Source: Beliefnet/Religion News Service
http://blog.beliefnet.com/news/2010/05/blacks-mirroring-larger-us-tre-1.php
Standing before a room full of fellow African-Americans, Jamila Bey took a deep breath and announced she's come out of the closet.
Her soul-bearing declaration is nearly taboo, she says.
"It's the A-word," said Bey, 33, feigning a whisper. "You commit social suicide as a black person when you say you're an atheist."
Bey and other black atheists, agnostics and secularists are struggling to openly affirm their secular viewpoints in a community that's historically heralded as one of America's most religious.
At the first African Americans for Humanism conference recently hosted by the non-profit Center for Inquiry, about 50 people gathered to discuss the ins and outs of navigating their dual identities as blacks and followers of the non-religious philosophy known as humanism.