The Rio Stanton Report

Tag: bigotry

  • Hit Dogs Holler: Growth Requires Listening

    Hit Dogs Holler: Growth Requires Listening

    When people in the LGBTQIA community make blanket statements about transphobia, homophobia, and other forms of bigotry against their community, and those statements are not directed specifically at me, I don’t get angry. I sit back and listen. Do I always agree? No. But I listen. I know that I have my own bigotry against the LGBTQIA community to work out.

    When women talk about rape culture and misogyny, and their comments are not directed specifically at me, I don’t get angry. I sit back and listen. Do I always agree? No. I still have much to learn, and I know I need to check my own sexism and misogyny.

    When my own people (Black people) talk about how Black people are cooning, and their comments are not directed specifically at me, I don’t get angry. I sit back and listen. Again, I don’t always agree… at first… but many times, I learn to adopt those positions. I know that I am guilty of cooning sometimes and have to check my internal anti-Black bias.

    Hit dogs holler. If you are deeply offended by a post that is not about you, to the point of being belligerent and lashing out like an angry child, maybe that is because, deep down, you know you are guilty but don’t want to grow and change. Growth and change require that we first admit there is something wrong. Growth and change require that we be willing to feel the discomfort we’ve made others feel. It requires introspection. It requires asking ourselves hard questions and accepting honest answers we don’t like. It requires that we listen to the voices of marginalized people we’ve affected in ways that go beyond hurt feelings, including acts of violence.

    I know that I am guilty of many things I don’t like. I know that I wrestle with many forms of bigotry. I was raised to be homophobic and transphobic. I was influenced to accept and participate in the exploitation of women. I was conditioned by society to believe that the White man’s ice was colder and his grass was greener. This was all programmed into me from birth and through childhood, and I’ve spent nearly a lifetime trying to deprogram myself.

    So our job is not to pout, cry, bitch, moan, complain, and act out when people are informing us about not only their own experiences with bigotry but also the proven pervasiveness of that bigotry and the continued and accepted marginalization of their communities. Our job is to see, listen, learn, and, most importantly, accept our roles and change. Yes, it is a long process. Yes, we do backslide. Yes, it is uncomfortable and demands that we take responsibility for actions we initially thought were benign. But the goal is growth. The goal is being a better human being.

    Don’t get angry and defensive. Listen.

  • Same Old Politics, Different Welfare Stereotype

    Same Old Politics, Different Welfare Stereotype

    Well, well, well. Republicans around the country, especially in Arkansas, are upset that Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ new political ad shows a young White man as a “welfare queen.” They are now turning against her for portraying a White man on welfare. They argue that White people have been discriminated against for decades (who has the “victim mindset” again?) and that the commercial should have shown a woman, particularly a Black woman (or a Black person in general), as the problem welfare recipient.

    And part of me agrees that the welfare recipient in the ad was not an accurate portrayal… but not for the racist and sexist reasons they are citing.

    The trope of the lazy young gamer is problematic by itself and many of these unemployed gamers are not on welfare. If they are not actively looking for work, they are usually being financially supported by parents, spouses, domestic partners, siblings, or other family members. Plus, most people who game regularly are employed.

    As for actual welfare recipients, more White people are on welfare than Black people. This is the part where the racists start talking about per capita. But in this case, per capita doesn’t matter. Most people in Arkansas who are on welfare are White (54%). Only 31% of welfare recipients in Arkansas are Black. This means that the face of welfare in Arkansas should more than likely be White, since more White people are on welfare than Black people by sheer number.

    The trope of lazy welfare recipients was popularized in the 1960s after Black people were allowed to participate in those programs. This was also when many conservative Southern politicians from both parties started imposing eligibility rules for welfare that removed men, especially Black men, from the home. Contrary to a popular talking point, it was not President Lyndon Johnson who removed Black men from the home. It was conservative Southern and Midwestern legislatures and governors, most of them Democrats, who started these policies locally and pushed for them to be implemented nationally. These policies were designed to punish Black families for participating in programs originally intended only for White families. Since then, Black people using public housing, housing assistance, food stamps, and other programs we collectively think of as “welfare” have been classified as “lazy” and saddled with other negative stereotypes. This happened despite many of them working low-paying jobs and despite many White families receiving welfare for generations.

    White conservatives need the narrative of Black welfare abuse to advance White supremacy and mask their own dependence on government assistance. In their minds, they use assistance because they need it. Black people use it because they supposedly lack morals and diligence. That is what they think. And then they wonder why they are constantly called “racist” and “bigoted.”

    They also hate that the commercial didn’t feature a woman. Because, Lord knows, you can feature a man with a chronic disability receiving Social Security benefits while mostly appearing able-bodied, and that disability never seems to bother them except when asked to work. But let’s demonize the woman he had children with while ignoring his failure to provide for them. Behind many women who need welfare is a deadbeat father who doesn’t provide for his children.

    This is not to shit on people receiving any form of welfare, including disability benefits. However, we need to stop with the racist and sexist tropes, stereotypes, and narratives around welfare.

    Do people abuse welfare? Yes. All types of people abuse welfare, including the rich…especially the rich. Elon Musk is one of the biggest “welfare queens” out there, spending much of his time playing video games and reposting Nazi propaganda on X. But no one talks about him or gets angry at him. “But Elon Musk is a ‘job creator!’” So are the Somali daycare owners you are now demonizing based on a deceptively produced and edited video by a conservative, made to make the whole community look bad. Again, you wonder why we think of you as “racist” and “bigoted.”

    The point is that all tropes are bad, especially when they are used to demonize the economically downtrodden. Whether it is a Black family, a single White mother, or a young unemployed gamer (of any race), these tropes and stereotypes need to go. We need to stop trying to punish individuals and families for being poor. We need to stop defining and demonizing whole groups of poor people based on the actions of a relative few. We need to stop the exploitation of labor and theft of wages by large corporations that underpay their employees and make them need welfare to live.

    This is my problem with Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ campaign commercial. It’s the same old conservative pastime of punching down. With Sanders, the targets are unemployed gamers and all welfare recipients. With her conservative critics, the targets are women and Black people. It all has to stop.

  • Moral Panics, “Groomer” Accusations, and a Familiar Pattern

    Moral Panics, “Groomer” Accusations, and a Familiar Pattern

    When conservatives are asked to provide empirical evidence of a connection between the LGBTQIA community and pedophilia, the response is rarely data.

    Instead, what usually appears are viral clips taken out of context, screenshots circulated by accounts like Libs of TikTok, isolated drag performances from other countries, sermons from openly hostile churches, anecdotes repeated on podcasts, or emotionally charged testimony from activists at school board meetings.

    What rarely appears are numbers, peer-reviewed studies, or credible statistical research demonstrating a meaningful relationship between LGBTQIA identity and child predation.

    This is not accidental.

    The current panic surrounding “groomers” follows a pattern that has appeared repeatedly throughout history. Moral panics often rely on emotionally powerful accusations that frame a targeted group as a threat to children or social order. Once that framing takes hold, evidence becomes secondary to fear.

    In many cases, the people promoting these accusations present themselves as defenders of vulnerable children. Yet it is often the same political actors who oppose policies that materially support children, such as expanded healthcare, education funding, or protections against abuse.

    That contradiction should raise questions.

    For Black Americans in particular, this rhetoric has an unsettling historical echo. Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Black men were routinely portrayed as sexual predators who threatened white women. These accusations were rarely supported by evidence, but they were politically powerful. They were used to justify segregation, mass incarceration, racial terror, and the destruction of entire Black communities.

    The narrative did not have to be true. It only had to be believed.

    The same mechanism is visible today. By portraying LGBTQIA people as inherently predatory, political movements can frame discrimination as protection. Policies restricting LGBTQIA rights are then presented not as acts of exclusion, but as necessary defenses of children.

    This strategy is not new.

    In the early twentieth century, the Ku Klux Klan expanded its influence by presenting itself as a protector of “American values,” white womanhood, and Christian civilization. Films like The Birth of a Nation helped transform the Klan’s image from that of a small terrorist organization in the South into a supposed guardian of social order.

    History shows how dangerous that type of narrative can become.

    None of this means that abuse never occurs in any community. Sexual abuse exists across every demographic group and social category. But addressing it responsibly requires evidence, data, and careful investigation—not broad accusations aimed at entire populations.

    When accusations replace evidence, the goal is rarely child protection. More often, the goal is political mobilization.

    Moral panics have always worked that way.

  • What Went Wrong With the Atheist Movement

    What Went Wrong With the Atheist Movement

    One of the ongoing debates about the atheist movement of the 2000s and early 2010s is whether it “collapsed” because it became too politically progressive or “too woke.”

    I don’t think that explanation holds up.

    In my view, the real problem with the movement was something else entirely: it contained a significant number of reactionary voices, particularly white male commentators, who eventually stopped hiding their hostility toward women, marginalized communities, and racial minorities.

    For a while, those tensions remained mostly beneath the surface. But when controversies like Elevatorgate, Gamergate, and similar disputes erupted, they exposed cultural problems that had been developing inside the movement for years.

    Regardless of where one stood on the details of those specific incidents, they represented opportunities for reflection and self-examination.

    Unfortunately, many of us (including myself) responded defensively rather than thoughtfully.

    Instead of listening to people who felt alienated or marginalized within atheist spaces, the dominant reaction in many circles was to dismiss their concerns, mock them, or accuse them of trying to impose political correctness on what was supposed to be a rationalist community.

    In hindsight, that response made things worse.

    Atheism itself is simply a position on one question: whether gods exist. But movements built around atheism inevitably become social communities, and communities bring their own cultural dynamics.

    When those dynamics include arrogance, hostility, or a lack of empathy, people eventually notice.

    The uncomfortable truth is that many of us behaved like self-important gatekeepers who were quick to criticize religion but much slower to examine our own toxic attitudes and behavior.

    The movement’s credibility suffered as a result.

    Looking back, it’s clear that moments of conflict within the atheist community could have been growth opportunities. They could have encouraged more thoughtful conversations about inclusion, respect, and how a community built around skepticism should treat the people within it.

    Instead, too often, those conversations devolved into hostility and factionalism.

    If there is a lesson to take from that period, it is a simple one: skepticism should not only apply to religious beliefs.

    It should also apply to our own behavior.

  • A Personal Note on Atheism and Religious Freedom

    A Personal Note on Atheism and Religious Freedom

    My name is Mario Stanton. I am an atheist and the founder of the Black Atheists Facebook group. Over the years, the group received attention from several media outlets, including The Grio and The New York Times.

    I mention this not to boast, but to clarify something important: I am not affiliated with any religious organization.

    My atheism is the result of years of study, reflection, and personal experience. I do not believe in any gods, and I often find many religious doctrines philosophically and intellectually irrational.

    However, there is an important distinction between disagreement and hostility.

    While I do not share religious beliefs, I strongly support the right of people to believe and practice the religion of their choice. Freedom of conscience is one of the most important principles in a pluralistic society.

    Over the years, I have found myself defending religious communities, particularly Muslims, against unfair stereotypes and discrimination. That might surprise some people, considering that my atheism would make me unwelcome in certain religious contexts, particularly with many Muslims.

    But fairness requires consistency.

    Muslims, like every other group, are not a monolith. Some individuals are admirable, compassionate people. Others are not. The same is true of Christians, Jews, Hindus, pagans, atheists, and every other category of human being.

    No group has a monopoly on virtue or vice.

    Unfortunately, public discourse often treats entire religious communities as if they can be defined by the actions of their worst members. This is one of the key characteristics of bigotry.

    Muslims are sometimes generally reduced to extremists in the public imagination. However, Christians and Jews are immune from this, even though Christians are sometimes associated with white supremacy and other troubling beliefs, and Jews are associated with Kahanism and extreme Zionism.

    Religious extremism is religious extremism, no matter what religion it is tied to.

    The reality is much simpler: people are individuals. Some are kind, thoughtful, and ethical. Others are not.

    My position is straightforward. I will continue to disagree with religious beliefs that I find unconvincing, but I will also continue to defend the right of others to practice their faith freely. I will do this as long as those practices do not harm others or infringe on their rights.

    Disagreement is inevitable in a diverse society.

    But fairness should be non-negotiable.