• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
Historic Deal Reopens B.C. Indigenous Land to Fracking, Promises Surface Restoration March 14, 2023
Biden Approves $8B Oil Extraction Plan in Ecologically Sensitive Alaska March 14, 2023
U.S. Solar Developers Scramble after Silicon Valley Bank Collapse March 14, 2023
$30.9B Price Tag Makes Trans Mountain Pipeline a ‘Catastrophic Boondoggle’ March 14, 2023
UN Buys Tanker, But Funding Gap Could Scuttle Plan to Salvage Oil from ‘Floating Time Bomb’ March 9, 2023
Next
Prev

No More ‘Existential Exceptionalism’: Climate Isn’t the First Survival Crisis Communities of Colour Have Faced

April 4, 2019
Reading time: 2 minutes

niekverlaan / Pixabay

niekverlaan / Pixabay

28
SHARES
 

The “existential exceptionalism” of assuming that climate change makes the environmental movement the first in history to stare down a threat of such great magnitude is “downright insulting” to communities of colour that can trace back hundreds of years confronting equally pervasive perils, Bronx-based writer Mary Annaïse Heglar argues on Resilience.org.

“I’m with you when you say that climate change is the most important issue facing humankind,” she writes. “I’ll even go so far as to say it’s the most important one ever. But, when I hear folks say—and I have heard it—that the environmental movement is the first in history to stare down an existential threat, I have to get off the train.”

  • The climate news you need. Subscribe now to our engaging new weekly digest.
  • You’ll receive exclusive, never-before-seen-content, distilled and delivered to your inbox every weekend.
  • The Weekender: Succinct, solutions-focused, and designed with the discerning reader in mind.
Subscribe

That line of thought is “inaccurate, shortsighted, and arrogant”, she adds, and ultimately divorces environmental issues from a wider “arc of history”, including the 400 years in which African-Americans have faced a continuing existential threat in that country.

“I want you to know that Jim Crow—far too tame a name for its reality—was never about water fountains or bus seats or lunch counters. It wasn’t about ‘integration’,” writes Heglar, who was raised in Birmingham, AL and Port Gibson, MS. “Instead, I want you to imagine living in constant, crippling fear of humiliation, rape, torture, and murder—in a word: terrorism. Lynching was not some abstract threat or a one-time event. It was omnipresent. It hung in the air like humidity. Or the stench of burning flesh.”

Her post goes into detail on that history, with examples as graphic as the most horrifying predictions of future climate impacts.

“I want you to understand how overwhelming, how insurmountable it must have felt. I want you to understand that there was no end in sight. It felt futile for them, too. Then, as now, there were calls to slow down. To settle for incremental remedies for an untenable situation.

“They, too, trembled for every baby born into that world.

“Sound familiar?”

Heglar’s advice for climate hawks planning to “educate” communities of colour about climate change is to “remember that they have even more to teach you about building movements, about courage, about survival.” While “nothing scares me more than climate change,” she concludes, “I made up my mind to face it head-on because of my debt to future generations and to previous generations.” The history “belongs to all of us. And I want you to know it too. You can’t afford not to.”

Continue Reading



in Climate Action / "Blockadia", Culture, Ending Emissions, Environmental Justice

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

U.S. Bureau of Land Management/flickr
Oil & Gas

Biden Approves $8B Oil Extraction Plan in Ecologically Sensitive Alaska

March 14, 2023
20
EcoAnalytics
Media, Messaging, & Public Opinion

Canadians Want Strong Emissions Cap Regulations, Not More Missed Targets

March 14, 2023
24
Behrat/Wikimedia Commons
Clean Electricity Grid

Hawaii Firm Turns Home Water Heaters into Grid Batteries

March 14, 2023
137

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

Behrat/Wikimedia Commons

Hawaii Firm Turns Home Water Heaters into Grid Batteries

March 14, 2023
137
EcoFlight

Historic Deal Reopens B.C. Indigenous Land to Fracking, Promises Surface Restoration

March 14, 2023
57
moerschy / Pixabay

Fringe Conspiracy Theories Target 15-Minute City Push in Edmonton, Toronto

February 22, 2023
1.6k
Rebecca Bollwitt/flickr

Fossils Stay ‘Oily’, Gibsons Sues Big Oil, U.S. Clean Energy Booms, EU Pushes Fossil Phaseout, and Fukushima Disaster was ‘No Accident’

March 14, 2023
33
David Dodge, Green Energy Futures/flickr

U.S. Solar Developers Scramble after Silicon Valley Bank Collapse

March 14, 2023
29
U.S. National Transportation Safety Board/flickr

$30.9B Price Tag Makes Trans Mountain Pipeline a ‘Catastrophic Boondoggle’

March 14, 2023
26

Recent Posts

U.S. Bureau of Land Management/flickr

Biden Approves $8B Oil Extraction Plan in Ecologically Sensitive Alaska

March 14, 2023
20
EcoAnalytics

Canadians Want Strong Emissions Cap Regulations, Not More Missed Targets

March 14, 2023
24
Raysonho/wikimedia commons

Purolator Pledges $1B to Electrify Last-Mile Delivery

March 14, 2023
11
United Nations

UN Buys Tanker, But Funding Gap Could Scuttle Plan to Salvage Oil from ‘Floating Time Bomb’

March 10, 2023
84
Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons

Biden Cuts Fossil Subsidies, But Oil and Gas Still Lines Up for Billions

March 10, 2023
150
jasonwoodhead23/flickr

First Nation Scorches Imperial Oil, Alberta Regulator Over Toxic Leak

March 8, 2023
357
Next Post
d.light Solar

Silicon Valley Start-Up Brings Off-Grid Solar Lighting to 100 Million People

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}