Meet Your Neighborhood Atheists

If you ran these in Oklahoma or something they would probably set fire to the buses and claim these ads were a hate crime. That being said, they are well done!

Proud to be from Wisconsin!

Katie is in there twice, so there’s 14 ads by 13 people. Maybe that explains the discrepancy?

ditto what @Sarah TX said.

Most are kind of….Meh. But I like Annie Laurie’s “Give me human rights over religious rites.”

Now that’s awesome.
You really think there corny.. Really. I think there just what’s needed, nice, simple and concise.

I do like the idea of the billboards, and I hope to see some up around my neighborhood. But I have to agree, that’s a whole lotta white folk.

If you’re saying the FFRF is racist, say so, if you’re not, you might want to make it clear what you are saying, because right now, it isn’t.

I don’t think anyone is saying FFRF is racist and I didn’t interpret those comments as innuendo. I understood the commenters as saying that these billboards don’t portray atheism as a very ethnically diverse group.

Kamaka:

Oh, I think the entire project will be misconstrued.

“No one died for my sins.” Break out the smelling salts, fainting is imminent!

Yes, but “No one died for my sins” is defensible on account of it being a straightforward conclusion of atheism. While it’s brash, it’s not reasonably construable as “Teh Thiests Iz Stoopid,” nor is it particularly arrogant on other grounds.

Personally, I find “I have faith in myself” to be a bit cringeworthy simply because, well, I don’t. I have a mild and somewhat conditional trust of myself and a healthy appreciation for human fallibility. Indeed, the latter is part of why I am an atheist: learning how well-meaning people who aren’t dumb can nonetheless pass along very false ideas.

Let’s say every single atheist was a white male. Who cares?

The racial constitution of a group implies nothing sinister about said group.

If you’ve watched the news lately then you know that a lack of diversity will be picked up on. I like the personal touch but you couldn’t find one black person in all of Wisconsin?

I do concur that there are a lot of white people there. I don’t think it has anything to do with racism (overtly anyway), but I sure hope they are able to get some minorities on those billboards.

I am glad that there are quite a number of women up there. That’s fantastic. Getting some minority women would be doubly fantastic, but a few minority guys would be fantastic as well. How about Sikivu(sic?) Hutchinson, Hemant, Masala Skeptic, or xxxThePeachxxx?

I’d recommend Ayaan Hirsi Ali, but I think these billboards should probably be limited to Americans.

@Supercheetah: The problem with those people is that ads are featuring locals on the signs.

I wouldn’t think it’d be that hard to find some token atheist diversity in Madison though…

All in all though, I like these ads a whole lot more than most of the previous FFRF ads.

If you trust Wikipedia – and why not – based on the demographic break down in Madison, WI there should be the following number of signs per race.

White 10.9148
Black 0.7592
Asian 0.754
Native American 0.0468
Pacific Islander 0.0052
Hispanic 0.5317

All and all a pretty white place at 83.96%.

Don’t know if having all whites in the ads is racist – it may just be a rounding error! 🙂

I’m just glad that the people in these ads are real actual Atheists. Some we even know and recognize easily. No clip-art here! Excellent!

But that font…it’s really hard to read. Looks like a child wrote it. No offense to children. :o)

The FFRF ROCKS! More more more!

I like the last one the best, although I think I would word it differently.

“I’ll take human rights over religious wrongs.”

Grimalkin:

Yup. The first one — bikin’ bakin’ and sleepin’ in on Sundays — is my favorite too. No heavy message other than “Atheists are regular folks who like the same things many of you do, sleeping in on Sundays included.” I.e. no horns, no eating babies, no cloven hooves. Others want to Make A Statement about human rights vs religious rites, fine. But I think the first one may be the most effective in doing what I presume this particular campaign was intended to do.

I’ve lived in downtown Madison for the last five years, and I have to say, we are not the most ethnically-diverse city. I work in a deli downtown – we have one out of a dozen workers that is non-white.

I find it very, very easy to believe that the FFRF just took people who were available and responded to whatever ad they ran for it (wish I’d seen it…).

OneSTDV:

Let’s say every single atheist was a white male. Who cares?

The racial constitution of a group implies nothing sinister about said group.

Uh… yeah. That’s really not at all what the complaint is about.

If this is meant to be a localized advertising campaign, and the local population is overwhelmingly, nearly entirely white, then I don’t really see a problem with the ads all being white people. The issue we’re experiencing is the fact that the ads, when viewed from a national level, no longer accurately represent the demographics. If it’s meant to be a national ad campaign, that’s a problem. The popular public face of atheism has thus far been mostly white, male, and upper-class. I’m sure we’re all aware that this isn’t a fair representation of all of us, and that we’d all like better representation.

Kamaka: “But I think the jesus-bullies will have a lot to say about that one.”

Then let them. Part of the usefulness of the bus ads is to get opponents riled up. The trick is to get them riled up for the wrong reasons (e.g. “Oh noes! Athiests iz making themselves visible”) rather than good ones (e.g. complaining about atheists implying “Teh Thiests Iz Stoopid”).

Saw one on my way home from work last night. Awesome!

The ads put me in mind of that old Sesame Street ditty:

An atheist’s a person in your neighbourhood,
in your neighbourhood,
in your neigh-bour-hood.

An atheist’s a person in your neighbourhood,
they’re a person that you meet, while your walking down the street.

They’re a person that you meet each day.

Campaigns like this one, stories such as the recent Pew survey and other similar activities will go a long way to “demythologizing” the image of an atheist for a lot of people.

If this is meant to be a localized advertising campaign, and the local population is overwhelmingly, nearly entirely white, then I don’t really see a problem with the ads all being white people.

It’s a Madison based campaign, running on local buses in Madison, featuring ‘Neighborhood Atheists’, all of whom are from Madison. That’s all right there in the original post. As other commenters have established, Madison actually is pretty full of white folks. So, presumably, on that basis, you’d be happy to acknowledge that there’s nothing wrong with the ethnic mix of the ads?

the ads, when viewed from a national level, no longer accurately represent the demographics. If it’s meant to be a national ad campaign, that’s a problem

Again, right there in the original post it says:

The campaign is supposedly going to extend across the nation, with local atheists being featured in their cities’ ads.

So, unless you’re suggesting that the FFRF is deliberately selecting in favour of white people, the use of locals in each case should naturally give a reasonable balance. There certainly seems no basis to suggest otherwise given the evidence available from this local, Madison campaign.

The popular public face of atheism has thus far been mostly white, male, and upper-class. I’m sure we’re all aware that this isn’t a fair representation of all of us

That’s not so clear cut. Clearly there are atheists that don’t fit that description, but it’s quite possible, even likely, that a greater proportion of atheists do than would be the case for the general population.

Unless the FFRF start making ads that are less diverse than the atheist populations they’re supposed to represent, and do so because they’re deliberately excluding minorities, there’s no fair reason for complaint.

I’m not drawing any conclusions, but that is in fact a whole lotta white people. Some of us come from places that are racially diverse and to some of us the exclusive use of white people in advertising is striking. even more so when all the ads are lined up in a row. It would not be as striking if the were on different buses rolling around town. sometimes people just notice stuff and comment on it, it’s just an observation. I race yachts and often notice that at the post race party back at the yacht club, that there are a whole lotta white folks, (for the most part the same white folks who were on the race course but they are now all in one place). To be honest it feels awkward at times. I’m not drawing the conclusion that yachting is inherently a racist sport or that sailors are racists, but I do notice it and sometimes comment on it. The same applies to FFRF, I don’t conclude from the ads that FFRF is a racist organization but their ads sure do have a lotta white folks in ’em.
There is no need to fly off the handle just because someone notices a fact and comments on it, it’s not a judgment but it is a valid observation. There is nothing sinister, snarky or vague going on, just an observation and comment about a factual matter. If Madison is truly lacking in diversity, and it appears this is the case, it may have never occurred to the folks who put this campaign together that it lacks diversity as the campaign looks just like the world they live in. A little outside perspective my be a thing they could make use of. I don’t condemn FFRF for this campaign and I’m not inferring they are a racist group. I’m also not complaining, but it was the first thing I noticed in the post, and I’m not the only one.

Revyloution, have I told you lately that I love you? That comment was just great!

Plus it made me think of Tyson and drool. Er, guess I’d have to add manwatching to my loves above. (But I admit I’d discreetly leave it off the billboard.)

I do like these, but I think billboards and bus campaigns probably work best in places that are used to seeing religious groups advertise that way. Where I live, it would just seem strange. We had a Catholic radio station buy billboard space not too long ago, and it generated a whole thread on Yelp because it’s not typical for religious groups to put up billboards, and they were actually advertising something concrete, not just preaching at people to convert. I think rural, conservative, heavily religious communities would be the target audience for this sort of thing.

Hemant, you could volunteer to have your face up there for the next round.

I love the billboards. Maybe even better would have been mentioning even more descriptors that almost everyone can even more readily identify with. For example: Son, brother, father, coworker, neighbor, gardener, bowler, and… atheist. Essentially, it puts the “atheist” descriptor right in there with the mundane/bland/common things like coworker, sister, etc., to even more dramatically show that we are not pigeon-holed into one thing called “atheist”.

I’m not drawing any conclusions, but that is in fact a whole lotta white people. […] it’s just an observation.

Well it sounds like an insinuation, and I think everyone that brought it up would have known that. Otherwise why mention it at all? Unless you think there’s something behind it other than simple demographics it’s got all the relevance of saying “Hemant Mehta – he’s a bit brown”. It’s ‘just an observation’, and it’s got nothing to do with anything that matters.

Terrible choice of typeface–hard to read, especially on a moving bus.

Oh for fucks sake, I stated flat out that I was not I’m not inferring they, (FFRF) are a racist group. Trying to claim I was insinuating anything by my post is as ridiculous as claiming the Annie was insinuating that only white folks were brave enough to participate, it’s just plain bogus.

This is a media campaign and if you think that the readers here will be the only ones to notice the lack of diversity in these ads you might well be underestimating the public’s perception, or maybe you are right and it was just a fluke that it was noticed here.

Do you like turtles?

Thanks, Annie Laurie, for the background information.

I like these ads a lot, and (like Casey Crisp) I prefer them to most of the previous FFRF ads. I think the approach of featuring real, local people, speaking in their own words, is great!

I especially like the billboard because it conveys just the right message–we are normal people.

*Black bisexual woman here.*

More important to me than racial representation is that the ads depict a balanced representation of all ages and both genders. I live in the DC area and can hardly locate other black/brown atheists. I wouldn’t take any organization (or anyone else) to task for its inability to do so.

I’ve raised this question elsewhere, but regardless of the explanation received, I always find it amusing to see atheists spend money to place ads about something in which they do not believe. I’ve yet to see an ad stating, “I don’t believe in the Easter Bunny!” or “My Christmases are so much better without a belief in Santa Claus!”

I suppose since “God” has been around for thousands of years and “race” for only hundreds, I shouldn’t find it so frustrating that people are able to understand the non-existence of one and not the other. Race, much like religion, is a construct that people believe in and clearly is part of their identity formation, but when will we start to look at it like “God”? It’s just one more myth in the dominant ideology that disrupts understanding the larger community.

Izzy

I find it funny that they are so anti-religion

Did you even look at them?

in reality they are no different than any other religion.

Apart from not being a religion you mean.

You may not believe in a God, but you are a group of people who share common beliefs

Actually we share lack of beliefs. None of us believe in leprechauns either.

now you’re even doing missionary work in the same way many Churches do.

Except it isn’t missionary work because we aren’t doing the old bait and switch common to missionary work where something is offered for “free” as long as you listen to the sermon. These ads are up front and honest. They are saying that there is an alternative to the dogma of religion and you can be free from it.