took that as me saying that he thought we should put black people in prison or concentration camps. No — I was pointing out unsavory alternatives for homeless black people who literally had nowhere to go.  So yeah — in that spirit — why is the gap the same over the last 50 years, if the effects of racism are dead and gone?

Screw it — I’ll propose one of the options. Do you really think it’s because black people are a “victim cult”? Could it be that we are still discriminated against in medical care, employment, social environments, law enforcement,  the education system, the justice system, and literally every part of US society we’ve studied — according to every actual study (note: each of those hyperlinks are links to information from actual studies, not random views of a YouTube racist huckstering for views).

Anyways, moving on, he says, in response to my saying that the country was built on the back of slaves:

The fact that the country was built on the back of slaves is no longer a relevant and pertinent fact. It has nothing to do with what’s going on today.

There. He shuts me down. Right? No, because he does the exact same shit he does several times in his video and jumps onto the other side, lowering his voice a bit as if he’s using small print. That first part was the louder “Martin is wrong.” And then he actually says:

Maybe there’s a causal relationship if you go far enough back and you say this, and this, and this led to this, and this led to this.

No shit. Yeah. Slavery had everything to do with segregation, which has everything to do with poverty in the black community and continued effects of racism. It’s well documented. It’s a direct causal relationship. And he actual admits that it may be, here. Right after he says it had NOTHING to do with what’s going on today.

It’s infuriating double-speak. And then he tries to fill in the hole he dug with:

Slavery is not an issue anymore. It’s been gone for quite sometime.

Which is it? Is there a causal relationship or not? You see? He’s straddling both sides of the fence.

So those are a few examples. There’s more, and this is already too long, but you get the gist.

It’s how he can say, “Why don’t you suck a big, fucking white dick” at 33:25 and still insist he said nothing racist.

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW HOW BAD RACISM IS, MAYBE ASK THE PEOPLE WHO EXPERIENCE RACISM

I think you should know that if you believe TJ Kirk when he says racism isn’t a big deal anymore, you’re hearing from someone who doesn’t experience racism about what it’s like to experience racism.

Sure, there’s a minority of black people who will agree that racism doesn’t hold them back. But the vast majority will disagree drastically.

 

What TJ is doing is the equivalent of saying, “Look at that minority of black people. That shows it’s not a problem!”

There are many reasons black people may say it’s not a problem. One is not very politically correct, but it’s true, as I’ve experienced it myself. When you have a lot of white friends, as I do, there’s pressure to be one of the “good black people” who say racism isn’t real. Another reason is that it is very difficult to admit you’re treated as a second-class citizen in American society — there’s something humiliating about it, and it can be tempting to live in denial. A third is that some places and environments are simply more racist than others. Birmingham, Alabama is not Seattle, Washington. But in spite of this, according to people who actually live in black skin day in, day out, discrimination is a problem. And the statistics back them up. Maybe the reason they aren’t believed is that they are too often stereotyped as less logical than white people? I mean, why else would people ignore such a well-documented problem?

There are plenty of disparities. They are well documented. And pretending that they aren’t any big deal doesn’t solve racism. It perpetuates it.

WHY DO YOU CARE? AND WHY SHOULD I?

I care because when TJ Kirk calls himself “Amazing” and gets on a pedestal to spout these views, he drastically mischaracterizes the state of race in America. He nails in the same American racism that has led to widespread injustices, in various forms, for centuries. His video tells people that racism is OK, as long as you don’t call it racism.  And apparently, he has convinced a lot of people.

I think you should care because when someone like TJ can so thoroughly disinform hundreds of thousands of people regarding the effects of racism in the United States, he hurts us all. Not if his video got a hundred thousand views. But half a million people? Yes, that’s serious. It gives them an inaccurate view of the landscape of the United States. It tells us that the solution to poor black neighborhoods is kicking out the black people and building shopping malls, making them poorer and even more desperate, instead of actually combatting racism so that they have better opportunities, better education, and a fairer shot to combat life without worrying about incarceration. This hurts us all.

And TJ cares, because he was so bothered by the video he saw that he made one in response. This isn’t just indifference. It’s active racism to go on YouTube and make a video as TJ originally did.

And he cares about continuing to be racist, so much that he went on YouTube and made a 37-minute video response to me, on top of his first video.

And his followers cared so much that they came to my blog and wrote over a thousand comments about this to me.

So it seems I struck a nerve. Good. Maybe it’ll actually get them to think.

Thank you for reading.

P.S. I have a Patreon, if you want to help me do more of what I’m doing.

If you want to hear me talk about this, I discussed it on The Naked Diner below.

Also, here’s my conversation with Steve Shives:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBTQ3JhY4Us[/youtube]

Update: 

Over the past few days, I’ve been addressed by thousands of supporters of The Amazing Atheist, had a four-hour conversation with The Amazing Atheist himself, watched a video he made addressing me directly, and watched a few other videos commenting on the whole exchange.

Most of these interactions have had a common goal: Telling me, as a member of black culture (which is obviously, apparently, a victim cult) how to stop being labeled by them as a member of a victim cult.

As I’ve listened, a fairly consistent picture seems to emerge, which has prepared me to write a brief guide.

So…here, for fellow black people, is a primer on how to get TJ and his supporters to stop calling your culture a victim cult.

Recently, The Amazing Atheist (the popular YouTuber TJ Kirk) answered 20 questions black people asked in a video.

His answers were proudly, ignorantly racist.

I’m sick and tired of people wondering where the heck black atheists are, when nonsense like this gets so much popularity.

It’s because a significant and growing portion of atheists are proud, outright racists that would make the Klu Klux Klan blush. It’s almost as if, now that black people have gotten a prominent place in Protestant Christianity, protesting white people are leaving so that they can claim the atheist circuit as a safe space for their racism and drastic misinterpretations of black culture.

I almost didn’t want to write this blog post, because it was so tedious. But as of now, The Amazing Atheist’s video, which came out about six days ago, has over 470,000 views, and about a 90% “like” rate. People love it.

It makes me feel out of place as a black man among atheists. It makes me disconcertingly ill at the prospect of a bunch of cheering KKK racists running around proud of their ignorance — retrograde revolutionaries trapped in a pre-Civil-War mindset who think it’s the cutting edge of the Next Big Thing.

Racism is not new, people. It’s as American as apple pie.

And white America has NEVER said that it’s racist. Not when it had slaves — there was no racism; black people were just better as slaves than as free men. Not when there was segregation — black people just didn’t mix well with white culture; they weren’t ready for it. Not now — discrimination isn’t a problem; black people need to stop being whiny and start taking responsibility.

Look. I don’t know if you, if you’re a white person, personally hate black people.

But I know we are discriminated in almost every segment of society. It happens in medical care, employment, social environments, law enforcement, the education system, the justice system, and literally every part of US society we’ve studied.  According to actual studies.

The evidence is overwhelming that, on some subconscious level, society dislikes us.

And you know what? I don’t care that white people don’t like me. Fine. I’ve been in this country for a long time, that’s the way it works, and I’m not just going to spend my life on my haunches begging for you to smile my way.

I just want people to stop being given inferior medical care, employment, social standing, police treatment, education and justice simply because they are a different color skin. They’re people. If you really don’t see race, white people, as you incessantly claim, then you’ll be outraged and fight for that, too. When a white person says, “I don’t see race,” 90% of the time, I’ve found, that’s proof positive that they DO, because the same people who are first in line at the slightest slight to a white person, crying out bloody murder, are as hush-hush as the mayor after the Tulsa Race Riots when something happens to a black person. If race didn’t matter, you’d march with us.

I can’t believe I’m having to talk about this in the 21st century. But this video and the positive responses clearly shows it’s absolutely necessary. This is an enormous amount of atheists.

More atheists have watched The Amazing Atheist in the past few days than atheists who have attended all major atheist organization events in the past year combined.

We are in over our heads in racism here.

What is wrong with the picture of all these people? Why don’t they give a shit? Why, according to the latest Pew Research poll, released right after The Amazing Atheist gave his speech, are white people so in denial when there are such obvious disparities that affect the lives of people just as human as they are? Do they hate black people?

It sure feels that way. Maybe that’s the problem. Not that we care if you hate us, just because we’re sensitive like that. It’s because we want the same stuff every human being in America wants — the American dream. And we want it by any means necessary — and if that requires you admitting your hate and getting over it, that’s what will have to happen.

And so the video asks, “Admit it. You hate black people, don’t you?”

The question makes sense. Go look at that Pew Research poll. Most black people in America know that they are being hated by white people forever in denial, because we feel the very real effects over the span of our lives. So we understand this question. If you don’t hate us — why else would this be happening? Explain why else we would be treated like second-class citizens. And no, that question is not to instigate a self-aggrandizing pity party that puts you as the great white savior. That’s just pure logic, from our perspective. What other conclusion is available out there?

And The Amazing Atheist knows what his white atheist audience wants to hear, and delivers. At first, he says he doesn’t hate black people. Then he says:

If I hate anything about black culture, it’s that it’s such a victim culture. Almost a victim cult — “Our Lady of Perpetual Victimization.” Every unfairness that exists in your life is the fault of white people or society stacked against you. You might as well tattoo, “It’s because I’m black, isn’t it?” to your fucking forehead.

Wait.

Wait.

He just called black culture “almost a victim cult.”

Right after he said that he wasn’t racist. Did you see that?

My bad. I guess slavery, segregation, and continued discrimination is totally the black people’s fault. It’s always our fault. White culture never takes responsibility for anything in America, it seems.

Slavery is the fault of black people because black people owned slaves, even though they probably didn’t anticipate that slaves would be cramped like sardines on ships for weeks on end before being pressed into race-based slavery for hundreds of years.

Lack of voting rights were the fault of black people because they couldn’t pass ridiculous voting tests.

Segregation was our fault because we were naturally inferior. White people are determined to be guilt free, in spite of the truth of the matter mowing down lies.

Now, the next question in the video The Amazing Atheist is responding to is about gentrification.

Let me tell you how gentrification works. My housemate (a wealthy white male, by the way) came home one day a couple weeks ago upset. He had been talking to a woman who was getting kicked out of her home because it was “substandard.” It was livable, but not sufficiently up to newly constructed code. So she was out on the street. That was it. She had no home to go to.

The city was doing that systematically, displacing people. White and black. Not giving them new housing. And not because they were selling drugs or were full of criminals. Because they eventually want to replace these newly homeless people with millionaire mansions and shopping malls.

That’s terrible. I’m sorry. If you don’t care about those people, I question whether you have a goddamn pulse.

Which is why the person in the video The Amazing Atheist is responding to asks, “Do you have any idea what gentrification is doing to black neighborhoods?”

And The Amazing Atheist answers:

Yeah, it’s making them look nicer and fixing the economic slums created by the high crime and poverty rate in the black community.

What? What about all the newly homeless people that are cleared out in these “black communities”? Where do they go? I mean, would it be better to just go to the black communities and send them off to camps to make neighborhoods look nicer? Or are you going to keep them alive and have them be an eyesore somewhere else?

It just…seems like such a heartless way to see life. And you pretend you don’t see race? ….Right.

But yeah. What about that old lady who has lived in her house for sixty years and suddenly gets “displaced” or homeless so that a white millionaire can build his castle over the ruins?

What would I rather have — a slum filled with thugs who would probably shoot me as soon as look at me, or shops, cafe’s, restaurants, and apartments.

I was tempted to just let that there as self-evidently racist. But I have to remind myself that a lot of people are clueless. They think that’s fine.

First — the fact that I am black and live in a neighborhood with other poor black people does not mean I am a thug or that my friends are thugs. Associating black people with thuggery is pretty goddamn racist. I know partly because I have to live with the stereotype every day, like most black men (see the Pew Research poll). Those are facts. I know because I experience it, but the data backs it up. Go look if you don’t believe me — but I suspect that we all know it’s true.

And second — where do these people go? Are they “thugs” somewhere else? Or do we work overtime to throw them in prison when we already have the highest incarceration rate in the world?

Third — do you realize how selfish it is to say you’re glad someone got kicked out of their home so that you could go to Starbucks on that spot? Do you have any idea? Talk about whiny — complaining that a neighborhood is an eyesore because it doesn’t have any Guess outlet for you. Atheists — preppy white racist elitists — “liked” this video by the thousands, remember. There aren’t many of us, and yet the much-loved video got hundreds of thousands of views in a matter of a few days.

Later, he says that the structure of America is not based on racism because if it were, we wouldn’t have black people employed in respected professions. But continued racism is well documented, and our country was built on the backs of slaves — things he completely ignores.

And he says that black people aren’t really limited in America, that the system is not built to keep them down — well, that’s just false. Yes, Obama is a black President. And yet, he is stonewalled by Congress more than any President in history, and he is only the first black President we’ve had. He is limited, still, by race, in spite of his many natural abilities.

 

 

But here’s the kicker.

When asked, “What are you going to do about systematic racism?”

He says:

[Racism against black people] is not my problem in the first place. What are [the people in the video I’m responding to] going to do to end discrimination against atheists? Right, you ain’t gonna do shit, because it’s not your problem and you don’t give a shit.

Yeah. That’s what I’m seeing. Atheism is a white America thing, and white atheists are increasingly, proudly, not caring about black people.

Like…why am I going to fight for atheists rights when they are made up of so many bigots, over and above the black church that’s fighting for my rights day in, day out? Why would I care about a predominantly white atheist club who cordons off race issues, when that impacts my day-to-day life far, far more than what I do or don’t believe about some nonexistent God?

I don’t believe in God. But frankly, when I hear sentiments like this, I want to turn in my atheist card and go back to church. Like Obama did.

That’s right. Obama was once a skeptic. As he put it:

I was not raised in a particularly religious household, as undoubtedly many in the audience were. My father…was…an atheist. My mother…grew up with a healthy skepticism of organized religion herself. As a consequence, so did I.

And what changed?

I believed and still believe in the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change, a power made real by some of the leaders here today. Because of its past, the black church understands in an intimate way the Biblical call to feed the hungry and cloth the naked and challenge powers and principalities. And in its historical struggles for freedom and the rights of man, I was able to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active, palpable agent in the world.

And so he became a Christian. I don’t think he believes it. But they were actually, y’know, giving a shit. And to be dead honest, when I see the growing popularity of the racists like The Amazing Atheist in atheism — when he can make racist statements all day and no one says a peep, but the moment I protest I’m supposedly breaking the cardinal rule of saying something outside the bounds of atheism — I’m beginning to think atheism is an excuse to feel superior, for many people. It makes me cynical. It makes me want to silently slip out the back door so that I can be part of a community that is actually after change.

What keeps me in is that there are some black atheists who do stand up for rights. But they have to take constant criticism from the majority, and it wears on you after awhile. I’m just about fed up.

And you wonder why there aren’t more black atheists. It’s because atheism is becoming an excuse for white racism, proudly and ignorantly displayed by the likes of The Amazing Atheist.

And you know what? I don’t really even think he was just doing it for him, especially since I don’t think he’s as ignorant as some of his statements let on. He was doing it for a predominantly atheist community, because that’s what they wanted to hear. That’s what will rack up 50,000+ views a day and get people donating to his Patreon account. It’s not him. It’s the atheist community in the United States that is fueling this.

And I’ve just about had it.  You keep endorsing this racist bull, and you may see more of us black people pulling an Obama and leaving atheism in droves. Which is a pity, because if atheists want equal rights in this country…they could learn a lot from black people. We’ve been at this fighting for equal rights thing for awhile. It’d be a shame for us to leave because of your incompetence.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. I have a Patreon, for anyone interested in helping me do more of what I’m doing.

I wish that I could cry;
Fall upon my knees.
Find a way to lie
About a home I’ll never see.

It may sound absurd, but don’t be naïve
Even heroes have the right to bleed.
I may be disturbed, but won’t you concede
Even heroes have the right to dream
And it’s not easy to be me.

— John Ondrasik

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw3tYiAFVfg[/youtube]

When you’re an atheist, you’re not supposed to admit that you miss heaven.

At least, that’s the impression I’ve gotten in writing for an atheist crowd. The line I’m supposed to take to heart, I gather, is that heaven would be a dreary place, with all the bowing to God. Besides, they tell me, no matter how good heaven is, I’d get tired of it.

So, for the most part, I’ve kept the fact that I miss heaven to myself.

I’m done with that. I’m going to be honest and let the chips fall where they may.

I miss heaven. I don’t miss God, and I don’t think I want to be there forever. I certainly don’t miss the concept of hell. But I wish there was a place where I could understand everything. Where everyone loved each other, deeply. Where we had that deep, rich happiness that feels like Mom’s sweet potato pie on Thanksgiving. Everyone peaceful, everyone loving each other, everything beautiful.

I fight for that, today. I know utopia doesn’t exist — that no matter how hard I try, most people won’t see the person I think is “the real me.” On some level, I will have to live and die alone.

I miss the concept of being completely, thoroughly, and deeply loved by someone who knows me inside-out.

I miss being able to be honest about missing these things without fearing that my atheist-card would be taken away.

Heaven is a dream I’ve had in my mind for most of my life. And yes, I’m angry that the seemingly beautiful story that felt so much like home is horrendous to so many beautiful people. I’m ashamed that the heaven I once believed in was so sexist, homophobic, unfeeling towards so much of humanity, and deeply disturbing in that it contains a hell.

I think there are beautiful ways to look at an atheist life, and one of the things about it is that you can be honest, if you’re not obligated to believe in God. People — including fellow atheists — may not like it. But you’re not going to be going to hell if you get angry at the way the world works; the worst another atheist can say is that you’re wrong or tell you the universe is indifferent, so you should get over it. But that doesn’t matter. They aren’t God. You can get angry. You can cry. You can regret. You can work to try to try and change things. You can still hope.

So I’m using my right to regret things and saying that I wish there was a heaven. You wouldn’t be forced to stay; you could leave, if you wanted.

And, of course, there would be no God to worship. Just people to meet and laugh with — family, friends, and others I hadn’t met with in the previous life.

And we’d laugh, in this dream I have, about all the bullshit that happened in the lives we lived before. All the hate, the abuse, the ruined lives, the diseases, the starving. We’d laugh because it all made sense, because we understood who we are — the parts of each other that we didn’t know that caused us to hurt each other.

I’ve heard it’s naive, but I don’t want to shake the thought that we’re decent people. I think that if I could read the mind of everyone, from the greatest philanthropist to the cruelest serial killer, and feel their emotions, I would understand why they did what they did. I still think we call things people do “evil” because they hurt us and we don’t understand how someone could do them. Once we understand the motives, we’re still hurt, we’re still angry that we lost something, but we don’t see the person as evil, really. We just see the thing the person did as hurtful.

But what if all the ways we felt cheated in life, all the unfairness, all that we’ve lost, all our missed opportunities and regrets — what if it all could be made right?

I think about it sometimes.

I know that sounds crazy. But sometimes the pain in the world hurts so much that I decide to hope, in spite of it all.

I’m not as naive as this may appear. I know it’s a waste of time. Like the song says, I realize, as I wrap myself in a barrier of hope, that “I’m only a man in a silly red sheet.”

But I’m not crazy, or anything.

I’m just claiming a right to bleed a bit. I only have one life, and it’s mine, so I’m claiming that right.

If it’s not atheistically correct, I couldn’t care less. It’s honesty, and I’m gonna just let it lie as it is. You don’t have to feel this way.  If you’re stronger than this, congratulations and feel free to claim your medal of made-up superiority; maybe that’s your silly red sheet.

This is who I am, for better or worse. I’m not in church, where we all have to sign up for the same program and hide our true feelings under an atheist Bible or creed.

I miss heaven, and I wish that there was one to go to, and that’s the truth.

Thanks for reading.

“So, you have to call sin, ‘sin.’”

“I don’t believe in sin.”

“What?!”

“I don’t believe in sin.”

*wide-eyed shock*

“Why not?”

“I’m an atheist.”

*awkward, confused silence*

It was a couple weeks ago that I had the conversation. He looked at me like a deer in headlights, as if what I said was entirely incomprehensible. How could I not believe in sin?

It wasn’t the first time. When I first left Christianity, most Christians, bewildered, thought sin was as essential to morality as wetness to water. How did I function without it?

They have the exact same reaction Steve Harvey did when giving ridiculous dating advice: “You’re sitting there talking with a dude and he tells you he’s an atheist, you need to pack it up and go home,” said Harvey.  “You know, talking to a person that don’t believe in God, what’s his moral barometer? Where’s it at? It’s nowhere.”

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWJ9ylZkS2s[/youtube]

The confusion would be more productive if it prompted people to actually think more carefully about the concept of sin itself.

But that almost never happens. Rather than recheck their calculus, they tend to think that the problem is with you. I mean, if I had a dollar for every time a Christian indicated I’m deservedly hellbound due to my “sin problem”….

I’m tired of this nonsense of proudly ignorant Christians sanctimoniously saying I need to humble yourself and admit that I have a “sin problem” due to my malfunctioning heartbrain.

Why the hell don’t you, Christian, have a “sin problem”? The concept of sin is an outrage that too many of y’all are taking for granted, and if you stopped looking at me for a second and started looking at the illogical logic working in your own brain you’d see the weirdness in front of you, clear as day.

I hate that I even have to explain this nonsense.

It is thoroughly ridiculous to me that anything would be right or wrong because some imaginary being said so. Here is a being who drowned the world, ordered genocides, said to stone to death homosexuals, made human beings destined for hell, told slaves to obey their masters, and originated all the pain and suffering in the world.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA3OqrNnezc[/youtube]

It’s a being who is, rather conveniently, beyond the five sense of human beings, had no origination we would need to explain — in fact, we would not notice Him if He were gone. It’s almost as if He doesn’t exist and thus has absolutely no relevance on our very real existences.

And “sin” is everything this being dislikes, and when we’re breaking one of the made-up, random “sin” rules, we’re supposed to go apologize to this imaginary friend you have.

Have you ever even thought about how outrageous that is? Seriously. If someone cuts you off in traffic, they’re absolved of “sin” because they said, “Uh, God, sorry about that.” We both know that’s bull, don’t we? I mean, you want to make amends, you talk to the actual, y’know, flesh and blood REAL PEOPLE that you actually hurt.

That’s really offensive. If you cut me off in traffic, you can’t ask God for forgiveness. I’m the one you cut off. Talk to ME.

And no, you don’t get to disparage someone because they’re gay simply because they’re “sinning.” No. Your religious myths do not get to randomly dictate morality to the rest of humanity. Your imaginary friend does not get to make something perfectly good and natural “sin” with a mere say-so. If you’ve done anything hurtful, you’re doing it to the PERSON, not to God.

I’ll be dead honest. I think that if we got rid of the concept of “sin” we could see each other as flesh-and-blood actual people with concerns and desires that do not need to be illogically policed by people’s imaginary friends, and I further think that it is really difficult to overestimate how big of an improvement this would be over the current system that illogically has things labeled as “sin,” “just because.”

Come on. Be honest. Isn’t it better to make decisions that are based on evidence, reason, and empathy of people who actually EXIST instead of arbitrarily, willy-nilly calling things “sin” because my personal imaginary friend said so?

So yeah, when the Christian winces at me when I say I’m an atheist and says, “You must not believe in God because you have a sin problem,” they’re dead right. I’ve got a problem with suicide bombers blowing themselves up for a jihad, too. I have a problem with illogical, ridiculously ignorant, harmful concepts, and you can be as sanctimoniously patronizing as you want — it doesn’t change how stupid and harmful and selfish your attempts to press your imaginary friend dictates onto me are.

We should not believe in God, and we should not endorse belief in God, because people and actual real-life-consequences are more important than the arbitrary standards dictated by your imaginary friend, especially if it is the brainchild of barbarous bigots.

Seems like an open-and-shut case to me. I mean, honestly — why the hell don’t you have a problem with sin, too, Christians? What is wrong with you that you would decide to judge people based on the ridiculous standards of an arbitrary standard instead of by looking at people’s face value, actual real-life consequences determined by science and logical observation, and actually, y’know…caring about people more than your personal imaginary friend?

There are better ways to be a moral person. Not just for yourself, but for all of us. Shed that selfishness and try to be a bit more considerate.

Gravy?

Thanks for reading.

“‘If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.” — Leviticus 20:13

“And the two who commit [sodomy] among you, dishonor them both. But if they repent and correct themselves, leave them alone. Indeed, Allah is ever Accepting of repentance and Merciful.” — Quran 4:16 (no explicit prescription of death is in the Koran)

Islam Extremism is COMPLETELY different from Christianity. That’s why over 100 people were shot in the name of Allah. That’s why homosexuality is illegal in many predominantly Muslim countries.

Except when one Christian country almost came within a hair’s breath of a “Kill the Gays” bill (Uganda, 84% Christian). Currently, in Uganda, as well as Kenya (82% Christian) and Zambia (87% Christian), it’s punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

Additionally, in Ghana (71% Christian) it’s punishable by 10 years or more in prison, in Cameroon (69% Christian) it punishable by up to 5 years in prison, in Burundi (75% Christian) it’s punishable by up to 2 years, and in Liberia (85% Christian) it’s punishable by up to 1 year.

It’s also illegal in Zimbabwe (84% Christian) and Swaziland (90% Christian).

Similar laws to the “kill the gays” law are being fought for by Christians in Nigeria (which went from 21% Christian to about 50% Christian in the space of about 50 or so years, and already has the death penalty for homosexuality in some of its states) and Russia.

By “missionaries.” As one writer reports:

“In nations such as Uganda, Russia, Nigeria and Belize, an insidious homophobia engineered in America is taking root….

“Lively and other culture warriors rely on their deeds abroad going largely unnoticed back home. When things get hot, as they did during the debate over Uganda’s “kill the gays” bill, they issue statements distancing themselves from the events they have set in motion. But they should be held accountable for the persecution of women and LGBTQ people abroad.

“If we fail to do so, we’ll find that Nigeria, Russia and Uganda are just the beginning.”

What virulent atheist penned those words?

An Anglican priest.

So, except for all that, it’s mainly Muslim extremists.

Thanks for reading.

As Mother Jones reports, Rick Wilson, a Republican operative who produces television ads for several national and statewide campaigns and has previously dubbed Trump supporters “childless single men who masturbate to anime” on MSNBC, has given Donald Trump a fantastic nickname.

Normally, I don’t like calling people names like a 12-year-old bully. But Trump is such a big bully in this case that he needs a short, memorable shorthand so that no one forgets who he is.

I think Rick Wilson stumbled onto it. Am I a bad person for laughing at it for at least a full thirty seconds?

1/ How the actual fuck does anyone at the RNC have standing to act shocked that Trump is not doing the basics of campaigning?

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) June 16, 2016

2/ You can’t elide over his utter dipshittery. No matter how much you try to act surprised, you own this. You’re covered in his stench.

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) June 16, 2016

3/ History will be so cruel to you.

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) June 16, 2016

4/ Your off the record sniping and grumbling is no substitute for moral courage. That’s so DC.

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) June 16, 2016

5/ You won’t escape the stain. It’s like a big, visible “No Ragrets” chest tat that will mark your careers forever.

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) June 16, 2016

6/ Go public. Man up. Show courage. Say what’s in your hearts; he’s insane. He’s poison. He’s doomed. He’s killing the Party.

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) June 16, 2016

7/ None of you are good enough to spin the unspinnable ratfuck that is Trump. None of you can say, “I was just following orders.”

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) June 16, 2016

8/ This weekend, people were lined up hundreds deep to give blood to the victims of Orlando. Your Cheeto Jesus was praising himself.

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) June 16, 2016

9/ There is no better Trump. There is not Presidential Trump. He is a vile stain on the this Republic.

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) June 16, 2016

10/ Your resumes will always read “Worked for a batshit crazy crypto-fascist who destroyed the GOP”

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) June 16, 2016

“Cheeto Jesus.”

Maybe it makes me a terrible person, but I hope it sticks.

Man, it seriously has me laughing again, as I’m writing. Just, “Cheeto” and “Jesus” sounds so deliciously appropriate, side by side.

My own stance regarding the divinity of Trump, by the way, is fairly straightforward, seeing as how I’m an atheist and all…

Thanks for reading.

I used to have atheist heroes.

I don’t anymore, and I don’t encourage it.

I have found that when we engage in hero-worship, there is the possibility of taking what someone says for granted. If they think someone is good, we believe them. If they say that someone is bad, we believe them.

I was watching a recent documentary on Lance Armstrong that followed this dynamic. Armstrong was well-spoken, seemed to genuinely care, was passionate, and seemed to carry all the exemplary qualities of a good cyclist. This sterling moral reputation gave him power. Due to it, he was able to say that people were bad, or that people were good, and people would unquestionably believe him. And you better not cross him, lest your own reputation wind up in the dirt.

If someone accused Armstrong, they were the ones being immature and disrespectful. Armstrong had center stage.

Not just for others, but for me, too. He was a Hero.

I did not pay attention to how many people were accusing him. I did not pay attention to the reputation he seemed cast on those most insistent on getting to the truth of where he was coming from. And he engaged in ad hominem attacks over and over and over again. He kept talking about how you just can’t trust these people, ruining their lives, getting them fired from jobs, burying them in debt, their reputations in shambles, and him coming out squeaky-clean free. They were “immature” he was “mature.” They were “bad” and he was “good.” They were “jerks” and he was “protecting the sport of cycling.” And his moral authority drove those points home so well that everyone — from the pauper to the President — believed him.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7NRvMM-JTE[/youtube]

I did, too. Lock, stock, barrel — I paid attention to Armstrong and admired him.

His exposure taught me an important lesson: no heroes.

I haven’t learned that lesson fully, but I’ve learned it in some places more than others. I’ve kept a sharp eye out for people who seem to have undue authority to — with or without evidence — say some people are good people and some people are bad people.

It’s part of why I left religion. I found preachers were leaders too often driven on having a powerful stranglehold on morality — people who could say who was bad and who was good without being questioned by the congregation. Later I found out that, in many cases, those who exerted tremendous moral authority over large groups of people were, behind closed doors (and often openly), clearly not following their own rules.

The key to controlling the morality of a group — to saying who is “good” and who is “bad” — is vague words and moral frameworks that could be used to raise up anyone or condemn anyone. I think it’s important to be cognizant of when someone uses this language, and I’m saying that because I think I saw this in a post by Neil Carter recently entitled “It’s Past Time for Atheism to Grow Up.”

Let’s stop at the title. When I was a kid, “growing up” meant following those in authority, not talking back to your elders, and “maturing” in following Christ. “Grow up” was shorthand for that. Other people say that “grow up” means standing up to those in authority, being assertive with your elders, and rejecting superstition. And there are a lot of definitions of “grow up” in between. Telling someone to “grow up” is something that I’ve learned can be used in a wide variety of situations to control behavior in a wide variety of ways.

And when it comes from a “hero” or someone we look up to, that definition of “growing up” can be accepted without question. That’s what happened with Bill Gothard. And that’s what can happen in any organization, including ones centered around a lack of belief in God or gods, when we sign up to follow heroes who have authority over definitions of those words.

One of the things that Neil Carter said is that, “As a group, the still-fledgeling atheist community has not always done a good job of discerning which voices deserve our trust and which ones don’t.” This was in bold in the article, and it struck me as strange. How do we know a voice “deserves” our trust? Who is in charge of saying that a voice deserves our trust?

I think it’s better to look at arguments logically, for whether or not they are right, not whether or not they are “deserving,” whatever that means.

As someone who grew up in churches discussing what we did or did not “deserve” — this kind of language makes me apprehensive. In the past, I’ve seen it give someone undue authority to hire and fire those it wants to from a group of friends in a community. It gives someone the authority to control people by controlling words.

This is also what made me apprehensive about the Atheism+ movement. Yes, I could sign up for social justice. But what bothered me is that the group was led by a small group of people who had control over who was a good person, and who wasn’t.

What bothers me about Carter’s article is that it sets a groundwork for ad hominem attacks about who “deserves” trust, using a definition of “maturity” that he controls, that can invalidate and validate opinions at will.

I can see this when he bolds more vague words:

“I suspect that the atheist movement owes so much of its development to the internet that it has internalized those flaws inherent in the medium itself which make it a place unable to discern the good from the bad, the right from the wrong, the mature from the immature.”

What is “right” and “wrong”? What is “good” and “bad”? These are words that don’t really seem clearly defined. And because they aren’t clearly defined, they’re immune from criticism — but they also leave the door open for Carter to define them as he wishes. It leaves the door open for him to say someone is “good” or “bad” regardless of who they are. And my concern about this is embodied in what comes next:

“It’s not enough that a person is good at dismantling religious beliefs. It’s not enough that a person can set up a camera with good sound and lighting and amass an internet following just because they know what their audiences want to hear. It’s not even enough that a person can type out a persuasive arrangement of words on a screen—none of that guarantees that you should really allow yourself to be greatly influenced by this person, whom you may hardly know at all.”

This is groundwork to invalidate the platforms of many atheists. Now, I have my issues with some atheists, like Dusty Smith, Thunderf00t, and others. But I will discuss them with people on an individual basis, and if they make a strong point, they make a strong point. Regardless of, in Carter’s words, whether they are a “creep or a jerk.”

Those are strong words, by the way. And they’re amorphous. Like, at any given time, you can accuse someone of being a “creep” or a “jerk,” and if you have strong enough clout, most will believe you.

I just want to set that caution up. If someone says that someone is a “creep or a jerk,” look at the evidence. Try to be unbiased and fair.

If someone has a good argument, don’t let someone saying that the person is a “creep or a jerk” alone invalidate the argument. The person doesn’t have to be a hero to be right, and I’ve never met a perfect person, but I’ve met a lot of imperfect people with decent opinions.

So, I won’t let someone’s “hero” status decide for me who is worth reading and listening to and who isn’t. And I tend to notice it when the very people who often paint others as “immature” for speaking up and being rude often are heralded for speaking up and are rude themselves — “heroes” or not.

On the last line:

“I hate to see their virtual spaces ruined by jerks and creeps and bullies who think that being right is more important than being kind. I will not support such people, and I will do whatever I can to counter their thrashing and whining because whether they want to or not, the rest of us would like to move forward and grow up.”

Let me point out the obvious. Labeling someone a “jerk,” a “creep,” or a “bully” because of a disagreement is not being nice to them.

I’m not saying that it’s wrong. Sometimes it might be the right thing to do. But it troubles me when someone sets up guidelines that they clearly seem not to follow themselves. I saw it in churches — these powerful preachers who had the authority to tell people that they were critical while he was being critical himself — ruining the names of people he didn’t like merely by mentioning them to his followers. I really hope we don’t become that. And the way we don’t become that, I think, is by holding would-be “heroes” to the same standards they try to hold us to.

I have more I could say about this, but that’s the gist of it. I think it’s important to be cautious when someone, or a small group of people, seems to be trying to gain a stranglehold over the morality of a group, is all. And also to insist on specifics, and examine whether an attack is ad hominem, when it appears that one person is muddying the name of another.

Thanks for reading.

Why do I run? I’ve been asked that question several times. The easy answer is that I run simply to stay in shape, or simply for the serenity of running. Others I’ve heard is that running provides a sense of balance. People tend to treat running as a side to a well-constructed diet. You have your running, your work, your weights, your diet, your relationships, etc. A sense of balance.

But I have space here, and you’re reading, so let me give a fuller answer.

When I run, I feel like I’m meeting an old friend. Someone reliable, someone I have to work with, someone who can take me places I want to be and that can help me experience old, familiar feelings and ones I’ve never felt before. The process take extended concentration, at times, that isn’t the incarnation of patience, exactly…sometimes it’s a steady beat of shoes steadily hitting the pavement. Or a mad rush towards a certain point, followed by a slow, relaxed gait, then a rush again.

The other nice thing about running is that all the problems from your problems and stress and anxiety comes out through your legs, freeing your mind to think with more straightforward clarity. And your mind — as it’s telling your legs to move, your arms to pump, your body to lean forward — is more active and alive. Broader and more passionate, and yet more focused and sober.

Then there are the little, technical things that make running a practical art you viscerally experience. When I first starting running, I was getting faster, but my knees began to hurt. Eventually, I had to stop. Then, one day, in Barnes and Noble, I was browsing through this book called “The Tao of Running.” It said that knee pain was caused by improper running, running that was too tense and not quite relaxed enough. So to nurse my knee back to health and strength, I changed my stride according to what I read in the book. Landing on the heel of your foot, as I was doing before, drives the full force of your coming down on the ground straight through your leg, without cushion. The remedy for that was to land on the balls of my feet and absorb the force as the foot came down. This was easier when I leaned my torso forward. To nurse my knee back to health, I also made sure my knees didn’t go past my leaned-forward torso, as the book suggested.

And the book also emphasized small strides, as well as intentionally absorbing your gait by bending your knee slightly with every strike of the ground.  Finally, running regularly made you less prone to injury, as it helps your muscles get used to the routine over time. If you run three miles once a week, you’re not necessarily getting stronger and your tendons get a shock every time you run – as opposed to if you run a mile a day and work your way up from there. Finally, it was necessary for me to get new shoes. I had to get shoes that fit my arch, that felt comfortable, that felt “natural” (that didn’t seem to put my foot in an unnatural position), that were relatively light, and that encouraged me to land on the balls of my feet as opposed to my heel.

This was not a chore for me in the least. I wouldn’t call it “fun” exactly, either. It was an art. It was a calm, solitary act. It felt like restoring the relationship I had with running. It’s hard to describe, but it was peaceful and it made me feel alive. The whole routine – from the getting the shoes, to the concentration on my stride.

I ran with the new advice…and discovered to my joy that I had no knee pain. I kept running…

Because running heightens my senses and focus, and because it leaves me free to be emotional and express all my anxiety and thought and drive through my constant movement, my favorite thing to do is listen to music and run. Listening to music while running allows me to drown in the music, to feel every tear of yearning in Rihanna’s “Stay,” or the drive in Drake’s “Forever,” or the constant steady drumbeat in The Proclaimer’s “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles),” or the overwhelming release in Florence+ The Machine’s “Shake it Off,” or…the environments of a zillion other songs. I can live a life in every song. I feel as if my heart is replaced with the melody as my mind relaxes and consumes the words, and it comes out through my whole body in a pace driven by the music. Sometimes steady, sometimes furtive and desperate, sometimes calm and meditative…moving through my life.

So that’s a major reason I run.

Some people say they don’t care about competition. I do, by choice, and within reason. One thing about friendly competition I’ve noticed is that it can encourage other people to run –which indicates to me that others are competitive, too. Also, running with other people just lets you cut loose and compete. I mean, in day to day world we have to be polite, you know? Like, dot our I’s, cross our t’s in the office, filter what we say in social situations. Hold back. Here, in running – you can let go. See the person ahead of you? You can pass him. Nothing’s between you and him – no real rules or bureaucracy – it’s just you, your body, your drive, and the trail. Go ahead. Engage the competitive urge. Let your legs fly. Grit your teeth. Feel the intensity of the music in your eardrums take over your being. Drive forward. You’re free to compete. You’re free to move your body to its limits.

But even this is really about you. Oftentimes, the person in front of you doesn’t give a shit if you pass them or not. This is your personal goal. And it’s really healthy, usually, to focus on the person ahead of you instead of worrying about those behind – if you’re competing at all (which is why that person ahead of you, again, probably isn’t paying attention to you). Passing that person, then – that’s your thing. That’s your goal.

So yes, I compete against others, but I compete largely for and against myself.

One thing I’ve found is that running goals gain weight as you work for them. Like, I wanted to beat my former PR. The more I worked to beat it, the more it meant to me. Same with placing higher at races.

I also like that running is a fairly pure sport. Biking, you need a bike. Most sports require a ball of some sort. Running, technically speaking, you could do naked (and some people do, haha). It just seems like a pure activity. I have a kind of pride when doing it that I’m just using my own body, without props, to move forward. Feels good.

There are other reasons I could give. Maybe I’ve wanted to run ever since my dad soundly beat me when I was around ten years old, running a race through the woods on a camping trip. Maybe it was those races I ran with my homeschool peers around 12 years old. Maybe it was that mile I ran at 14 from the Suisun City (in CA) library (my favorite place then) to the house my parents had at the time – and the fact that the mile took ten minutes and I swore to myself that one day I’d run faster. Maybe it was because I wanted to be able to run with my sisters (and got to a couple times) when they were doing track. Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve always liked to walk outdoors to think, and it was not unusual for me to travel a couple miles in the darkness to ease my brain during undergraduate years. Probably all of these experiences and goals and dozens more.

Some people I run with are in their late sixties and early seventies, and still pretty fast, still running many miles a week. There’s a light in their eyes I don’t see in the eyes of many people – their age or younger. Something youthful and confidently alive. All those years running – I think it gave it to them. It’s like running is an old friend that has gathered experiences with them and stuck by them through the years…and when you’re running, you’re living all that life again in every stride, altogether. It makes your eyes twinkle.

And to get there without making mistakes that cripple your knees over the long term, you do have to treat running like an art form. You have to know the shoes, the stride, how to take care of your body, the frequency, the technique. It’s almost like a deeply joyful, meditative routine.

My goal is to run till I’m in my seventies, and one day look over some path — maybe the Trinity River, however it looks then — and think of all those years and memories, and smile. It’s a personal goal. Doesn’t mean much to anybody except myself. And that will make that moment even more valuable, especially as I work at it more and more.

It’s about midnight. 72 degrees outside. I’m feeling like my mind is coming awake…the world around me is peaceful, quiet. I’m in a room with a steadily blowing air conditioner, typing on my computer…

I like running at night, especially, because running at night feels more free. It feels like I can imagine a bit more, like I’m more isolated…the world around me seems to fade and the world created by the motion and my own sense of self and history, all mixed in with the music, and shoes hitting the ground — that world where imagination and reality meet comes alive. Like a blank piece of paper or easel, the hours of the night are there, filled with promise, beckoning me to live in the composition of my heart’s dreams….

Enough talk….time to lace up.

 

All pictures are self-taken running photos.