SIO161: Mandisa Thomas, President of Black Nonbelievers
Serious Inquiries Only
Thomas Smith
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 11 October 2018
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
I had the pleasure of interviewing Mandisa Thomas, the president and founder of Black Nonbelievers! Mandisa talks about her fascinating background and the work she's doing, and then we go on to talk about the black experience, some of the history involved, and how it is unique within atheism. We talk about what organizations might do to better serve a diverse community. For all the challenges we've faced as a country lately, Mandisa does have some optimism about the future and talks about why. Make sure to check out her Patreon here!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to serious inquiries only. Oh, Hello and if I sound a little different, I'm coming at |
| 0:36.2 | you from a hotel room in Bordeaux, France with Eli Bosnick and Anna Bosnick and Heath Enright. It's a fantastic trip a little fun get together and stuff before |
| 0:49.5 | QED which is coming right up if you are anywhere in the area, Manchester area or |
| 0:54.8 | somewhere that you can get there easily, there is still time to come hang out. |
| 0:59.2 | There may not be tickets because they were they were sold out very early, but Friday has all kinds of fun events that are open to everybody, and I will be there. |
| 1:08.8 | I will be hanging out with people, so come visit if you can. |
| 1:12.0 | I'm really looking forward to it. |
| 1:13.0 | All right for today's episode I've got Mandisa Thomas. |
| 1:17.0 | This is a episode that was recorded a little ways back |
| 1:21.0 | but got somewhat preempted by the Kavanaugh stuff because I |
| 1:25.3 | couldn't help but yell about that for a few weeks. But this was a fantastic |
| 1:29.7 | interview, really interesting stuff. Mandisa is of course the president and the |
| 1:34.4 | founder of Black Nonbelievers. She's done all kinds of interesting work, very |
| 1:39.4 | interesting background and honestly I'm going to give an opinion here and this is just me speaking for myself |
| 1:46.0 | She was someone that a lot of people thought maybe the new leader of American atheists after |
| 1:52.3 | the previous leader had to step down for me too related reasons. |
| 1:58.1 | And I for one am really sad that they ultimately didn't go with her. |
| 2:01.3 | I think she would have been great and I think it would have been a chance to finally, you know, allow someone of a different background to head up a major organization. I think it would have been a big step forward for atheism. I think it would have been a really positive |
| 2:14.4 | step for inclusivity. I think it would have helped reach out to groups of people who maybe |
| 2:19.5 | haven't been reached out to before by major atheist groups so it's really too bad. I'm |
| 2:26.1 | sad that didn't happen. We didn't talk about this in the interview or anything |
| 2:30.3 | which is why I just wanted to bring it up here because that's my |
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