UC Irvine

Increasingly our climate conversations have shifted from urgency to crisis. As report after report emerges from the scientific community that our planet is reaching closer to the point of no return, inching closer to 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees higher atmospheric temperature, our ability to prevent the worst of the climate effects is slipping away. This study investigates how racial regimes function to shape Black environments. This research aims to illuminate the relationship between how society treats Black people and how it treats the environment. This research considers how Black people articulate their ecological relationships and the possibilities Western society has to learn from this relationship. There is no way to address the current climate crisis without understanding how Black people have constructed their relationships related to the environment, similar to movements made in Indigenous Studies and conversations about environmental stewardship. As liberal movements shift to focus on specific, impending climate disasters and building climate resilience, there is no way we can do better by the environment and not by Black people, as the assumptive logics of ecological degradation parallel racial logics of oppression and discrimination.