“You don’t believe in God? You ain’t Black”: Identifying as atheist elicits identity denial from Black ingroup members.

Abstract

Objective: Anecdotal narratives and recent qualitative research with Black atheists document experiences of racial identity denial from the target's perspective. However, no research to date has examined whether Black perceivers perceive Black atheists as being weakly identified with their race. Because belief in God is often inextricably linked with Black racial identity in the Black community, we hypothesized that Black atheists would be perceived as less Black than nonatheists. Method: Black/African American adults (n = 343) were randomly assigned to view one of three Black individual's social networking profiles (i.e., a Christian, an atheist, and religion not explicitly mentioned). After, they reported their perceptions of the targets' perceived racial identity and trustworthiness. Results: Black participants, regardless of how strongly they identified racially, perceived a Black Atheist as less racially identified than a Black Christian or someone whose religious affiliation was unknown. Additionally, a Black atheist was perceived as less trustworthy than a Black Christian. Conclusions: Black atheists experience general anti-atheist bias (e.g., perceived as untrustworthy), as well as unique antiatheist bias in the form of racial identity denial. These findings extend previous research on identity denial and intragroup dynamics and advance our understanding of the relationship between religious identification and racial identity denial within the Black community. Public Significance StatementAnecdotal narratives suggest that atheism in the Black community is something that authentically Black people do not do. The results from this study support that notion by finding that Black people perceive Black atheists as being less racially identified compared to Black people who do not identify as atheists. Black atheists in the United States, who are a minority within a minority, face unique anti-atheist bias due to the intersections of their racial and religious identities.

Exploring White individuals' perceptions of Black atheists' trustworthiness, racial identity, and feelings of warmth

“…We also did not find any evidence that White individuals perceive Black individuals who identify as atheist as any less racially identified than Black individuals who identify as Christian or whose religious affiliation is not known. Although recent research has demonstrated that Black individuals challenge the racial identity of Black atheists in the United States, this may be an exclusively intraracial phenomenon (Abbott et al, 2020; Howard et al, 2021; Swann, 2020). It is important to note that the present study used perceived Black identity of a Black target as a dependent variable given this was the most appropriate for a U.S. context.…”

“…It is likely that these individuals experience different types of biases than their single stigmatised counterparts and these biases may be currently overlooked in the literature. For example, recent research suggests that the intersection of an atheist identity with race leads to unique experiences of bias among communities of colour in the United States (e.g., racial identity denial; Abbott et al, 2020; Howard et al, 2021). There needs to be more cross‐cultural research examining the intersection of race and religion.…”

“…Behavioural science research suggests that atheists are one of the most stigmatised groups in the United States (Edgell et al, 2016; Franks & Scherr, 2014). For example, atheists are perceived to be less trustworthy (Gervais et al, 2011; Howard et al, 2021), more judgmental, more cynical, hedonistic (Harper, 2007) and more immoral (Gervais et al, 2017) than believers and those who do not identify as atheists. Although most of this research has been carried out in a U.S. context, these findings have been replicated across several diverse countries as well (e.g., Australia, Czech, China, India, Singapore, the UAE, the United Kingdom; Gervais et al, 2017).…”

“…To date, in a U.S. context, Black atheists (and other atheists of colour) are largely absent from atheism scholarship in psychology (Brewster et al, 2014). Moreover, race of the target is not explicitly conveyed to participants in most of the experimental psychological investigations of anti‐atheist bias (e.g., Franks & Scherr, 2014; Gervais et al, 2011; Hall et al, 2015; cf., Howard et al, 2021). Thus, we sought to address this gap in the literature in the current investigation by examining White individuals' perceptions of Black atheists' trustworthiness relative to Black individuals who do not identify as atheists in the United States.…”

“…Thus, we sought to address this gap in the literature in the current investigation by examining White individuals' perceptions of Black atheists' trustworthiness relative to Black individuals who do not identify as atheists in the United States. We examined perceptions of trustworthiness because research demonstrates that individuals consistently rate trust as the most important trait to consider when making judgements of other people (Cottrell et al, 2007) and has been well studied in the anti‐atheist bias literature (Gervais et al, 2011; Gervais et al, 2017; Hall et al, 2015; Howard et al, 2021).…”