by Bryan K. Bullock
Climate change will multiply the scourges that afflict Black people. “Black lives have always been vulnerable, expendable and exploitable under a capitalist, white supremacist, imperialist system, and climate change will exacerbate our vulnerability, expendability and exploitation.” Yet, “the fate of the planet is not even a topic of sermons in black churches.”
And We are Not Saved: Blacks and Climate Change
by Bryan K. Bullock
“Black so-called leaders were unprepared for Katrina and they are not preparing us for climate change.”
The faux climate change summit closed out the old year – wasting yet another chance for humankind’s survival. Black and brown and poor nations are left in the lurch again. In the U.S., there is no real recognition that climate change is upon us. As the title of Naomi Klein’s book says, climate change does indeed, “change everything.” But, it doesn’t change everything for everyone in the same way. Poor, black and brown communities will experience climate change in the same manner that they experience joblessness, recessions, mass incarceration, police murders and broken levees – which is, unequally.
States like Indiana don’t even have an environmental justice statute, let alone a clear policy on how to deal with climate change. In fact, the governor and the environmental protection agency in Indiana, IDEM (the Indiana Department of Environmental Management), doesn’t believe that climate change exists. How then, will they prepare the state, let alone its most vulnerable communities, for the consequences of climate change? It’s simple. They won’t and they can’t.
Gary, Detroit, Baltimore and other front line black communities are not being prepared for climate change by their state government, city administrations and black “mis-leadership” organizations. No candidate for president is talking about the specific needs that poor, marginalized, black and brown communities will face as the world experiences climate change. The same can be said for the local chapters of the NAACP, Urban League, etc.
Communities that live in food deserts have no champions who will ensure that their neighborhoods will not be barren as food shortages occur. New Orleans laid bare the truth that poor black communities will not be prepared for catastrophic events either individually or collectively, and the governments that should be protecting them are not prepared to do so, as usual.
“No candidate for president is talking about the specific needs that poor, marginalized, black and brown communities will face as the world experiences climate change.”
When crops die and the meager foods that can get to grocery stores cannot reach the few stores in black communities and black people begin to rebel and loot those stores to feed their families, what will the white media and the black apologists for white supremacy say about those desperate people? That they are thugs? That they deserve to die at the hands of the police because they stole food? When rivers and lakes and oceans rise and flood black communities like Detroit and Gary, both on the shores of Lake Michigan, will the Army and National Guard be called in to keep those people from reaching the higher grounds of the suburbs? The answer is, probably so.
Black lives have always been vulnerable, expendable and exploitable under a capitalist, white supremacist, imperialist system, and climate change will exacerbate our vulnerability, expendability and exploitation. We will increasingly become fodder for what is wrong in America as conditions worsen. We may even be blamed for causing climate change. The argument would go something like, “Perhaps climate change would not exist if the blacks wouldn’t drive so many Cadillacs.” Or, the more sophisticated racists, called conservatives, would argue that African Americans caused climate change by working in steel mills and car manufacturers and therefore have no one to blame but themselves because they produced the vehicles that caused the problem. The NAACP may claim that if the negroes voted more, and voted for the Democrats, then they would be prepared for the effects of climate change. Whatever the worn out, racist, classist excuses of the black and white talking heads, we will be demonized, marginalized and blamed for our vulnerability.
“When rivers and lakes and oceans rise and flood black communities like Detroit and Gary, will the Army and National Guard be called in to keep those people from reaching the higher grounds.”
While whites buy guns in fear of the fictional Muslim menace, African Americans are taught to be passive, trusting in the Lord and nonviolent in the face of the violence of police brutality, extreme capitalism and climate change. This issue, the fate of the planet, is not even a topic of sermons in black churches. Black people did not pray their way out of slavery, segregation, police murders or prisons, and we will not pray our way out of rising temperatures and extreme weather. Nor will the black president or the white female candidate for president secure our safety as the earth changes. In fact, one of the ways that the federal government responded to the citizens of New Orleans is telling. It responded in a Fergusonian way by sending in Blackwater storm troopers to keep the poor blacks away from the protected spaces of affluent white communities. The military was sent in as well, just as in Ferguson and Baltimore. It doesn’t matter that it was Bush and not Obama or Clinton. President Obama has taken a “hands off” approach to police killings of black people and his Justice Department has not brought a single prosecution of a police officer, claiming that its too difficult.
As climate change becomes worse, and people in desperate, unprepared and unprotected communities become more desperate, they are likely to be met by the same forces that seek to corral them in their already quarantined zones of poverty, crime, police brutality, and poor education. As the schools are privatized in these communities, where will the safe spaces be for people to go to when the climate becomes extreme? Schools have traditionally been public spaces where the community meets, holds gatherings and even seek shelter from the violence existing outside of its doors. Now, the violence has seeped into the schools in the form of school resource officers who are allowed to abuse young black girls simply because they won’t get up from their seats. Where then will poor black students find refuge from the rising tides and extreme weather? The charter schools that have come to dominate the educational “market” in black communities owe no duty to the citizens whose tax money they’re existence depends upon. They are not public spaces that will provide safe spaces for black children in the event of a flood, heat wave and other weather-related event.
“As the schools are privatized in these communities, where will the safe spaces be for people to go to when the climate becomes extreme?”
Black communities, many of whom already look like war zones, will become increasingly warlike as the planet warms. The desperate feudalism of drug warfare will be exacerbated as will the increased presence of local, county and state police. The issues that exist in these communities will be laid even more bare in the face of natural disasters. The great migrations of African descendant people from the South who sought refuge from apartheid and terrorism, will not be possible. There will be few safe places that black people will be able to go to and those that do exist, may not be welcoming.
Black so-called leaders were unprepared for Katrina and they are not preparing us for climate change. The federal, state and local governments were likewise unprepared to respond to the needs of the black and poor in New Orleans and Mississippi and they too, are still unprepared for the next catastrophic weather event to hit our spaces in places like Indiana. As usual, we are not saved. And, as usual, we must save ourselves.
Instead of ridiculing whites who engage in survivalist actions, like stockpiling weapons and food and water, we may need to emulate them. Our distractions have taken over our lives at a dangerous time in history. The things too many of us obsess over, such as Nike shoes or Nicki and Jay Z or Scandal or Empire, will not protect our families when the lights go out. It is the same with our football and basketball heroes; they will not be there when the water rises. But our co-ops and economic and cultural syndicates and urban intellectuals and, yes, even some of our gangsters could. We must think clearly and soberly about the dangers and reality of climate change and prepare ourselves. With climate change, as with so many other aspects of our struggle, in the end, we’re all we’ve got.
Attorney Bryan K. Bullock practices law in Merrillville, Indiana.