Connecting racism with the degradation of the earth is a
necessity for the African American community.
JAMES H. CONE is Briggs Distinguished Professor at Union
Theological Seminary and the author of many books on black theology of
liberation, including Martin and Malcolm and America. This
essay appears in a slightly different form in his most recent book, Risks
of Faith: The Emergence of a Black Theology of Liberation, ,
published by Beacon Press.
The earth is the Lord's and all that is in it,
The world, and those who live in it.
-- Psalm 24:1 (NRSV)
We say the earth is our mother --
we cannot own her; she owns us.(1)
-- Pacific peoples
The logic that led to slavery and segregation in the Americas,
colonization and Apartheid in Africa, and the rule of white supremacy
throughout the world is the same one that leads to the exploitation of
animals and the ravaging of nature. It is a mechanistic and instrumental
logic that defines everything and everybody in terms of their
contribution to the development and defense of white world supremacy.
People who fight against white racism but fail to connect it to the
degradation of the earth are anti-ecological -- whether they know it or
not. People who struggle against environmental degradation but do not
incorporate in it a disciplined and sustained fight against white
supremacy are racists -- whether they acknowledge it or not. The fight
for justice cannot be segregated but must be integrated with the fight
for life in all its forms.
Until recently, the ecological crisis has not been a major theme in
the liberation movements in the African American community. "Blacks
don't care about the environment" is a typical comment by white
ecologists. Racial and economic justice has been at best only a marginal
concern in the mainstream environmental movement. "White people
care more about the endangered whale and the spotted owl than they do
about the survival of young blacks in our nation's cities" is a
well-founded belief in the African American community. Justice fighters
for blacks and the defenders of the earth have tended to ignore each
other in their public discourse and practice. Their separation from each
other is unfortunate because they are fighting the same enemy -- human
beings' domination of each other and nature.
The leaders in the mainstream environmental movement are mostly
middle- and upper-class whites who are unprepared culturally and
intellectually to dialogue with angry blacks. The leaders in the African
American community are leery of talking about anything with whites that
will distract from the menacing reality of racism. What both groups fail
to realize is how much they need each other in the struggle for
"justice, peace and the integrity of creation."(2)
In this essay, I want to challenge the black freedom movement to take
a critical look at itself through the lens of the ecological movement
and also challenge the ecological movement to critique itself through a
radical and ongoing engagement of racism in American history and
culture. Hopefully, we can break the silence and promote genuine
solidarity between the two groups and thereby enhance the quality of
life for the whole inhabited earth -- humankind and otherkind.
Expanding the Race Critique
No threat has been more deadly and persistent for black and
Indigenous peoples than the rule of white supremacy in the modern world.
For over five hundred years, through the wedding of science and
technology, white people have been exploiting nature and killing people
of color in every nook and cranny of the planet in the name of God and
democracy. According to the English historian Basil Davidson, the
Atlantic slave trade "cost Africa fifty million souls."(3)
Author Eduardo Galeano claims that 150 years of Spanish and Portuguese
colonization in Central and South America reduced the Indigenous
population from 90 million to 3.5 million.(4)
During the twenty-three-year reign of terror of King Leopold II of
Belgium in the Congo (), scholarly estimates suggest that
approximately 10 million Congolese met unnatural deaths -- "fully
half the territory's population."(5)
The tentacles of white supremacy have stretched around the globe. No
people of color have been able to escape its cultural, political and
economic domination.
Blacks in the U.S. have been the most visible and articulate
opponents of white racism. From Frederick Douglas and Sojourner Truth to
Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Fannie Lou Hamer,
African Americans have waged a persistent fight against white racism in
all its overt and covert manifestations. White racism denied the
humanity of black people, with even theologians debating whether blacks
had souls. Some said blacks were subhuman "beasts."(6)
Other more progressive theologians, like Union Seminary's Reinhold
Niebuhr, hoped that the inferiority of the Negro was not
"biological" but was due instead to "cultural
backwardness," which could gradually with education be overcome.(7)
Enslaved for 244 years, lynched and segregated another 100, blacks,
with militant words and action, fought back in every way they could --
defending their humanity against all who had the nerve to question it.
Malcolm X, perhaps the most fierce and uncompromising public
defender of black humanity, expressed the raw feelings of most blacks:
"We declare our right on this earth. . . to be a human
being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a
human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend
to bring into existence by any means necessary."(8)
Whites bristled when they heard Malcolm talk like that. They not only
knew Malcolm meant what he said but feared that most blacks agreed with
him -- though they seldom said so publicly. Whites also knew that if
they were black, they too would say a resounding "amen!" to
Malcolm's blunt truth. "If you want to know what I'll do,"
Malcolm told whites, "figure out what you'll do."(9)
White theologians thanked God for being "truly longsuffering,
'slow to anger and plenteous in mercy' (Ps. 103:8)," as Reinhold
Niebuhr put it, quoting the Hebrew Scriptures. Niebuhr knew that white
people did not have a leg to stand on before the bar of God's justice
regarding their treatment of people of color. "If," Niebuhr
wrote, "the white man were to expiate his sins committed against
the darker races, few would have the right to live."(10)
Black liberation theology is a product of a fighting spirituality
derived from nearly four hundred years of black resistance. As one who
encountered racism first as a child in Bearden, Arkansas, no day in my
life has passed in which I did not have to deal with the open and hidden
violence of white supremacy. Whether in the society or the churches, at
Adrian College or Union Seminary, racism was always there -- often
smiling and sometimes angry. Since writing my first essay on racism in
the white church and its theology thirty years ago, I decided that I
would never be silent about white supremacy and would oppose it with my
whole being.
While white racism must be opposed at all cost, our opposition will
not be effective unless we expand our vision. Racism is profoundly
interrelated with other evils, including the degradation of the earth.
It is important for black people, therefore, to make the connection
between the struggle against racism and other struggles for life. A few
black leaders recognized this need and joined the nineteenth century
abolitionist movement with the Suffragist movement and the 1960s civil
rights movement with the second wave of the women's movement. Similar
links were made with the justice struggles of other U.S. minorities, gay
rights struggles, and poor peoples' fight for freedom around the world.
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s idea of the "beloved community"
is a potent symbol for people struggling to build one world community
where life in all its forms is respected. "All life is
interrelated," King said. "Whatever affects one directly
affects all indirectly. . . There is an interrelated structure
of reality."
Connecting racism with the degradation of the earth is a much-needed
work in the African American community, especially in black liberation
theology and the black churches. Womanist theologians have already begun
this important intellectual work. Delores Williams explores a
"parallel between defilement of black women's bodies" and the
exploitation of nature. Emilie Townes views "toxic waste landfills
in African American communities" as "contemporary versions of
lynching a whole people." Karen Baker-Fletcher, using prose and
poetry, appropriates the biblical and literary metaphors of dust and
spirit to speak about the embodiment of God in creation. "Our
task," she writes, "is to grow large hearts, large minds,
reconnecting with earth, Spirit, and one another. Black religion must
grow ever deeper in the heart."(11)
The leadership of African American churches turned its much-needed
attention toward ecological issues in the early 1990s. The catalyst, as
usual in the African American community, was a group of black
churchwomen in Warren County, North Carolina, who in 1982 lay their
bodies down on a road before dump trucks carrying soil contaminated with
highly toxic PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyl) to block their progress. In
two weeks, more than four hundred protesters were arrested, "the
first time anyone in the United States had been jailed trying to halt a
toxic waste landfill."(12)
Although local residents were not successful in stopping the landfill
construction, that incident sparked the attention of civil rights and
black church leaders and initiated the national environmental justice
movement. In 1987 the United Church of Christ Commission of Racial
Justice issued its groundbreaking "Report on Race and Toxic Wastes
in the United States." This study found that "among a variety
of indicators race was the best predictor of the location of hazardous
waste facilities in the U.S."(13)
Forty percent of the nation's commercial hazardous waste landfill
capacity was in three predominately African American and Hispanic
communities. The largest landfill in the nation is found in Sumter
County, Alabama, where nearly 70 percent of its seventeen thousand
residents are black and 96 percent are poor.
In October 1991 the First National People of Color Environmental
Leadership Summit was convened in Washington, D.C. More than 650
grassroots and national leaders from fifty states, the District of
Columbia, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Marshall Islands participated.
They represented more than three hundred environmental groups of color.
They all agreed that "If this nation is to achieve environmental
justice, the environment in urban ghettoes, barrios, reservations, and
rural poverty pockets must be given the same protection as that provided
to the suburbs."(14)
The knowledge that people of color are disproportionately affected by
environmental pollution angered the black church community and fired up
its leadership to take a more active role in fighting against
"environmental racism," a phrase that was coined by Benjamin
Chavis who was then the Director of the UCC Commission on Racial
Justice.(15) Bunyan Bryant, a
professor in the in the School of Natural Resources and Environment at
the University of Michigan and a participant in the environmental
justice movement, defines environmental racism as "an extension of
racism."
It refers to those institutional rules, regulations, and policies
or government or corporate decisions that deliberately target certain
communities for least desirable land uses, resulting in the
disproportionate exposure of toxic and hazardous waste on communities
based upon certain prescribed biological characteristics.
Environmental racism is the unequal protection against toxic and
hazardous waste exposure and the systematic exclusion of people of
color from environmental decisions affecting their communities.(16)
The more blacks found out about the racist policies of the government
and corporations the more determined they became in their opposition to
environmental injustice. In December 1993, under the sponsorship of the
National Council of Churches, leaders of mainline black churches held a
historic two-day summit meeting on the environment in Washington, D.C.
They linked environmental issues with civil rights and economic justice.
They did not talk much about the ozone layer, global warming, the
endangered whale, or the spotted owl. They focused primarily on the
urgent concerns of their communities: toxic and hazardous wastes, lead
poisoning, landfills and incinerators. "We have been living next to
the train tracks, trash dumps, coal plants and insect-infested swamps
for many decades," Bishop Frederick C. James of the A.M.E.
Church said. "We in the Black community have been
disproportionately affected by toxic dumping, disproportionately
affected by lead paint at home, disproportionately affected by dangerous
chemicals in the workplace." Black clergy also linked local
problems with global issues. "If toxic waste is not safe enough to
be dumped in the United States, it is not safe enough to be dumped in
Ghana, Liberia, Somalia nor anywhere else in the world," proclaimed
Charles G. Adams, pastor of Hartford Memorial Baptist Church in
Detroit. "If hazardous materials are not fit to be disposed in the
suburbs, they are certainly not fit to be disposed of in the
cities."(17)
Like black church leaders, African American politicians also are
connecting social justice issues with ecology. According to the League
of Conservation Voters, the Congressional Black Caucus has "the
best environmental record of any voting bloc in Congress."(18)
"Working for clean air, clean water, and a clean planet,"
declared Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, "is just as important, if not
more important, than anything I have ever worked on, including civil
rights."(19)
Black and other poor people in all racial groups receive much less
than their fair share of everything good in the world and a
disproportionate amount of the bad. Middle class and elite white
environmentalists have been very effective in implementing the slogan
"Not In My Backyard" (NIMBY). As a result, corporations and
the government merely turned to the backyards of the poor to deposit
their toxic waste. The poor live in the least desirable areas of our
cities and rural communities. They work in the most polluted and
physically dangerous workplaces. Decent health care hardly exists. With
fewer resources to cope with the dire consequences of pollution, the
poor bear an unequal burden for technological development while the rich
reap most of the benefits. This makes racism and poverty ecological
issues. If blacks and other hard-hit communities do not raise these
ethical and political problems, they will continue to die a slow and
silent death on the planet.
Ecology touches every sphere of human existence. It is not just an
elitist or a white middle class issue. A clean safe environment is a
human and civil rights issue that impacts the lives of poor blacks and
other marginal groups. We therefore must not let the fear of distracting
from racism blind us to the urgency of the ecological crisis. What good
is it to eliminate racism if we are not around to enjoy a racist free
environment?
The survival of the earth, therefore, is a moral issue for everybody.
If we do not save the earth from destructive human behavior, no one will
survive. That fact alone ought to be enough to inspire people of all
colors to join hands in the fight for a just and sustainable planet.
Expanding the Ecological Critique. We are indebted to
ecologists in all fields and areas of human endeavor for sounding the
alarm about the earth's distress. They have been so effective in raising
ecological awareness that few people deny that our planet is in deep
trouble. For the first time in history, humankind has the knowledge and
power to destroy all life -- either with a nuclear bang or a gradual
poisoning of the land, air, and sea.
Scientists have warned us of the dire consequences of what human
beings are doing to the environment. Theologians and ethicists have
raised the moral and religious issues. Grassroots activists in many
communities are organizing to stop the killing of nature and its
creatures. Politicians are paying attention to people's concern for a
clean, safe environment. "It is not so much a question of whether
the lion will one day lie down with the lamb," writes Alice Walker,
"but whether human beings will ever be able to lie down with any
creature or being at all."(20)
What is absent from much of the talk about the environment in First
World countries is a truly radical critique of the culture most
responsible for the ecological crisis. This is especially true among
white ethicists and theologians in the U.S. In most of the essays and
books I have read, there is hardly a hint that perhaps whites could
learn something of how we got into this ecological mess from those who
have been the victims of white world supremacy. White ethicists and
theologians sometimes refer to the disproportionate impact of hazardous
waste on blacks and other people of color in the U.S. and Third World
and even cite an author or two, here and there throughout the
development of their discourse on ecology. They often include a token
black or Indian in anthologies on ecotheology, ecojustice, and
ecofeminism. It is "political correct" to demonstrate a
knowledge of and concern for people of color in progressive theological
circles. But people of color are not treated seriously, that
is, as if they have something essential to contribute to the
conversation. Environmental justice concerns of poor people of color
hardly ever merit serious attention, not to mention organized
resistance. How can we create a genuinely mutual ecological dialogue
between whites and people of color if one party acts as if they have all
the power and knowledge?
Since Earth Day in 1970, the environmental movement has grown into a
formidable force in American society and ecological reflections on the
earth have become a dominant voice in religion, influencing all
disciplines. It is important to ask, however, whose problems define the
priorities of the environmental movement? Whose suffering claims its
attention? "Do environmentalists care about poor people?"(21)
Environmentalists usually respond something like Rafe Pomerance puts it:
"A substantial element of our agenda has related to improving the
environment for everybody."(22)
Others tell a different story. Former Assistant Secretary of Interior
James Joseph says that "environmentalists tend to focus on those
issues that provide recreative outlets instead of issues that focus on
equity." Black activist Cliff Boxley speaks even more bluntly,
labeling the priorities of environmentalists as "green
bigotry." "Conservationists are more interested in saving the
habitats of birds than in the construction of low-income housing."(23)
Do we have any reason to believe that the culture most responsible
for the ecological crisis will also provide the moral and intellectual
resources for the earth's liberation? White ethicists and theologians
apparently think so, since so much of their discourse about theology and
the earth is just talk among themselves. But I have a deep suspicion
about the theological and ethical values of white culture and religion.
For five hundred years whites have acted as if they owned the world's
resources and have forced people of color to accept their scientific and
ethical values. People of color have studied dominant theologies and
ethics because our physical and spiritual survival partly depended on
it. Now that humanity has reached the possibility of extinction, one
would think that a critical assessment of how we got to where we are
would be the next step for sensitive and caring theologians of the
earth. While there is some radical questioning along these lines, it has
not been persistent or challenging enough to compel whites to look
outside of their dominating culture for ethical and cultural resources
for the earth's salvation. One can still earn a doctorate degree in
ethics and theology at American seminaries, even at Union Seminary in
New York, and not seriously engage racism in this society and the world.
If we save the planet and have a society of inequality, we wouldn't have
saved much.
According to Audre Lorde, "the master's tools will never
dismantle the master's house."(24)
They are too narrow and thus assume that people of color have nothing to
say about race, gender, sexuality, and the earth -- all of which are
interconnected. We need theologians and ethicists who are interested in
mutual dialogue, honest conversation about justice for the earth and all
of its inhabitants. We need whites who are eager to know something about
the communities of people of color -- our values, hopes, and dreams.
Whites know so little about our churches and communities that it is
often too frustrating to even talk to them about anything that matters.
Dialogue requires respect and knowledge of the other -- their history,
culture and religion. No one racial or national group has all the
answers but all groups have something to contribute to the earth's
healing.
Many ecologists speak often of the need for humility and mutual
dialogue. They tell us that we are all interrelated and interdependent,
including human and otherkind. The earth is not a machine. It is an
organism in which all things are a part of each other. "Every
entity in the universe," writes Catherine Keller, "can be
described as a process of interconnection with every other being."(25)
If white ecologists really believe that, why do most still live in
segregated communities? Why are their essays and books about the
endangered earth so monological -- that is, a conversation of a dominant
group talking to itself? Why is there so much talk of love, humility,
interrelatedness, and interdependence, and yet so little of these values
reflected in white people's dealings with people of color?
Blacks and other minorities are often asked why they are not involved
in the mainstream ecological movement. To white theologians and
ethicists I ask, why are you not involved in the dialogue on race? I am
not referring primarily to President Clinton's failed initiative, but to
the initiative started by the Civil Rights and Black Power movements and
black liberation theology more than forty years ago. How do we account
for the conspicuous white silence on racism, not only in the society and
world but especially in theology, ethics, and ecology? I have yet to
read a white theologian or ethicist who has incorporated a sustained,
radical critique of white supremacy in their theological discourse
similar to their engagement of Anti-Semitism, class contradictions, and
patriarchy.
To be sure, a few concerned white theologians have written about
their opposition to white racism but not because race critique was
essential to their theological identity. It is usually just a gesture of
support for people of color when solidarity across differences is in
vogue. As soon as it is not longer socially and intellectually
acceptable to talk about race, white theologians revert back to their
silence. But as Elie Wiesel said in his Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance
Speech, "we must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor,
never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the
tormented."(26) Only when
white theologians realize that a fight against racism is a fight for their
humanity will we be able to create a coalition of blacks, whites and
other people of color in the struggle to save the earth.
Today ecology is in vogue and many people are talking about our
endangered planet. I want to urge us to deepen our conversation by
linking the earth's crisis with the crisis in the human family. If it is
important to save the habitats of birds and other species, then it is at
least equally important to save black lives in the ghettoes and prisons
of America. As Gandhi said, "the earth is sufficient for everyone's
need but not for everyone's greed."(27)
Notes
1. [Back to text] Cited
in Samuel Rayan, "The Earth is the Lord's," in Ecotheology:
Voices from South and North, ed. David G. Hallman (Geneva: WCC
Publications, 1994), 142.
2. [Back to text] See Justice,
Peace and the Integrity of Creation, papers and Bible studies ed.
James W. van Hoeven for the World Alliance of Reformed Churches
Assembly, Seoul, Korea, August 1989; and Preman Niles, Resisting the
Threats to Life: Covenanting for Justice, Peace and the Integrity of
Creation (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1989).
3. [Back to text] Basil
Davidson, The African Slave Trade: Precolonial History
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1961), 80.
4. [Back to text]
Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the
Pillage of a Continent (London: Monthly Review Press,
1973), 50.
5. [Back to text] See
Adam Hochschild, "Hearts of Darkness: Adventures in the Slave
Trade," San Francisco Examiner Magazine, August 16,
1998, 13. This essay is an excerpt from his book, King Leopold's
Ghosts: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa
(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1998). Louis Turner suggests that five to
eight million were killed in the Congo. See his Multinational
Companies and the Third World (New York: Hill and Wang,
1973), 27.
6. [Back to text] See
Chas. Carroll, The Negro a Beast (St. Louis: American Book
and Bible House, 1900).
7. [Back to text] See
Reinhold Niebuhr, "Justice to the American Negro from State,
Community and Church" in his Pious and Secular America
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958), 81.
8. [Back to text]
Malcolm X, By Any Means Necessary (New York: Pathfinder
Press, 1970), 56.
9. [Back to text]Malcolm X
Speaks, ed. George Breitman (New York: Grove Press, 1965), 197-98.
10. [Back to text]
Reinhold Niebuhr, "The Assurance of Grace" in The
Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses, ed. and
introduced by Robert M. Brown (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1986), 65.
11. [Back to text] See
Delores Williams, "A Womanist Perspective on Sin" in A
Troubling in My Soul: Womanist Perspectives on Evil and Suffering,
ed. Emilie M. Townes (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1993), 145-47; and
her "Sin, Nature, and Black Women's Bodies," in Ecofeminism
and the Sacred, ed. Carol J. Adams (New York: Continuum,
1993), 24-29; Emilie Townes, In a Blaze of Glory: Womanist
Spirituality as Social Witness (Nashville: Abingdon, 1995), 55; and
Karen Baker-Fletcher, Sisters of Dust, Sisters of Spirit: Womanist
Wordings on God and Creation (Minneapolis: Fortress,
1998), 93.
12. [Back to text]
Robert Bullard, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental
Quality (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1990), 31.
13. [Back to text]
Cited in Bunyan Bryant and Paul Mohai, eds., Race and the Incidence
of Environmental Hazards: A Time for Discourse (Boulder, Colo.:
Westview Press, 1992), 2. See also "African American Denominational
Leaders Pledge Their Support to the Struggle against Environmental
Racism," The A.M.E. Christian Recorder, May 18,
1998, 8, 11.
14. [Back to text]
Cited in Robert D. Bullard, ed., Unequal Protection:
Environmental Justice and Communities of Color (San Francisco:
Sierra Club Books, 1994), 20.
15. [Back to text]
Benjamin Chavis is now known as Benjamin Chavis Muhammad and is
currently serving as the National Minister in Louis Farrakhan's Nation
of Islam.
16. [Back to text]
Bunyan Bryant, "Introduction" in his edited work, Environmental
Justice: Issues, Policies, and Solutions (Washington, D.C.: Island
Press, 1995), 5. Benjamin Chavis defined environmental racism as
"racial discrimination in environmental policymaking. It is racial
discrimination in the enforcement of regulations and laws. It is racial
discrimination in the deliberate targeting of communities of color for
toxic waste disposal and the siting of polluting industries. It is
racial discrimination in the official sanctioning of the
life-threatening presence of poisons and pollutants in communities of
color. And, it is racial discrimination in the history of excluding
people of color from the mainstream environmental groups, decisionmaking
boards, commissions, and regulatory bodies" ("Foreword"
in Robert Bullard, ed., Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices
from the Grassroots [Boston: South End Press, 1993], 3.)
17. [Back to text]National
Black Church Environmental and Economic Justice Summit, Washington,
D.C., December 1 and 2, 1993, The National Council of Churches of Christ
in the U.S.A., Prophetic Justice Unit. This is a booklet with all the
speeches of the meeting, including the one by Vice President Gore.
18. [Back to text] See
Ronald A. Taylor, "Do Environmentalists Care about Poor
People?" U.S. News and World Report, April 2,
1984, 51.
19. [Back to text]
John Lewis's quotation is cited in Deeohn and David Hahn-Baker,
"Environmentalists and Environmental Justice Policy" in Bunyan
Bryant, ed., Environmental Justice, 68.
20. [Back to text]
Alice Walker, Living by the Word: Selected Writings
(San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988), 173.
21. [Back to text] See
Ronald A. Taylor, "Do Environmentalists Care about Poor
People?"
25. [Back to text]
Catherine Keller, From a Broken Web: Separation, Sexism, Self
(Boston: Beacon, 1986), 5.
26. [Back to text] See
Eli Wiesel, "Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech,"
, December 10, 1986.
27. [Back to text]
Cited in Leonado Boff, Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor (Maryknoll,
N.Y.: Orbis, 1997), 2.
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