David Anderson

“At an 1870 Anti-Slavery Society convention, Frederick Douglass proclaimed, 'I bow to no priests either of faith or of unfaith. I claim as against all sorts of people, simply perfect freedom of thought.' Douglass' comments were in response to black preachers' insistence he 'thank' God for Emancipation. His failure to be appropriately devout elicted a firestorm. After his speech, a group of prominent black preachers passed a Resolution censuring him....This rebuke was perhaps one of the first documented instances of the black 'authenticity police' trying to silence an eminent thinker.”
― Sikivu Hutchinson in Moral Combat Black Atheists Gender Politics and the Values Wars

“I don’t think this kind of thing [satire] has an impact on the unconverted, frankly. It’s not even preaching to the converted; it’s titillating the converted. I think the people who say we need satire often mean, ‘We need satire of them, not of us.’ I’m fond of quoting Peter Cook, who talked about the satirical Berlin cabarets of the ’30s, which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the Second World War.”
― Tom Lehrer

“The idea that the commodification and suffering and forced labor of African Americans is what made the United States powerful and rich is not an idea that people necessarily are happy to hear. Yet it is the truth.”
― Edward E. Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism

“It is because of religious dogma, (black health care professional Thelma) Delgado says, that young African Americans believe "God will make a way for their survival, so they may drop out of school, have children with no visible means of supporting them, or simply not plan for their financial future because they believe god will handle the hardships and the details that rationalists plan for.”
― Sikivu Hutchinson in Moral Combat Black Atheists Gender Politics and the Values Wars