White Supremacy Underlying Eugenics and Climate Change by

Thesis

alisongodfrey2 — 2023-11-23 15:15:41 UTC

Bullard and Pulido speak on the disproportionate effects of climate change while Purdy and Anson discuss eugenics and eco-fascism, but all are mainly based on colonialism and white supremacy, where corporations and white people who hold societal power ensure their continued misuse of the environment they believe they are entitled to by diminishing the lives and platform of people of color.

Context: Disproportionate Effects of Climate Change

alisongodfrey2 — 2023-11-23 15:40:02 UTC

Restrictive covenants are legally binding documents controlled what people could do with their property in terms of construction or who they could sell too, for example, that they cannot sell their house to a person of color. Redlining assigned people to zones that were graded as "green" that were desirable, where these zones were occupied by white people, and "red" that had hazards or unwanted land uses. These "red" zones were occupied by minority and/or low income neighborhoods, and were forced into staying there since they could not afford to move (Menrisky, Alexander. ENGL 2635E lecture, 10/16/23). The disproportionate effects can be traced back to the great migration of black Americans to northern areas from the South following World War 1. This led to a change in population in certain areas, where waste and hazardous materials built up in these areas. The migrants had to endure most of this stress, where suburbanization followed that was largely white people who wanted to "escape." The encouragement of restrictive covenants and redlining also reinforced divide between black and white Americans. This division ensured that white people would be subjected to better environmental conditions based on the existing notion of superiority and power they held.

Context: Eugenics Historical Background

alisongodfrey2 — 2023-11-23 16:02:12 UTC

In the 1850s-1900s, there was a mass movement to standardize. Specifically, there was a growing tendency to categorize people into "natural" types. The sexologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing viewed people as the sexual acts rather than sex just being seen as the acts (Menrisky, Alexander. ENGL 2635 lecture, 10/25/23). This means that being a homosexuality and heterosexuality was viewed as a biologically ingrained type of person. This idea of categorization and "naturalization" was the foundation of eugenics, and fostering the most genetically pure and prosperous. This becomes very problematic, where this justified better treatment for the white people, deemed as genetically superior. White men have set up a system of power with themselves in control since colonialism, and eugenics is just a way to attempt to justify environmental racism among all other forms of racism.

Context: Eugenics vs Natural selection

alisongodfrey2 — 2023-11-23 16:13:48 UTC

Eugenics is based on the misunderstanding that evolution has a predetermined end point. While this is what the eugenic platform is, changes will always happen and "survival of the fittest" does not mean brute masculine strength nor does it mean that the end point is at a "superior" form (Menrisky, Alexander. ENGL 2635 Lecture, 10/25/23). Eugenics also has the misunderstanding that non-heterosexuality is very unnatural. Homosexuality along with all other sexual identities are found as frequently occurring in plants, animals, and other species, making this thought invalid and unsupported. As we have seen eugenics attempt to justify racism, it is again another attempt to justify white heterosexual men. It is clear that the true scientific meaning of natural selection does not support eugenics in this superior form or in any justification of white supremacist ideals. But since white men have always held powerful positions in society, these were mechanisms to make themselves feel superior and continue to hold the dominant position in a power system.

Context: Partisanship in Climate Change

alisongodfrey2 — 2023-11-23 16:31:49 UTC

The US is the only nation where climate change is a partisan topic, and the causes of climate change denial is a result of many factors. These factors are mainly the campaigns from companies that profit from fossil fuels, how we communicate about climate change, the scientific knowledge itself, and the size of the problem itself (Menrisky, Alexander. ENGL2635E Lecture, 10/30/23) . The "attention economy" and climate anxiety specifically contribute to partisanship with climate change, where the debilitating fear and powerlessness about the future makes it very hard for individuals to feel that they would make real change. There are many mechanisms where change can be made, where this can mean individual protests or movements that lead to legislative progress. However, it can be hard to strive for this change when the people in legislative positions value greed and corporations in the United States. These corporations use campaigns to further spread climate change denial so that they can maintain their position in economic and social power. For some people who understand the danger of climate change, this can enhance climate change anxiety, where it takes a lot of movements, protests, and effort to even allow people in powerful positions to listen. The idea of partisan divide over climate change is very complex, but it is very involved with financial prosperity and corporations involved with fossil fuel use and harmful gas emissions.

Context: Slow Violence

alisongodfrey2 — 2023-11-23 16:41:43 UTC

Slow violence is gradual and less obvious violence or harm, such as the CDC estimating over 10000 "excess deaths" from fallout related Cancers (Menrisky, Alexander. ENGL2635E Lecture, 10/18/23). Even after the effects were realized, there wasn't compensation for the victims until 1990. For example, above ground atomic testing of took place in areas that were described as "virtually uninhabited desert terrain", disregarding the lives of the people who did live there (Alexander, Menrisky 10/18/23). This goes along with the idea of people living more downstream than others, where industrial areas are coinciding with cancers much more often than other areas. These locations of above ground testing and other harmful hazards are often placed in "red zones" or areas that are mostly inhabited by people of color because of system policies. This along with the healthcare system in the United States that does not provide equitable access and the higher mortality seen in people of color are reflected more recently with COVID-19, cancers, and many other illnesses. The route of these disproportionate effects are the environmental racism and power dynamic where white people not only hold power in legislative positions, but in education and healthcare too.

Environmental Justice in the Twenty-first Century: Environmental racism mutually reinforcing systemic racism

alisongodfrey2 — 2023-11-23 17:10:39 UTC

"People of color are often victims of land use decisions that mirror the power arrangements of the dominant society. Historically, exclusionary zoning (and rezoning) has been a subtle form of using government authority of foster and perpetuate discriminatory practice, including discriminatory environmental planning practices" (Bullard 32). More recently, there are generally less clear and/or direct forms of racism, where zoning and rezoning is an underlying and relatively unknown mechanism of environmental racism. The effects from the original power dynamic following migration from the South still underlie people of color's disproportionate health consequences from the environment. Environmental hazards are still placed in the same areas based on zoning, and people of color still live in these zones because they are unable to leave. There is no may to truly resolve this without completely taking down the system of power set up in with environmental racism. This would also mean taking down the power dynamic that was put into place since colonialism, because of how intertwined environmental racism is with climate change and other foundational flaws.

Environmental Justice in the Twenty-first Century: Environmental Hazards

alisongodfrey2 — 2023-11-23 17:12:30 UTC

"Numerous studies, dating back to the 1970s, reveal that people of color have bourne greater health and environmental risk burdens than the society at large. For example, people of color are subjected to elevated health risks from contaminated fish consumption, from close proximity to municipal landfills, incinerators, and toxic waste dumps; and from toxic schools, toxic housing, and toxic air releases" (Bullard 34). The sheer amount of hazards that people of color are exposed to is clearly not some coincidental reason, that is also not any justified by any reason. Environmental racism alone accounts for severe health consequences that people of color were forced into with no means of leaving. With the people in legislative power and corporations favoring the lives of white Americans who lived in the healthiest environmental conditions, this meant that environmental hazards were placed with the most harm to non-white neighborhoods. It gives off the idea that white people view people of color as disposable lives, or that their health is disregarded because it is less important than risking their own health. This environmental problem is so intertwined with financial and social problems, where people may not be able to afford to leave their neighborhoods, which was set up purposefully by white people to create such a separation.

Environmentalist's Racist History: Historic Racism

alisongodfrey2 — 2023-11-23 17:14:07 UTC

"Muir was more concerned with human perfidy toward bears ("Poor fellows, they have been poisoned, trapped, and shot at until they have lost confidence in brother man") than with how Native Americans had been killed and driven from their homes (Purdy 5)." This statement to me is almost putting himself and white people above both animals and people of color. Without the historical context, I wouldn't think it's a horrible thing to feel bad for animals being deceived and hunted. The problem comes when white people put themselves as superior to non-white people, specifically this is reinforcing the idea of Indigenous Americans being animalistic. This was not even intentional, as it did not even reference treatment of Native Americans, which is exactly the problem. There is instead a lack of concern for everyone but white people where the violence and death inflicted on people of color was almost viewed as necessary or just a casualty. It shows an indifference for people of color, as mentioned later in the writing, but a concern for the bears. Muir, as someone who had a lot of societal influence and control, showed the same need for power as shown over and over again with white men in American history. Even hunting is still just another way for people to feel superior to everything else in nature, which is how the same feeling they hold over people of color.

Racism and the Anthropocene: Power system that favors white people

alisongodfrey2 — 2023-11-23 17:15:44 UTC

"The rich, industrialized countries, which are disproportionately white, will escape with vastly fewer deaths." "In addition to dying from heatstroke and heat exhaustion, people will die from their inability to tolerate migration, hunger, thirst, and disease (Pulido 118)." The increased mortality of people of color can be attributed to many foundational components such as exposure to environmental hazards, poor access to healthcare, and financial boundaries which can effect housing and diet. The disproportionate deaths are attributed to long-term things like financial burden which could manifest in insufficient medical care or other ways. These are mechanisms of slow violence which are direct, such as the lack of healthcare access, or indirect, such as only being able to afford fast food that can have longer-term health consequences. This is much more subtle and underlying racist ideal that leads to these effects, where zoning and rezoning policies among others are now active today in a much more systematic way. The lack of action from corporations and people with significant funds to make environmental change comes from both the greed-driven society in the United States as well as the lack of experience of climate change's direct effects. The companies who profit from CO2 emissions, oil production, etc. don't want to lose all of the money they are already making and power they already hold. They also feel no urgency to make change because they genuinely may not know the extent of climate change's effects.

Scarpbook: Eugenics and Climate Change

alisongodfrey2 — 2023-11-23 17:22:32 UTC

"To understand why eugenicists sought to conserve the redwoods, we must first turn our attention to the history that imperiled them, that of settler colonialism in the United States - one that killed and displaced the Indigenous occupants and engaged in an extractive and destructive relationship with the land" (Kaishian 2023). Colonialism was the start of a power dynamic set up with white people asserting themselves as superior to Indigenous Americans. After nearly wiping out the entire population, they then forced those who were alive to relocate and then endure measures to try to erase their culture. They aimed to replace native culture with colonial culture to cover up the atrocities committed by Europeans and maintain the dominance they always enforced. By trying to assimilate Native Americans into American society with school systems among other measures, white people would continue to hold their powerful legislative positions. This goes along with treating the environment however they wish, and going to extreme measures to make sure they can continue to use fossil fuels and create high gas emission levels.

Scrapbook:Climate Change for "poorest countries"

alisongodfrey2 — 2023-11-23 17:27:14 UTC

"The biggest fight is likely to be over the sources of funding for loss and damage. Campaigners want rich countries to pay for their 'historic responsibility' for emissions. This would put the US on the hook for the lion's share of funding, which is difficult for the White House as the Republican-controlled US congress is likely to oppose attempts to increase climate finance" (Harvey 2023). Corporations and people who hold legislative power are so unlikely to agree to making environmental change or taking responsibility for people's role in climate change. They do not feel that there is a problem with how they abuse the environment, because of the underlying idea that they can do what they please with it. Even more so, they don't want to take responsibility because this would force them to give up money or lead to restructuring the economy. This would not only cost them money itself, but would take away their power in the current power system. It is not fair by any means to the countries and the people who are not contributing nearly as much to the climate crisis, and these people have been victims of the established system of power with white people at the top.

Scrapbook: Eugenics and Climate Change

alisongodfrey2 — 2023-11-23 19:28:34 UTC

"For eugenicists, societal breakdown can be explained by impurities in the gene pool, as opposed to an unequal social infrastructure, and this flawed logic applied to eugenicists' approach to conservation. Instead of correctly identifying the cause of the destruction of redwoods–settler colonialism, the genocide of Indigenous peoples and loss of their ecological knowledge, and extractive industry–American eugenicists likened the decimation of trees and the spoiling of habitat to their perceived erosion of the white race" (Kaishian 2023). Just as white people in power and/or corporations are known to be the largest culprits of climate change, these trees were another mechanism in trying to repress Indigenous culture. The article goes on to talk about the trees' importance in ceremonies and other aspects of Native culture, where by taking away the materials needed the hope was to force them to assimilate into American culture. It wasn't enough for white people that they nearly exterminated the entire Native American population, but they then had to displace them from their land and try to remove their ties to their culture because of it's threat to their control. Native Americans used the land in a very reciprocal way, which differs dramatically from how Europeans were using the land for their own benefit. So, the murder, displacement, and repression of Indigenous culture took place with no remorse shown about it during or afterwards. This goes along with the definition of eco-fascism that we discussed, where the violence came with enforcing the so-called relationship Europeans had with the environment.

alisongodfrey2 — 2023-11-28 17:58:09 UTC

alisongodfrey2 — 2023-11-28 18:03:30 UTC

Context: Eco-fascism

alisongodfrey2 — 2023-11-29 16:49:27 UTC

Eco-fascism describes the reinforcement of systems of power that allows violence based on the idea that certain people get to control the land and resources more than others (Menrisky Alexander. ENGL 2635E lecture, 10/29/23). Even with this claiming to have an environmental solution, taking people's lives is never the solution. This is founded in Nazi ideals where the idea of interconnection with the land is used to justify killing non-white people so that white people can use the land how they please rather than actually have an environmental solution. There is no concern for the environment, but rather an extreme viewpoint that white people are entitled to do whatever they want with the land and do this by any violence that is necessary. These ideas are very much alive today as seen in manifestos from mass shootings and storytelling about purification of the human race. This “purification” is founded in eugenics and white supremacy, and ultimately the belief that white people somehow deserve complete control over the land and all other life.

No One is A Virus: Nature and Violence

alisongodfrey2 — 2023-11-29 16:51:11 UTC

“Nature will heal when we heal the white supremacist vision of nature as an object to be extracted, resource to be mined, concept to racialize, sacrifice, and make killable” (Anson 6). Environmental racism has ingrained ideas that makes it intertwined with systematic racism and eugenics. White people who have put themselves at the top of a power system will not be willing to care for the environment until they are forced to out of concern for themselves. The desire for them to maintain power is too strong, where mass shootings and near extermination of entire populations they have justified with white supremacy. The people of color are seen as "sacrifice" and "made killable" as if their lives are easily thrown away so that white men can continue to burn fossil fuels and feel superior. Because of the power dynamic created, the entire system has to be overhauled in order for true environmental change to be made, or these people in powerful positions to directly experience it's effects; whichever comes first.

Citations

alisongodfrey2 — 2023-11-30 13:54:11 UTC

Lecture:

Menrisky, Alexander. ENGL 2635E Lecture, 10/15/23-10/25/23

Sources:

Jedediah Purdy. (2015). Environmentalism's Racist History. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/environmentalisms-racist-history.

Bullard, Robert. (2005). Environmental Justice in the Twenty-First Century. The Quest for Environmental Justice. San Francisco, California. Sierra Club Books. Chapter 1, A legacy of injustice (pgs 32, 34)

Lauren Pulido, Racism and the Anthropocene (pg 118)

Anson, April. (October 2021, 2020). No One is A Virus: An American Ecofascism. EHN Blog. Environmental History Now. https://envhistnow.com/2020/10/21/no-one-is-the-virus-on-american-ecofascism/

Scrapbooks:

Harvey, Fiona. (2020)Climate Crisis Talks Resume on 'loss and damage' funding for poorest countries. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/03/un-climate-crisis-talks-resume-loss-damage-funding-poorest-countries. Guardian News & Media Limited

Kaishian, Patricia. (2023).A TANGLED WEB Redwoods, Colonialism, Eugenics, and Climate Change. Sempervirens Fund. https://sempervirens.org/news/a-tangled-web/.

Images:

https://ssir.org/images/ads/chart_growing_partisan_divide_climate_change.png

https://racism.org/images/Images/RacistZoning.jpg

https://www.southwestern.edu/live/image/gid/30/width/1000/height/750/37938_Racial_Disparities_Infographic.rev.1597177555.png

http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2011/06/01/apsimg1481_custom-5fdd786e4a1bfbd10ae27c6ab33ced319329a6f3-s6-c30.jpg

No One is A Virus: White supremacy in Eco-fascism

alisongodfrey2 — 2023-11-30 16:41:03 UTC

Eugenic supporters such as Teddy Roosevelt "are commonly cited in eco-fascist genealogies, but they built on a long tradition tied less to swiftly shifting national boundaries or fickle political affiliations than to the circulation of narrative tradition where violence is a part of the 'natural' order, of people and planet. Today eco-fascism manifests virally in our most socially mediated forms of storytelling - Twitter, Instagram, and the manifestos posted to 4chan and 8chan" (Anson 5). The violence almost seems like it tries to be justified as something that would naturally occur or somehow is survival of the fittest, but this is just white people who are always the one inflicting violence with no justification possible. Because the system of power enables them with funds and resources, they were able to continue this violence and dominance over everyone and everything else. Not only has eco-fascist principles been used to justify mass shootings in America, founded in Nazi ideology, but it also is evident in social media and general communication. The fact that it is so commonly seen in social media outlets means that it is common enough to be shared to other people and almost normalized. It is not a few isolated users sharing such ideology, meaning that white supremacy has infiltrated media on a very general level because a true audience exists.