Rights, Education, Organizations, and Hood Humanism: An Interview with Dr. Sikivu Hutchinson
Sikivu Hutchinson Dr. Sikivu Hutchinson is a writer, educator, and director. Her books include Humanists in the Hood: Unapologetically Black, Feminist, and Heretical, White Nights, Black Paradise and the new novel Rock ‘n’ Roll Heretic: The Life and Times of Rory Tharpe (March 2021). She is the founder of the Women’s Leadership Project, Black Skeptics L.A. and a co-facilitator of the Black LGBTQI+ Parent and Caregiver group.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: It’s been a bit since we last did an interview (2016) and since I was doing a review of Humanists in the Hood: Unapologetically Black, Feminist, and Heretical (2020). First things first, what’s new? How are you doing?
Dr. Sikivu Hutchinson: It has been a busy year marked by writing, teaching, organizing, and composing/writing guitar music.
Jacobsen: There have been some ugly developments for reproductive rights for women in the States, particularly around Roe v Wade’s repeal. These aren’t new efforts. They are the culmination of decades of efforts. As we both know, and as Human Rights Watch stipulates, “…equitable access to safe abortion services is first and foremost a human right. Where abortion is safe and legal, no one is forced to have one. Where abortion is illegal and unsafe, women are forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term or suffer serious health consequences and even death. Approximately 13 percent of maternal deaths worldwide are attributable to unsafe abortion—between 68,000 and 78,000 deaths annually.” So, what is the intersection here with poor people, African Americans, and women in this plight?
Hutchinson: Black women are more likely to seek out abortion care than other groups and are disproportionately more likely to die of pregnancy-related complications. They also earn significantly less than white folks, are more likely to be in the workforce and to be the primary breadwinners for their families. Thus, economic justice and reproductive health care are inextricably linked for Black women and Black communities. If Black women and Black gender-expansive folks don’t have safe and equitable access to abortion care, birth control, and STD/STI screenings, then they will not be able to have bodily autonomy, self-determination or exercise control over their families and communities. Abortion is safer than childbirth and should be viewed as health care, period. ProPublica recently disclosed the preventable deaths of two Black women, Amber Thurman and – who were living in Southern states with abortion bans.
Jacobsen: You’ve always had a radical bent–since knowing about you. It’s an admirable trait in the United States, particularly when confronting religion when constitutive of a fundamentalist ideology and social ultra-conservatism tied to a blatant racist social history. Fundamentally, in my opinion, you are an educator, first and foremost, and interested particularly in honest education on history and literature, whether miseducation K-12 (2, 3), young black queer adult lit., honest depictions of under-reportage and unknowns in crime statistics, religions politicized ideologically as fascist (2), important black women historical figures, or mentoring and teaching the young while giving them a space (2), some crooked religious hucksters, vaccine hesitancy in black religious communities, and more. You have been involved in supporting the next generation of humanists too. What is the ethical imperative here? What have been some of the fruits of these acts of goodwill to the local Commons of young people over the years?
Hutchinson: It’s important to provide concrete resources and support to advance academic, career, and professional development for Black and PoC secular youth. Over the past decade, Black Skeptics has provided multi-year scholarships and other forms of financial support such as need-based grants and paid internships to K-12 and college students. We’ve provided leadership training in everything from gender-based/domestic and sexual violence prevention education to public speaking, civic engagement and community organizing. I regularly write letters of recommendation for my high school and college mentees and advise them on career paths. We also provide multigenerational mentoring and arts education to youth. These resources are especially important given the lack of safe secular humanist and queer-affirming spaces in communities of color.
Jacobsen: How is far-right Evangelical Christianity pushing Black religious Americans away from the Church and more towards secular alternatives?
Hutchinson: Younger Americans are the least religious in U.S. history and the most LGBT-aligned. Gen-Z African American youth are rejecting organized religion in greater numbers while embracing spiritual and secular alternatives. Gen-Z Black youth express disdain for the hierarchies, hypocrisies, abuse, and homophobia/transphobia of evangelical Christianity. Radical and progressive Black youth have called out the egregious respectability politics and double standards that are projected onto poor and working-class communities of color. They have also been critical of white evangelicals’ alignment with Trump’s white supremacist pathology and predatory capitalism. I see these views reflected in my students. A number of them have spoken and written about breaking from religious traditions because of the increasingly fascistic national climate as well as the anti-LGBT bigotry and sexism they’ve encountered in their own local faith communities.
Jacobsen: How do you use theatre, drama, and music, as a holding of space or place to educate and engage difficult subject matter for American social and political consciousness?
Hutchinson: Theater and music have been essential mediums for political expression. All of my theater pieces—from “Grinning Skull” to “White Nights, Black Paradise” “Rock ‘n’ Roll Heretic” and “Narcolepsy, Inc.”—have explored the intersection of workplace conflict, gender and racial injustice, queerness, segregation, and religious indoctrination. Theater is especially powerful because it is a space where I can create unique, idiosyncratic Black and PoC women and queer characters that are not ordinarily seen on stage/screen amplifying the lived experiences, world views, challenges, and cultural spaces that Black women across generations navigate, dealing with racism, sexism, homophobia/transphobia, white supremacy, misogynoir, and other inequities. My first stage play, “Grinning Skull”, was set in the 1940s in L.A. and dealt with Black women washroom workers employed by the Pacific Electric Railway company and their dilemma on whether they should vote to unionize. My 2018 play, “White Nights, Black Paradise” (adapted from my 2015 novel of the same name) explores the sociopolitical and cultural dilemmas/trajectories of Black women in the Peoples Temple church movement, which was at the center of the largest murder-suicide of American citizens in U.S. history when nearly one-thousand members perished in Jonestown, Guyana in 1978. My latest play, “The Kinderness” focuses on a Black woman-owned “reparative justice” and robotics company on the brink of an IPO that deploys white androids to perform corrective acts for Black descendants. It examines race and gender hierarchies in the workplace, Afrofuturist visions of historical redress and the perils of Black complicity with neoliberalism.
Jacobsen: What is the current status and stage of development of the Women’s Leadership Project?
Hutchinson: WLP continues to implement youth leadership and sexual, domestic and gender-based violence prevention education programming in South L.A. school communities with a dedicated focus on Black girls, girls of color, and BIPOC queer and gender-expansive youth. The organization supports in-school student groups, conducts professional development training, and spearheads community rallies that amplify the disproportionate rates of gender-based violence experienced by Black women and girls.
Jacobsen: What are the current areas of focus for Black Skeptics L.A.?
Hutchinson: We continue to focus on providing support for social and gender justice initiatives, principally through fiscal sponsorship, critical pedagogy, paid youth internships, and scholarship awards for first generation BIPOC secular, LGBTQ+, undocumented, foster care, unhoused and system-involved youth (these awards have been in existence since 2013).
Jacobsen: Black LGBTQI+ Parent and Caregiver group is newer to my knowledge. What is it? How does it work?
Hutchinson: The Black LGBTQIA+ parent and caregiver group is a safe space for parents/guardians of Black,queer and gender-expansive youth. The group has offered professional development, parent trainings, and general engagement for parents/guardians. It is on hiatus at this time but we continue to support the Black LGBTQ+ Youth institutes and student advocacy with the GSA Network.
Jacobsen: What are your next projects and areas of focus?
Hutchinson: I’m producing the “Outliers: Black Women’s Theater Showcase” at the Blue Door theater in Culver City/L.A. on January 26th. The showcase features work by me and fellow Black L.A.-based women playwright-directors Cydney Wayne Davis, Dee Freeman and Jessica Robinson. As I mentioned, I am working on “The Kinderness” play, which I hope to stage at the Hollywood Fringe Festival this summer. I also have two new folk rock songs in the works. One (“Lightning Rider”) focuses on my three times great grandmother, Harriet Stroope Knox, who was born enslaved in Clark County, Arkansas in 1825. The other (“Tinker Toy Train”) focuses on assembly line workers dealing with Amazon corporate kleptocracy. My music is available on Spotify.
Jacobsen: How can people get involved by donating time, expertise, money, manual labor, etc.?
Hutchinson: They can check us out at www.womensleadershipla.org or www.blackskepticsla.org.