Are Greens too White?
'The Unbearable Whiteness
of Green'. By Paula Bock, Seattle Times,
March 10, 2008. "'What's a nice black guy like me doing in a movement like
this?' Van Jones strides the stage at the Langston Hughes Performing Arts
Center, a charismatic lawyer who grew up in rural Tennessee, graduated from Yale
Law, and founded the Ella Baker Center for Human
Rights in Oakland. Tall, 39, his pate shaved,
he cuts a striking silhouette in a black turtleneck and blazer, but it's his
daring message that electrifies the crowd. He's in Seattle to talk about 'The
Unbearable Whiteness of Green' and how the environmental movement needs to
include people of color and the poor if there's any hope of slowing global
warming... 'The Prius people, the polar-bear crowd are great,' Jones says.
'We're not mad at them. We like them! At the same time, if the only people who
can participate are the kind who can afford to put solar panels on their second
home, the green movement is going to be too small to fix the problem.'"
Yay! Stereotypes! I really
Yay! Stereotypes!
I really hate they way that people constantly repeat the lunatic myth that "the environment movement is all white middle class". It's crap. It might be true for that section of the movement that seems to constantly get in the government's and businesses' ears - The Sierra Club, and the Nature Conservancy (I'm not from america, I don't know, and saying that is probably just repeating the same shit I want to refute) - but it's not true for the movement as a whole.. a lot of the "activist" greenies I know, here and in other countries aren't rich, most hardly make the grade for "middle class" in these countries - often living below the poverty line. And pretty much ALL of those activists are at pains to try to include indigenous people, other minorities, other socio-economic classes.
Yeah, we've got a LONG way to go, but we're trying. We know the problems, and spouting the same sterrotyped shit, implying that greens don't care, or aren't aware of the divisions in society doesn't help.
ned
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"This is the first age that's ever paid much attention to the future, which is a little ironic since we may not have one." - Arthur C. Clarke
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