Sikivu Hutchinson

Sikivu Hutchinson is an American feminist, atheist, author/novelist and playwright. She is the author of Humanists in the Hood: Unapologetically Black, Feminist, and Heretical (2020), White Nights, Black Paradise (2015), Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels (2013), Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars (2011), and Imagining Transit: Race, Gender, and Transportation Politics in Los Angeles (Travel Writing Across the Disciplines) (2003). Moral Combat is the first book on atheism to be published by an African-American woman. In 2013 she was named Secular Woman of the year and was awarded Foundation Beyond Belief's 2015 Humanist Innovator award, and the Secular Student Alliance's 2016 Backbone award.

Her grandfather Earl Hutchinson Sr. and father Earl Ofari Hutchinson are both authors. Hutchinson graduated from New York University with a Ph.D. in Performance Studies in 1999.

Hutchinson has written articles for www.huffingtonpost.com, The Feminist Wire, thehumanist.com, the LA Progressive, and The L.A. Times. She is a Senior Fellow with the Institute of Humanist Studies, and is part of the Speakers Bureau at the Secular Student Alliance.

She has taught women's studies, urban studies, cultural studies, and education at the California Institute of the Arts, UCLA, and Western Washington University. She is a co-contributor to the Black Skeptics blog on the Freethought Blogs network and a contributing editor for www.thefeministwire.org.

In her book, Moral Combat, she examines what she views as the hijacking of civil rights by the Christian Right; the connections between humanism, feminism and social justice; the importance of humanism for pre-college education; the backlash of religious fundamentalism, in the vein of the Tea Party, against progressive public policy; and the efforts of atheists of color to challenge the "New Atheist" movement, which values a narrow conception of science and disregards both social and also economic justice.Hutchinson frames her critique in the contemporary realities of working- and middle-class African-American communities which are just as steeped in the tradition of religiosity-due to capitalism and de facto segregation—as they are in the cultural trappings of the Black Church.Hutchinson highlights Nella Larsen's work as atouchstone for black feminist humanist thought.Hutchinson also explores the emergence of black atheist and freethought activism and spotlights the voices of African American non-believers from around the country.

Formed by Hutchinson in March 2010 she explained to KTYM radio the reason she formed the group was a "response to the emergent need amongst African-American non-believers to have some kind of community and interpersonal connection to each other, in real time".She believes that there is a large community of black non-believers on social media sites, but it is important for these people to find a "sanctuary from the hyper-religiosity that African-Americans are seeped in". The group was featured in a May 2012 article that chronicled how greater numbers of African Americans were leaving religious faith and adopting atheism and freethought.

Criticism of the Center for Inquiry's all white board of directors

In 2016, Sikivu Hutchinson criticized the merger of the secular organizations Center for Inquiry and the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science which gave Richard Dawkins a seat on the board of directors of the Center for Inquiry. Her criticism was that both organizations had an all-white board of directors.

Double standard for male/female skeptics in black community

As a black female atheist, she states that "While black male non-believers are given more leeway to be heretics or just MIA from church, black women who openly profess non-theist views are deemed especially traitorous, having 'abandoned' their primary role as purveyors of cultural and religious tradition." Much of Hutchinson's work focuses on the cultural and social history of African-American secular humanist thought and its role in black liberation struggle. Hutchinson's work also challenges the social conservatism of the Black Church with respect to abortion, gay rights and women's rights.

Criticism of the New Atheism movement and their views related to social justice

Hutchinson has challenged the lack of racial diversity and attention to institutional racism in the secular and New Atheist movements.She has championed the inclusion of anti-racism, anti-sexism, and anti-heterosexism in mainstream secular humanist and New Atheist discourse.She has also written extensively on the role of freethought and secular humanism in black women's liberation and gender justice.

Advocate of humanist vision without discriminatory social hierarchies

Hutchinson subscribes to a radical Humanist vision that eschews religious and social hierarchies of race, gender, sexuality, class, and ability status because they undermine the universal human rights and self-determination of oppressed peoples.For communities of color, radical Humanism reinforces the cultural legitimacy, visibility, and validity of non-believers of color within the context of a white supremacist, heterosexist, patriarchal, economically disenfranchising ideological regime that equates morality with Abrahamic religious paradigms and beliefs.Radical Humanism rejects the notion that there is only one way to be black or Latino, and that women and the LGBT community are marginal and morally aberrant.

Advocate of secular humanism and its ideals

Hutchinson has argued for the articulation of a Culturally Relevant Humanism based on secular social, racial, and gender justice that eschews notions of colorblindness and post-racialism, focusing instead on the lived experiences, cultural knowledge, social histories and social capital of diverse communities She has argued that the racist and white supremacist objectification of women of color as hyper-sexual "Jezebels" has made African American and Latina women especially vulnerable to paradigms of femininity that emphasize self-sacrifice and obeisance to conservative Christian mores.Hutchinson has written that the heterosexist ideal of the "sacrificial good woman" of faith straitjackets women of color and effectively contributes to high rates of intimate partner violence, sexual assault and HIV/STI contraction in communities of color because masculinity and femininity are viewed as oppositional to each other. Hutchinson considers her activism in the humanist sphere to be inextricably bound to the other identities.

In 2012 Hutchinson was featured in a national billboard campaign of prominent black non-believers launched by African Americans for Humanism.She was paired with author Zora Neale Hurston, a folklorist of African-American culture who wrote of being a skeptic in her essay "Religion."

• White Nights, Black Paradise. Infidel Books. 2015. ISBN 0692267131.
• Godless Americana. Infidel Books. 2013. ISBN 978-0615586106.
• Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics and the Value Wars. Infidel Press. 2011. ISBN 978-0578071862.
• Imagining Transit: Race, Gender, and Transportation Politics in Los Angeles (Travel Writing Across the Disciplines). Peter Lang Publishing. 2003. ISBN 978-0820455860.