BLACK ATHEIST...IS THERE SUCH A THING?

There used to be a saying, something about there are no atheists in the foxhole.  Having never been in a foxhole under conditions of a fire fight, I will only surmise that to mean all humans call on the unseen when bullets are flying.  As a youth, I often felt this same way about the black community.  There was no such thing as a black person that was or is an atheist, period.  It, to my young mind, was impossible.  Black people just believed in "God" some kind of way.  Ok, maybe some didn't embrace Christianity like most of us did, but they believed in something.  So I thought.

Today, I often hear black atheists on frequent radio programs, the most recent, was on Love Productions Nicky Love's Blog talk radio program.  There was a black man on the program that is a member of Black Atheist of Atlanta.  And actually, he was very clear about his position and just why he is a black atheist.  Having read Stolen Legacy by George G. M. James, I was quite familiar with the angle in which the guest took on his definition of a black atheist.  True knowledge was presented in the book Stolen Legacy when the author notes the influx of people from the city states that later became known as Greece began venturing into Kemet to learn from the foundation of metropolitan civilization.  Anaxamenes, Anaximander, Pythagoras, and Socrates all lived in Kemet to study the Way of the Kemetans.  To become "learned in all the Wisdom of the Egyptians..."  For this, they, the Athenians, were later persecuted and put to death for brining "foreign gods" into their country.

The foreign gods, in this case were the Spirits of Africa.  The Spirit of Mathematics.  The Spirit of Music.  The Spirit of Sacred Geometry.  The Spirit of Word Sound. Spirit.  For this the Greek Masters were persecuted and put to death.  Thus, the black atheist's point was that Theos was a Greek god, an that he being one that is in line with Kemet, he could never be a Theist simply because he is aligned with the very gods the Greeks were killed for introducing into Grecian society.  He then is away from Theos, thus an atheist, fittingly.  Based what he said I agreed.  Thus, my previous notion of us "believing something" was valid.  As I listened, I found I was still incorrect.

Mr. Black Atheist, then began to speak about science.  That he could prove scientifically all things in his perspective.  For me, the listener, this sounded like he was saying he could prove his point via logic and reason and that would be the determining factor as to whether he won a point or the host or even a caller would score a point.  I understood right then that he was in fact a worshiper of Theos and not representing Kemet at all.  He was in fact representing whom he speaks of as his nemesis.  Logic and Reason alone are the gods of the Greeks.  Founding your premise on Logic and Reason alone are not representations of Kemet.  This pattern of thought that so encompasses the Conscious Community's major concepts is not a foundation based on our ancestor. so much so that "science" is wielded like a sword of persecution on those that don't succumb to "science."  This alone diminishes the power of right brained thinking and backhandedly wipes the feminine principle from the foundation.  It was the Cobra and Vulture that proceeded from the forehead of the Kemetan Emperor's crown not solely a Serpent or solely an Avian, but both.  Balance/stability.

Dr. Phil Valentine once said that all is not mathematics, but that mathematics are only an explanation of a thing or an event.  We have to question from whence the science comes before it is wielded in combat.  To confront using "science" only, then the black atheist sides with the Greeks and not Kemet.  Or more appropriatly sides with the Theos following Greeks that killed Socrates, Anaxinamder and Anaximenes, all of whom promoted balanced thought/foreign gods to the Athenian society.  Logic and Reason alone are not African, it is not aboriginal.  Logic and Reason alone are foreign unbalanced gods and when promulgated by black atheists then they are introducing foreign gods into our collective. 

Roots; African or American?

In the 1980’s, during the surge of Black “Afro-centric” authors and books, I became an avid reader of every angle of the history and legacy of Black people across space and time. From reading Stolen Legacy by George G.M. James to African Origin of Biological Psychiatry by Dr. Richard M. King to the Biography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley, Revolutionary Suicide by Huey P. Newton, and even Divine Horsemen by Maya Deren and Secrets of Voodoo by Milo Rigaud.

My reading addiction has not stopped, nor was it or is it all by Black authors on Black/African history and accomplishments. Eventually things began to become stale for me, as if I was beginning to read things that were being rehashed over and over, but with a little different spice added to the mix thus, in the end it was basically the same.

While listening to my favorite community radio station in Atlanta in December of 2000, there was an advertisement that would be rotated throughout the many hours of the day as I listened while I worked ,saying something to the affect of “Have you ever heard grandmamma or great grand ma was in Indian? Come down to the Auburn Research Library to learn more about this.”

Of course this peaked my curiosity since I had heard this very same thing all my life from my mother concerning her grandfather, my great grandfather “papa” all my life. She would point at his picture on our living room wall and say “look at papa, looking just like and Indian.” So, of course I was at the library’s auditorium promptly at 6 o’clock.

Shortly after 6 pm, the little auditorium was filled with many people, from college professors from the AU center (the center where several HBCU’s are located in Atlanta) and professors from Georgia State and a couple reporters from local Black newspapers, to average people wanting clarity about this “Indian” ancestry we have.

By 6:30, Rev. Radine Amen Ra took the stage and proceeded to layout her argument that the aboriginal people of the Americas , including the Caribbean islands were Black people and how European history books and European artists’ renditions of the aboriginal people of the Americas had been anglicized to fit the imaginations of the people back home in Europe.

She actually based her theory on several books, writings and portraits by George Catlin and county tax records and court documents of various states. She pointed to books by J. leitch Wright that wrote of the plight of Indians of the Southeastern United States. Rev. Amen Ra spoke of the logic and logistics of a huge Atlantic slave trade including cost and expense of transporting so many people from the west coast of Africa.(Ah yaw ne tak oar-A warriror of the Menominee or more specifically the Mamaceqtaw nation)

For years I had heard and read how the enslaved Africans would often runaway and live with the Native Americans, and if any Africans were enslaved by the Indian their slave system was nothing like the system of slavery that was instituted by the Europeans. Thus, the Africans would intermarry with the Indians and would often become great leaders of the “tribes.” This is what I was taught, which made sense to me and of course Alex Haley’s Roots re-enforced these lessons. But is that really the truth?

Next time what I learned.