A college professor offers some wing-clipping news for those who see the open air in a way that is free of whiteness.
Erin FitzHenry, University of Melbourne Writer for The Conversation shoots your hopes and dreams like skeet.
The Deputy Coordinator for U of M’s Anthropology, Development Studies & Social Theory department doesn’t mince words.
Erin says:
White colonization is the process of changing climate.
She wants you to recognize what’s been recognized:
“Climate change is racist”. This is the title of a book written by Jeremy Williams, a British journalist. While this title might seem provocative, it’s long been recognized that people of color suffer disproportionate harms under climate change – and this is likely to worsen in the coming decades.
Rich, white countries, however, are “doing precious little to properly address this inequity.”
It is devastating.
[T]Millions of people are condemned to death, disability and hardship by the government. Australia is an example of this, as climate change has compounded historical injustices against First Nations communities in many different ways.
Erin pegs the “injustice” as “a type of ‘atmospheric colonization.’”
[It]It is the deepest form of colonial racism and arguably, the biggest global equity concern of our time.
To be sure, climate change’s effects are “not borne equally between everyone on the planet, and this problem will only worsen.”
Black people are the most vulnerable. Also: black people and other people who aren’t white. Indigenes are people who are not white.
People of color, black people and Indigenous people are often the ones most affected by a warming planet.
Erin blames “global warming” for the future tragedy of undernourishment among “half of Africa’s population, due to reduced agricultural production.” This is especially unfair, she explains, since the continent has “contributed relatively little to greenhouse gas emissions.”
And yet, “[R]ich white countries continue to distance themselves from all language of compensation or reparation for both historic and contemporary emissions.”
India and China are, of course, the most prominent purveyors climate disaster. They might also be white.
Either way, Erin charges that the white countries’ lax attitude “continues long histories of European racism, including the deeply racialized processes of large-scale extraction that fueled and sustained the Industrial Revolution from the outset.”
It can be traced all the way back to slavery
Africans were slaved to work sugarcane plantations in the Caribbean. They then reinvest these profits into energy-intensive industrial infrastructure. These infrastructures helped to fuel today’s global greenhouse gasses.
Erin has a Land Acknowledgement in spite of her climate claims.
Without the unpaid labour and stolen land acquired by colonization or slavery, British industrialization wouldn’t have been possible. This plunder did not receive compensation.
The white-wrought racism is certainly implicated in many wrongs. Atmos- is just one of the many invaded spheres. And everyone’s trying to defeat the devilry differently:
Law Professor Denounces the Constitution’s ‘White Supremacy,’ Calls for an ‘Antiracist’ Replacement
CRT Symposium Speaker Calls Diversity of Thought ‘White Supremacist’ Excrement
An Actress Resolves to Not Star in Cop Shows to Combat White Supremacy
Professor Slams the Harm of Writing Rules and Whacks White Supremacy through Gonging Grads
Ohio State Student Government Rep Says Whites Are Taught They’re Superior, but Black People Actually Are
UC Berkeley professor tells students that eliminating whiteness means wiping out white people
Erin’s not the first person to wring white supremacy for environmental ills. In 2019, Democratic presidential hopeful Julián Castro decried the racism of weather:
Julián Castro says his plan calls for new civil rights legislation to address environmental racism. “I know that too often times it’s people who are poor, communities of color, who take the brunt of storms that are getting more frequent and more powerful.” #ClimateTownHall pic.twitter.com/0kK3mrBGqg
— CNN (@CNN) September 4, 2019
Erin notes that some “European states have begun to take responsibility and provide redress for colonial theft, violence and displacement.” Those actions “are laudable.”
However, “there’s an urgent need to focus this sentiment on climate change – and in particular, to supercharge demands for climate reparations.”
Climate reparations: Will they ever happen? Will only white people be forced to pay them, though the “rich” countries have citizens of all shades? After all, governments don’t have money; only citizens do.
Such questions remain unanswered.
“Going into [the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference] in November,” Erin says, “negotiators from the US, the EU and Australia must prioritize loss-and-damage finance. Failing to do so will only further solidify climate injustice.”
In the meantime, it seems not only has the climate changed, but words and their meanings as well: Things caused by places that are predominantly white…are racist.
-ALEX
You can find more of my content here:
Oregon Equity and Inclusion Agency Postpones Meeting Because ‘Urgency’ Is White Supremacy
University offers map marking where gay students have gathered for sexual trysts
‘New Scientific Evidence’: World Health Organization Discovers There Are More Than Two Sexes
All my RedState works Here.
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