[Serious] The black man as a slave to the white man's god

[Belacqua]

I don't get the American "exceptionalism" on this

There are A LOT of things about America I don't understand..... So I'm with you on this one.

what does the color of one's skin have to do with if a god exists or not?

If the question is whether God exists or not, then of course no one's skin color has anything to do with the issue. 

I get the historical significance of the use of religion to control the masses by inscrupulous people, such as using it within slavery as a control mechanism. But this isn't exclusive to Christianity or any particular group of people.

All this is true. 

And it's overly simple to say that any religion has ONLY been a means to control the masses. Any big religion has been used that way, but any big religion also has a wide variety of opinions and aims within it. Dissent from the mainstream of Christianity has been around as long as Christianity has been around. 

Black Christians in America don't use their church in the same way that white slaveholders used theirs. 

Conflating these is not only historically false but risks flat-out bigotry.

To me it's the proliferation and memetic virility of bad ideas in any population that is able to survive in today's otherwise skeptical & critical thinking environment that just baffles me.

Absolutely. 

And among the bad ideas that are holding on is the one that the OP demonstrates. That we can tell other people they are delusional without making any argument, without any knowledge of historical particulars, without consulting any of the people who know more about the issue than we do. 

If an atheist merely says "black Christians, like all other religious believers, are incorrect," that's a metaphysical question. Atheists of course believe that theists are mistaken. 

But Eleven goes way beyond that. He's saying that an important institution in black America exists only to oppress its members. This is not the opinion of its members, and there is historical evidence that in some fortunate cases, the church acts to liberate, not oppress. Our opposition to the oppression doesn't justify condemning the cases when it empowers and supports the oppressed. 

I guess the aftershock of slavery is still felt today, such as systemic racism.

Undoubtedly. There are still way too many racists in America. And some of them don't even see when they're being racist.