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Uncertain Humanism and the Water of Whiteness - TheHumanist.com - 5 views

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shared by Bakari Chavanu on 04 Jul 15 - No Cached

Uncertain humanism is not just about how we approach “facts.” It involves how we approach our very identities and who we think we are.
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It’s about asking: Who are we, as humanists, and will we let ourselves become more uncertain so that we might more fully realize that black lives matter?
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My major point is this: race (and especially racism) has developed largely as a response to feelings of uncertainty that get rationalized away.
- Bakari Chavanu on 04 Jul 15
  
  Racism has developed to justify oppression and protect privilege.
  
  <div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">Racism has developed to justify oppression and protect privilege. </div>
  
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In what follows, I intersperse several quotes and paraphrased wisdom from Wallace with commentary directed at white humanists
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Therefore, determining if black lives matter to (white) humanists might require determining the direction our humanism is oriented: towards certainty, security, and facts; or, uncertainty, compassion, and attention to the limits of what is possible as humanists, and as humans.
- Bakari Chavanu on 04 Jul 15
  
  This part is not clear to me.
  
  <div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">This part is not clear to me.</div>
  
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But we tend to toe a fine line between experiences of our own ideological alienation, and expressing tolerance (of other beliefs) precisely because of our own feelings of having been alienated.
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Rationality is this process of faking it, and it is always secured through violence. Rene Descartes, one of the fathers of rationalism, even defines it as transforming intellectual uncertainty into certainty. But this certainty is only ever an idea; the social world is never certain. So when people like Michael Brown, Eric Garner, or Trayvon Martin—or places like Ferguson, Missouri; Baltimore, Maryland; or Cleveland, Ohio—cause a person to feel uncertain, when black bodies trouble the “rational” order of things, they get killed.
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If humanism is used to procure a sense of certainty—that God doesn’t exist, that humans can achieve whatever we set out to accomplish, or to procure certainty of self—then it will at best capitulate to a mentality that allows racism to flourish. And at worst, it will directly reinforce racist ways of thinking and acting.
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Do black Christian lives matter to humanists? Do black Muslim lives matter to humanists? Or are we so hung up on not believing that our concern for all humans grows cloudy?
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For instance, couldn’t the American Humanist Association (AHA) organize a group of humanists to march alongside community folks who are declaring that black lives matter?
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When will black lives matter as much as humanist lives? All of us, and I’m including myself, could do more to put our ideological freedom to work in the service of those who face the brunt of a social world where God has really only ever been a proxy for power, anyway. In this respect black lives are atheist lives. They are humanist lives.
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At what are our efforts directed? Are we trying to change the world through some sort of self-righteous (and ironic) messiah complex? Do we think we have all the answers and lament that others will not follow us? Or are we holding conversations about how we might change so that the world might be changed—becoming fish that finally feel the full weight of water?
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Many white humanists still fight the notion that black lives matter to humanists, and that such mattering requires intense self-reflection. If you think I’m simply constructing a
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But the highest rated comment is this: “I am fully a humanist, and will always fight for equal rights and justice, but putting Michael Brown’s name on this meme is divisive and reactionary. As the evidence comes out, we are seeing that he committed several serious crimes. It cheapens our movement to look at this as a non-gray issue.”
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Are there still so many of us who are more concerned with securing our own (humanist) identity and increasing our numbers that we’re willing to be complicit with a social arrangement where certain identities are not simply facing various modes of marginalization, but literal death? As a humanist, these perspectives are embarrassing. And as a white person, I am ashamed of them.
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Or will we worship at the altar of full humanity where #AllLivesMatter only once #BlackLivesMatter? Let us be uncertain, using our relative freedom to choose not to wallow in selfish indifference or guilt-ridden stagnation, but for the sake of imagining new, uncertain possibilities of social life where black lives matter more than a god that doesn’t exist anyway.
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