Black Faces, Green Spaces: Amplifying Black Voices in the Environmental Community

by Lauren Ritchie

Amplifying Black Voices in the Environmental Community

Two years ago, the world shuddered with mourning and grief over the tragic murder of George Floyd, a black man killed by a white police officer. His death sparked a global conversation about police brutality, racism against the black community, and the grave need for social justice. 

For most black people who watched the devastating video, we mourned not only for George, the man whose life was taken away before his time but also for the gut-wrenching reality that this isn’t an isolated incident. It’s not just about George – it’s about all of us. It’s about Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Eric Garner, Oscar Grant, and the many other black people who died at the hands of the police. We watched that graphic video and braved the slap in the face that that could’ve just as easily been us or someone we love.

To put it plainly, you can’t talk about climate justice without racial justice.

As a Sustainable Development major at a predominantly white university, it’s not uncommon for me to be the only black face in most of my sustainability classes. During the past two years at Columbia, I have had to quickly come to terms with the fact that I am a black woman in a majority white field. It wasn’t until recently, however, that I began to think about how the lack of black, or even non-black POC, representation within sustainability is actually rather counterintuitive. 

What many fail to realize is that the prevalence of racism within the global community isn’t just about police brutality or discrimination within the criminal justice system. It’s everywhere. It’s in the quality of our air and water. It’s in the segregated and poorly funded communities we live in. It’s in our limited access to resources. 

Environmental racism is very real.

A 2018 report by the Environmental Protection Agency found that race is one of the biggest indicators of whether or not one lives near toxic waste with black Americans being among the most likely to live near landfills and industrial plants that pollute water with toxic waste and the air with harmful gases such as nitrogen dioxide. Accordingly, more than half of the 9 million people living near hazardous waste sites are people of color and black Americans are three times more likely to die from exposure to air pollutants than their white counterparts.

Thus, if it’s evident that black communities bear the brunt of adverse environmental impacts, why are these not the voices placed at the forefront of the movement to help the planet? Why aren’t the communities that suffer the most from climate change and environmental degradation the faces of climate activism or even sitting at the table in the first place?

The short answer: we aren’t invited.

Contrary to popular belief, the reason why communities of color aren’t as heavily involved in climate action isn’t that they care less. In fact, Vien Truong, director of Green for All suggests the opposite and claims that “communities of color overwhelmingly care about the environment more than their white counterparts” Truong continues that communities of color are “more willing to pay more for the cost of the energy because they know that they will save costs later on in health care and in improved quality of life.”

Instead, the reason for lack of black involvement in climate action is due to the refusal of the leaders of the climate movement to make real strides towards inclusivity. Green 2.0 Executive Director Whitney Tome wrote that “[black people] aren’t keeping up with climate change because the environmental movement is allowing a legacy of implicit bias to constrict its leadership and strategy. It silences the very people who often feel the greatest impact of a warming planet, even though activists of color could make or break success for this work.”

In the Green 2.0 Report entitled Beyond Diversity, interviews and surveys were conducted for close to 100 high-ranking officials at NGOs and foundations. In this study, more than 70 percent of respondents indicated that increasing diversity would “increase focus on environmental justice, increase support for the movement by widening its constituent, and attack environmental problems from multiple perspectives.”

Nonetheless, Grist’s article The unsustainable whiteness of green by Nikhil Swaminathan found that the staff of these organizations are still nearly three-quarters white. “Only 15 percent of the leaders are people of color,” Swaminathan writes. They continue by explaining that this number is “a slight uptick since the 2014 Green 2.0 report, but given that the U.S. population is more than 36 percent people of color, the sector continues to lag.”

The reality of the matter is that environmental organizations, and the green movement as a whole, recognizes the value of inclusivity and amplifying black and POC voices, but not enough to work towards enacting a more intersectional approach to climate action. Adding black activists within the ranks of environmental organizations has become a box ticked on a diversity checklist or a “one and done” action to tokenize the few black faces of the movement. 

Moving Forward

Climate action cannot move forward until there is an active desire to transform the green movement to be more inclusive and to give black environmentalists the platform to share their innovation and unique perspectives. It’s about time that our voices and stories were no longer silenced and cast aside within the environmental community. It’s time for black people to claim their rightful seat at the green table. 

Lauren Ritchie is a Bahamian student, and avid animal lover, at Columbia University studying Sustainable Development and Political Science. She wants to increase representation of people of color in the climate conversation, particularly the Caribbean community.