ERACISM Minute 9/13/2020 Lauralee Carbone

 

ERACISM MINUTE

September 13, 2020

Lauralee Carbone

As I sit here, the Air Quality Index hovers around 200 here in Bellingham. Last week it was over 400 in California’s Central Valley where I grew up, and last night it was over 600 in Portland. We are all connected by our air and water.

I want to talk this morning about Environmental Racism, the intersection of racial discrimination in environmental policy making, the enforcement (or lack) of regulations and laws, the deliberate targeting of communities of color for toxic waste facilities, the official sanctioning of the life-threatening presence of poisons and pollutants, and the history of excluding people of color from leadership of the ecology movements. It stems from the legacy and the history of residential segregation which includes practices of redlining, zoning, and colorblind adaptation planning, hence causing disproportionate effects on BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color).

African-Americans are 75 percent more likely than other Americans to live in so-called fence-line communities, defined as areas situated near facilities that produce hazardous waste, like oil and gas refineries, incinerators, smelters, sewage-treatment plants, landfills and petrochemical plants.

A study found that Black Americans are subjected to higher levels of air pollution than white Americans. While socioeconomic status was an important correlation, race was the most significant factor. Black Americans are exposed to 1.5 times as much of the sooty pollution that comes from burning fossil fuels as the population at large. This dirty air is associated with lung disease, asthma, heart disease, cancer, and now Covid-19. The urgency of this environmental crisis has been hastened by climate change and has now gathered speed and attention as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and the current racial-justice movement.

From the American colonists’ earliest encounters with the indigenous people of this land—what they call Turtle Island—Native wisdom has warned against the unsustainable practices of exploitation and extraction. We need to think of climate change as a series of ecological catastrophes caused by colonialism and an accumulation society. Our First Nation sisters and brothers help us see that we cannot save the planet without first reconstructing the systems that have overlooked and marginalized non-white people from their inception. There is no Green New Deal without a Third Reconstruction, as Rev. William Barber calls the organized change that needs to happen.

To further quote his article, “We cannot separate the question of whether we can survive together on a warming planet from the question of whether we can redeem the promise of liberty and justice for all in this nation. We are, in the powerful image from the biblical story of Noah’s ark, all in the same boat. A future free from the polluting economy of extraction is inextricably tied to a future free from the systemic exploitation of white supremacy, and this future requires reconstruction and transformation. When we are willing to look honestly at our history to understand the foundations of interlocking injustices, we can see in that same history examples of multiracial movements that have worked to reconstruct America from its very beginnings.

We are all connected in this interdependent web of existence, as our 7^th principle reminds us. We need the 8^th principle to remind us of our interconnectedness to each other in Beloved Community.

https://lithub.com/rev-william-j-barber-ii-on-the-scourge-of-environmental-racism/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/magazine/pollution-philadelphia-black-americans.html

https://www.naacp.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Fumes-Across-the-Fence-Line_NAACP-and-CATF-Study.pdf

https://www.diversegreen.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Green_2.0_Retention_Report.pdf

Eracism Minute 9/7/20 Barbara Gilday

Eracism Moment Sept. 7, 2020

This morning, I’d like to share the evolution of my experience regarding racism.

I grew up in a conservative town in a conservative family in Ontario, Canada.

There were no people of color – diversity was Catholics, Protestants and Jews.  

Before I graduated from University, I realized that my upbringing had been narrow and I came home and told my parents I was going to Africa to teach.  My mother’s response was: “You are not!”  But I did.  I knew I needed to expand my horizons, and this seemed like a good way to do it.

My takeaway from Ghana was Ghanaians are welcoming, generous and good humored.

 

Some years later, after living in the sometimes subtle, sometimes not subtle American behaviortoward blacks, I was sitting in the parking lot of Macy’s at South Center Mall, when I saw a white man running, followed by a black man and woman.  I assumed he was being attacked.  Turns out, he had stolen something and was being chased by security guards.  I was ashamed and shocked by my assumption.

 

At a church dinner around the same time, someone told a racist joke.  I think we were all stunned, but no one said anything.  I did gather up my courage and talk to him at church the next morning. It was progress.

 

Fast forward a few years and was co-teaching diversity classes in Seattle and running a peer tutoring program with inner city, mostly children of color, tutored by suburban kids, all white.  For many, it was their first experience of a relationship with a person of another color and developed some very sweet bonds, and academic improvements of both the younger and the older children.

 

In the same time period, my daughter, Andrea was talking about a friend of hers at school.  Later she showed me a picture of her.  My response was: “Oh, she’s Asian.” Andrea’s response: “So”? You see, I was celebrating her embracing diversity, whereas she took it for granted.

 

In Nigeria in 2005 on a Global Citizen Journey, I met Judy, who later immigrated to the US.  We had become good friends in Nigeria and continued the friendship here.  

 

Today, I’m mentoring my friend Judy, who has decided to develop support groups for black girls in schools in NY city using the Compassionate Listening model she learned on Whidbey Island, and other leadership skills she learned in Landmark Forum.

I’m also a new member of the Black Lives Matter team at BUF and I’m listening to Podcasts to educate myself and sharing what I’m learning with others.

 

Each one of us is on our own path, but to become whole, as individuals, to restore our soul as a nation, our challenge and opportunity is to start, at whatever place we are on ourjourney and grow into more accepting, fulfilled human beings and communities. I’d like Black Americans to be able to freely express their welcoming natures, their generosity and their good humor, without having to always look over their shoulders in fear. We would all be the better for it, wouldn’t we?

Thank you.