Sikivu Hutchinson
- Located in Los Angeles, CA
- Writer and intergroup specialist for the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission.
- Received a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from New York University and has taught women's studies, cultural studies, urban studies and education at UCLA, the California Institute of the Arts and Western Washington University.
- Author of Imagining Transit: Race, Gender, and Transportation Politics in Los Angeles (Lang, 2003) and has published fiction, essays and critical theory in Social Text, California English, Black Agenda Report and American Atheist Magazine.
- A frequent contributor to RichardDawkins.net and the New Humanist Blog,
- Editor of blackfemlens.org and a commentator for Pacifica stations KPFK Los Angeles and WBAI NY's Women's Collective.
- Author of the novel Dealey and is currently working on a book entitled Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics and Secular America.
- Senior Fellow with the Institute of Humanist Studies
- Founder of Black Skeptics L.A.
- Editor of Black Skeptics blog
- Review of Moral Combat
- Author of forthcoming Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels
Sikivu has written extensively on the politics of atheism and secular humanism and its implications for African Americans. For black atheists, actively breaking with religious tradition is an even graver rejection than that of white intellectuals galvanized by the work of Hitchens or Dawkins. This is partly due to the fact that the history of African American civil and human rights resistance is heavily steeped in Judeo-Christian religious dogma. Sikivu's work explores the tensions that exist in African American culture around living a moral life beyond the boundaries of organized religion. She has addressed the role secularism/atheism plays in shaping contemporary black perspectives on such issues as abortion, intimate partner violence and same-sex marriage, the particular challenges of "coming out" as an atheist female of color and how the cultural knowledge and lived experience of atheists and secular humanists of color "nuance" the conversation around American atheism.
Some of Sikivu's articles and interviews:
- http://freethoughtblogs.com/blackskeptics/2012/06/11/the-uppity-negress-the-o-g-s/
- http://www.religiondispatches.org/books/rd10q/4125/to_be_atheist,_feminist,_and_black/
- http://freethoughtblogs.com/blackskeptics/2012/05/25/return-of-the-welfare-queens-feminism-secularism-anti-racism/
- http://www.intersectionssouthla.org/index.php/story/more_african-americans_leaving_religious_faiths/
Examples of Sikivu speaking can be found on Youtube at:
Sikivu is available to discuss such topics as:
- The "problem" of coming out for black atheists and building humanist communities of color
- The political rise of the Religious Right and its Black Church allies
- Youth of color perspectives on organized religion & non-theism
- Race/gender politics & Eurocentrism in the humanist & atheist movements: why science worship doesn't work for people of color
- Women's rights and humanism: anti-racism, anti-sexism and anti-heterosexism as a humanist stance
- Anti-choice media propaganda and the policing of women's bodies
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