Very well said by Sarah: "Communities that have experienced existential threats — colonialism, slavery, genocide, dispossession, medical injustice, food insecurity, pollution, exile — tend to view climate change as just another layer of threat" [& oppression].
I do my best to screech my little hamster-wheel from up here in Kanuckistan
I'm almost embarrased at the vehemence with which other wyt males regularly pronounce that racism and sexism don't exist - even in the context of asian women being specifically targeted and mass-murdered - and that raising that discussion is "divisive"
Just recently someone quoted Edward Abbey at me... I can't remember the exact context, but I was prompted to search "Edward Abbey racism" and KaBAM! he was a racist sexist asshole who basically poisoned his corner of environmentalism...
In the climate disruption discussions, whenever I hear/read an over-emphasis on "population", I attempt to call it out as an evasive tactic. I comprehend the concept that the effect of education of girls and family planning and access to birth control comprise the #1 DrawDown solution - however, unless one is directly engaged in such education and action, talking about population _instead_ of all the other relevant parameters which might be controlled, boils down to "what should we do about all those excess brown people?"
All of the CtCs (colonies turned countries) were founded on Doctrine of Discovery and genocide of indigenous people, and slavery - all of which are undoubtedly racist. Not everywhere was quite as flagrantly arrogant about their racism as America... I keep asking "exactly when, given its racist beginnings and development, did America stop being racist, apologize, make amends and reparations ?"
This psychosociopathic eco-cidal patriarchal dominator cult-ure twists all of us up...
Denialism of racism, sexism, ecological collapse, climate disruption are not routes to resolution - but to continued addiction
This really resonates with me, and has given some clarity and language for why wording such as "our largest existential threat" feels so wrong. I'm part of a racial justice working group and shared it with our group - we've talked about the intersections of climate and racism so this is very helpful.
The article locates an easy and fashionable target and lazily fires at it. The issue of whether the prospect of runaway climate change - we are about there now - is happening, by implication, gets dismissed as just being a case of more white privilege and anxiety over what ‘white’ privileges might be lost. The straw man argument - whites experience anxiety because their stack of privileges collapses - presents whites as oppressors of the climate and black and brown people as victims. Such a colonial outlook might go down well in the white bastion of academia where I’m sure there is a lot of collective guilt about its own set of privileges of the back of dirty money benefactors of military, fossil fuel and Wall Street but all this does is transfer what should be the primary focus: how can a huge unifying movement be built? Ecological collapse preceded climate anxiety. Finally, conflating colonial crime with ecological presents a very white faced anthropocentric perspective where suffering is only measured through human suffering rather than the species extinction event that this is. You will see.
Well said Andy. Not a very nuanced, original or thorough perspective laid out here by the author. I'm fully on board but I feel like I've read these oversimplified statements thousands of times before. We certainly need more reminders of this lesson, so this is good, but it's just not cutting-edge thinking that I'm usually seeing out of the Gen Dread newsletter
To address the author, racism is ONE of the roots of the climate crisis, but not the whole story; there are many, many other roots. It's very tempting to oversimplify complex, overwhelming problems into something that is simpler/clearer so it feels more workable and approachable. But by taking that narrower view, we then can lose sight of the full picture of the actual problem.
I would instead be interested in hearing thoughts on how the parts of the climate movement that are already actively anti-racist climate movement can build the influential, unifying movement with the strength and urgency to actually give us improved odds of averting catastrophe. Because that is unfortunately nowhere in sight.
This resonates so much for me. I know one thing I've struggled with personally and professional around all of this is finding the right language to describe the need for action NOW on climate change, without erasing or minimizing the existential threats that marginalized communities have always faced. I really appreciate how Ray highlights the need to channel our (white) climate anxiety towards climate justice and racial justice efforts. I've read A Field Guide, but now I'm going to put her other book on my list!
Yes this article is opening my eyes to potential "derapages" as we would say in French. Yes another book to add to the list. Interesting to note that the Field Guide was written after Ecological Other.
This is very hard for me. I'm a white woman ( I know, pariah) , and I just do not identify with this. I completely agree that climate justice is paramount; that education and reproductive rights for women across the world is necessary; and I have absolutely noticed that I seem to care more about this issue - climate change - than my black friends. To me this makes perfect sense. It's like you say above, they are resilient in a way that white people are not, and they are put under pressures and structural racism and oppression that white people are not. If you are worried that you might get killed by a police officer TOMORROW, why would you worry about ecological disaster 100 years from now. There is something bizarrely white about this issue. I think maybe it's also more "fashionable" for white people - but even more so, it's like Mazlo's Hierarchy of Needs. You cannot reach self-actualization or pursue dreams or, in this case I guess, prioritize fighting for climate change - if you do not have basics - shelter, food, safety etc. Like this just does not match their threshold / enter their zeitgeist when they are struggling to provide for themselves and their families and stay safe. I live in Queens - one of the most diverse counties in the US, I live next door to black and brown people, majority, and I can see this in the long food lines outside of my door. I think the guilt that white people feel - esp privileged white people - and the insulation they have from these other problems - marginalization / racism / oppression - is why they are more able - seemingly - to resonate with this topic or have it be front of mind. For me personally - I am sick to death of everything (seemingly) being broken down in this way. Like I said - I see what you are saying in terms of white people seeming to care more about this issue, or suffering from climate anxiety what have you - and it is definitely humbling and troubling. But I DO NOT in any way want to use this - or have anyone use it - as a means of hoarding resources or closing borders. The reason nothing is being done to combat climate change is because it largely doesn't affect white people and white people have most of the power. Like, this is utterly infuriating and excruciating on a level I cannot communicate. I knew about Christchurch guy, did not know about El Paso guy's climate anxiety. But in general, for me and the people I know that care deeply about this topic - like this could not be farther from what they want and I want. It offends me and irritates me to read this, and I'm just being honest here. There is no specific data / polling to back up this opinion piece in Sci Am - except for in her own anecdotal evidence, which is kind of lame honestly - which referenced directly Britt Wray who then in turn references her (that's kind of shitty and incestuous to me) and it's just so fucking alienating. Is there another way we can discuss this pls? Now I have to feel even more guilty and horrible and confused than I already do about climate change. I just cannot believe that the vast majority of people in the climate movement today, and those that read this blog, fall into the category of trying to "suffocate people of color" as part of climate change activism. Also, I routinely, DAILY ask myself Who Am I? How am I connected to all of this? I do agree with you tho on the "greatest existential threat we've ever faced" as really shitty and insensitive. Dems need to change that rhetoric asap.
maybe another way to say this is racism / oppression is the black and brown persons existential fight; for white people, climate change is their existential fight. You are obviously going to be more drawn to the one that resonates most with you. maybe we can bring these together, and work together. BlPOC folks have their hands full. (I'm speaking primarily about 1st world / West / American activist and other folks, obvi not people in global south / parts of the world primarily black and brown that are - undeservedly - already feeling affects of this). Like white people destroyed the world. Their culpability is maybe what drives them.
Very well said by Sarah: "Communities that have experienced existential threats — colonialism, slavery, genocide, dispossession, medical injustice, food insecurity, pollution, exile — tend to view climate change as just another layer of threat" [& oppression].
I do my best to screech my little hamster-wheel from up here in Kanuckistan
I'm almost embarrased at the vehemence with which other wyt males regularly pronounce that racism and sexism don't exist - even in the context of asian women being specifically targeted and mass-murdered - and that raising that discussion is "divisive"
Just recently someone quoted Edward Abbey at me... I can't remember the exact context, but I was prompted to search "Edward Abbey racism" and KaBAM! he was a racist sexist asshole who basically poisoned his corner of environmentalism...
In the climate disruption discussions, whenever I hear/read an over-emphasis on "population", I attempt to call it out as an evasive tactic. I comprehend the concept that the effect of education of girls and family planning and access to birth control comprise the #1 DrawDown solution - however, unless one is directly engaged in such education and action, talking about population _instead_ of all the other relevant parameters which might be controlled, boils down to "what should we do about all those excess brown people?"
All of the CtCs (colonies turned countries) were founded on Doctrine of Discovery and genocide of indigenous people, and slavery - all of which are undoubtedly racist. Not everywhere was quite as flagrantly arrogant about their racism as America... I keep asking "exactly when, given its racist beginnings and development, did America stop being racist, apologize, make amends and reparations ?"
This psychosociopathic eco-cidal patriarchal dominator cult-ure twists all of us up...
Denialism of racism, sexism, ecological collapse, climate disruption are not routes to resolution - but to continued addiction
This really resonates with me, and has given some clarity and language for why wording such as "our largest existential threat" feels so wrong. I'm part of a racial justice working group and shared it with our group - we've talked about the intersections of climate and racism so this is very helpful.
The article locates an easy and fashionable target and lazily fires at it. The issue of whether the prospect of runaway climate change - we are about there now - is happening, by implication, gets dismissed as just being a case of more white privilege and anxiety over what ‘white’ privileges might be lost. The straw man argument - whites experience anxiety because their stack of privileges collapses - presents whites as oppressors of the climate and black and brown people as victims. Such a colonial outlook might go down well in the white bastion of academia where I’m sure there is a lot of collective guilt about its own set of privileges of the back of dirty money benefactors of military, fossil fuel and Wall Street but all this does is transfer what should be the primary focus: how can a huge unifying movement be built? Ecological collapse preceded climate anxiety. Finally, conflating colonial crime with ecological presents a very white faced anthropocentric perspective where suffering is only measured through human suffering rather than the species extinction event that this is. You will see.
Well said Andy. Not a very nuanced, original or thorough perspective laid out here by the author. I'm fully on board but I feel like I've read these oversimplified statements thousands of times before. We certainly need more reminders of this lesson, so this is good, but it's just not cutting-edge thinking that I'm usually seeing out of the Gen Dread newsletter
To address the author, racism is ONE of the roots of the climate crisis, but not the whole story; there are many, many other roots. It's very tempting to oversimplify complex, overwhelming problems into something that is simpler/clearer so it feels more workable and approachable. But by taking that narrower view, we then can lose sight of the full picture of the actual problem.
I would instead be interested in hearing thoughts on how the parts of the climate movement that are already actively anti-racist climate movement can build the influential, unifying movement with the strength and urgency to actually give us improved odds of averting catastrophe. Because that is unfortunately nowhere in sight.
This resonates so much for me. I know one thing I've struggled with personally and professional around all of this is finding the right language to describe the need for action NOW on climate change, without erasing or minimizing the existential threats that marginalized communities have always faced. I really appreciate how Ray highlights the need to channel our (white) climate anxiety towards climate justice and racial justice efforts. I've read A Field Guide, but now I'm going to put her other book on my list!
Yes this article is opening my eyes to potential "derapages" as we would say in French. Yes another book to add to the list. Interesting to note that the Field Guide was written after Ecological Other.
This is very hard for me. I'm a white woman ( I know, pariah) , and I just do not identify with this. I completely agree that climate justice is paramount; that education and reproductive rights for women across the world is necessary; and I have absolutely noticed that I seem to care more about this issue - climate change - than my black friends. To me this makes perfect sense. It's like you say above, they are resilient in a way that white people are not, and they are put under pressures and structural racism and oppression that white people are not. If you are worried that you might get killed by a police officer TOMORROW, why would you worry about ecological disaster 100 years from now. There is something bizarrely white about this issue. I think maybe it's also more "fashionable" for white people - but even more so, it's like Mazlo's Hierarchy of Needs. You cannot reach self-actualization or pursue dreams or, in this case I guess, prioritize fighting for climate change - if you do not have basics - shelter, food, safety etc. Like this just does not match their threshold / enter their zeitgeist when they are struggling to provide for themselves and their families and stay safe. I live in Queens - one of the most diverse counties in the US, I live next door to black and brown people, majority, and I can see this in the long food lines outside of my door. I think the guilt that white people feel - esp privileged white people - and the insulation they have from these other problems - marginalization / racism / oppression - is why they are more able - seemingly - to resonate with this topic or have it be front of mind. For me personally - I am sick to death of everything (seemingly) being broken down in this way. Like I said - I see what you are saying in terms of white people seeming to care more about this issue, or suffering from climate anxiety what have you - and it is definitely humbling and troubling. But I DO NOT in any way want to use this - or have anyone use it - as a means of hoarding resources or closing borders. The reason nothing is being done to combat climate change is because it largely doesn't affect white people and white people have most of the power. Like, this is utterly infuriating and excruciating on a level I cannot communicate. I knew about Christchurch guy, did not know about El Paso guy's climate anxiety. But in general, for me and the people I know that care deeply about this topic - like this could not be farther from what they want and I want. It offends me and irritates me to read this, and I'm just being honest here. There is no specific data / polling to back up this opinion piece in Sci Am - except for in her own anecdotal evidence, which is kind of lame honestly - which referenced directly Britt Wray who then in turn references her (that's kind of shitty and incestuous to me) and it's just so fucking alienating. Is there another way we can discuss this pls? Now I have to feel even more guilty and horrible and confused than I already do about climate change. I just cannot believe that the vast majority of people in the climate movement today, and those that read this blog, fall into the category of trying to "suffocate people of color" as part of climate change activism. Also, I routinely, DAILY ask myself Who Am I? How am I connected to all of this? I do agree with you tho on the "greatest existential threat we've ever faced" as really shitty and insensitive. Dems need to change that rhetoric asap.
maybe another way to say this is racism / oppression is the black and brown persons existential fight; for white people, climate change is their existential fight. You are obviously going to be more drawn to the one that resonates most with you. maybe we can bring these together, and work together. BlPOC folks have their hands full. (I'm speaking primarily about 1st world / West / American activist and other folks, obvi not people in global south / parts of the world primarily black and brown that are - undeservedly - already feeling affects of this). Like white people destroyed the world. Their culpability is maybe what drives them.
Race baiting trash.