Great, now I’ve got Bachman Turner Overdrive stuck in my head.
And a feeling of doom stuck in my heart.
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Yes, climate change denial is about more than just profits and economics. And not just because most deniers are older white men.
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Me thinks you need to go back to their texts, ESPECIALLY DuBois. That’s a serious misreading of his body of work and his arguments about race in America.
[ETA to add link] From an actual DuBois scholar…
He NEVER said race was a distraction and neither did King. It’s a social construct, with real power in the world, not just the US. DuBois recognized the global nature of white supremacy and regularly worked across national boundaries to dismantle global white supremacy and to free Africans around the world, not just in the US. To the day he died, he worked on this project in the hopes of ending the construct of race and the way that it was deployed to suppress people of color. Race doesn’t matter because it’s some biological fact (it is not). Race matters because is has POWER in our world and in our lives as a primary organizing ideology. The ability to ignore it and pretend that it doesn’t is yet another white privilege. When say “it doesn’t matter” and argue that we should not pay attention to race and move on from discussions of race, especially discussions of whiteness and the privilege it brings, is in and of itself a privilege that people of color around the world do not have.
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I’m not American myself, which just goes to show you that everyone has biases towards the people that they see and interact with. And that’s why saying “Hey, it’s not all X” is so irrelevant. I guarantee you that if we got all white boomers on board really wanting to fight climate change, we could change the course of history, because the odds that they are influential, are larger contributors than most others, and have influence is much much higher than any other demographic group. That is the point.
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Fundamental to Du Bois’s work was his belief that race should not be considered in voting, working, housing, education or social standing. And that race should not influence the behavior of police, politicians, landlords or others in positions of power. He thought that black people were the equals of white people in ability and morals, and that racial disparities in treatment were wrong.
Am I wrong about this? Can you show me where Du Bois thought racial beliefs should be used to either suppress Black people or exalt White people?
This is very OT, you know.
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Well gee whiz, ya don’t say!
And yet you, like a lot of white people in discussions that involve race, and like a lot of men in discussions about gender, keep insisting on the airing of your all-too-familiar point of view.
So, how bout that Greta Thunberg!
Oh how most of us here indeed do wish this derailment would stop!
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Dude, read the article, I’m not here to regurgitate a link I posted for you. He understood race as a construct, that had real world power. He did not say ignore it. he said understand it and dismantle it (and argued that WHITE PEOPLE needed to do so, as did Baldwin), so that we can understand our common humanity. Those are VERY different things. We can’t ignore power in our society and how it’s distributed. YOU as a white man, an older one, I’m guessing, have more power and privilege than others here. Our society (and global society) is STILL steeped in race as a social construct. We have not dismantled that in the least and until we do, we have to think about it and be conscious of it.
That’s what you get to saying that race doesn’t matter when it very much does.
[ETA]
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If you go back and read this thread, my point is not “Hey, it’s not all X”, my point is that race is not relevant to the topic. People in positions of power who continue to fight greenhouse gas reduction and who continue to destroy natural ecosystems are the problem, whether it’s a white CEO of an oil company, a black CEO of a brokerage house, or an Indonesian CEO of an international logging company.
Concentrating on one racial group in one country blinds you to the magnitude and diversity of the group who’s slowly killing us. It’s not just a U.S. problem, it’s world wide, and multi racial. Concentrate on their bad behavior - that’s what the problem is.
You may not be American yourself, but you’ve got American blinders on.
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If I’m recalling that photo correctly, that actually is an older white guy disguised as a baby from an episode of “The Little Rascals.” Don’t be fooled the same way Wheezer and Spanky were. Only Stymie was smart enough to realize that they were “fidgets” and not children.
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My eyesight is not so good these days. Thanks for the correction!
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You and I have had this discussion before, and when I have said we need to dismantle racism you have attacked me. You seem to want to continue using race as a first criterion for judging people, while claiming that racism is wrong. I think you are confused but well meaning.
The first step to dismantling racism is to stop looking at race first when you encounter someone. Because the whole idea of race is a social construct, and it is not who that person is. Du Bois understood that, and so do I. He also understood how racism had created cultural distinctions that would not have existed without racism, and believed, as I have written elsewhere here, that black people had equal abilities with white people and were not distinct in ways that were important in society - that they should be treated equally in legal, political and social contexts, without regard to their race. That we should not look at their race first.
So - global heating and the destruction of ecologies is not an exclusively “white” problem. The people worldwide who are pushing forward with creating greenhouse gasses and destroying ecologies are in a mix of countries, cultures and races - they all matter, and it’s their behaviors, not their races, which are important. When we try to turn it into a racial issue, we lose focus and power.
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Have a look at this topic. How much of it is about Greta’s message, and how much of it is about you wanting to “correct” the viewpoints and focus of ire of others because you believe it is being inappropriately directed?
Now, blinders off, ask yourself - are you part of the solution towards increasing the visibility of the importance of climate change, the nature of the discussion around it, and looking for solutions, or are you part of the reason that these discussions inevitably end up being about meta-issues surrounding the core issue instead of the core issue itself?
People in positions of influence and power need to do more. Much more. It’s not about billionaires. A cultural shift* is required, and a large part of that cultural shift involves wealthy countries making significant changes where their citizens stand up and say “The status quo is not ok”.
Suggesting that a radical change in US policy (a country where the vast majority of political and financial power is in the hands of a specific demographic) would NOT have wide and far reaching effects on the global stance towards climate change is laughable. It would. So much of the worlds economy is based around servicing a few small wealthy countries and their citizens. IMHO, that is Greta’s message.
So, please, lets stop pretending that POC are, in balance, as “responsible” or “capable” of dealing with the issue as wealthy white types, and therefore “race does not matter”. Let’s instead focus on what can be done here. Because I’m pretty sure no one here in this discussion cares about racial stereotyping more than you do, the very person trying to point out that it is irrelevant.
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Wow, you are doing some seriously hard dancing to claim that privileged white male-type humans are absolutely in no way responsible for climate change any more than any other group. We bear a large majority of the blame. We need to be willing to sacrifice to fix it or to at least ameliorate it. We do because we inherited the vast majority of the benefits wrought by the system that got us, as a species, where we are. I do understand not wanting that to be true. It is uncomfortable. But it is also true.
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That is not what you’ve said here. At all. You’ve denied that structural racism is a problem, that we don’t need to talk about white privilege and that we should just act as if it does not exist. We don’t fix problems by pretending they are not there.
No, it’s actually not. DuBois never argued anything of the sort. You are not accurately reflecting his world view, you’re projecting yours onto him, because that’s what you want to see. DuBois (and Baldwin) had very strong words for white people and our complicity in racism. As did King, in fact… Letters from a Birmingham Jail is a strong rebuke of white liberalism and it’s paternalistic attitude towards civil rights.
The world we live in right now was largely forged through the exploitation of the global south and the people there for the benefit and privilege of whites in North America and Europe. There is no getting around that. We ignore that at our peril.
Race is deeply implicated in our current climate and environmental crisis.
https://wecprotects.org/racial-environmental-justice/
Greta herself has noted the role of patriarchal white supremacy in the environmental crisis:
Relevant paragraph:
That action must be powerful and wide-ranging. After all, the climate crisis is not just about the environment. It is a crisis of human rights, of justice, and of political will. Colonial, racist, and patriarchal systems of oppression have created and fueled it. We need to dismantle them all. Our political leaders can no longer shirk their responsibilities.
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I am saying that it is a global issue, a set of global problems, it is multi-racial and multi-cultural. We need to stop our fossil fuel consumption, but we also need to stop massive deforestation, stop fishing the seas to extinction and stop having so many children. It is not just one set of countries or one racial group or one set of activities that is causing the destruction of our ecosystems - and that is what I have been saying.
You may be happier saying that only old white guys in developed nations are the problem - but that’s just not the case.
I don’t know anyone, personally, who talks like that. If you read my actual words, you will see that I don’t say anything close to what you are accusing me of.
My main point is that it’s not a racial issue. But so many people here keep insisting that it is a racial issue - but then have no cause-and-effect evidence to support their claim.
Refusing to deal with climate change is the result of massive amounts of ignorance, greed, and self-centeredness worldwide, which has led to some terrible behavior including massive disinformation campaigns. But refusing to deal with climate change is not caused by racial categories. If we attack people’s race - nothing will change, since race is not causal here. If we attack ignorance, greed and self-centeredness, we may have a chance at making a difference.
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Sounds like some people need to read this, again:
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Agreed. Probably lots of folks should read it… I suspect the people that need to do so likely won’t though. Which is very sad.
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I want shirts with her likeness and the caption,
“This girl ain’t go no ‘quit’ in her.”
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That’s the guy, all right! Tiny Lawrence. He and Major Mite were the “fidgets” in Free Eats, the Little Rascals short.
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