Race and the Constitutive Inequality of the Modern/Colonial Condition

Climate Apartheid, Race, and the Future of Solidarity: Three Frameworks of Response (Anthropocene, Mestizaje, Cimarronaje)

“…. [but before this] the name comes from the Arawak term símaran , [that is, from the language of the indigenous inhabitants], originally used to describe an arrow that misses its intended target and is lost in the forest” (2016, 111). The word itself indexes the complex historical phenomenon of struggle among indigenous, Spanish, English, and African peoples in the New World, even as it gestures toward “the first alternative social practice to the rigors of enslavement and imminent civilizational collapse.” And the word itself bears witness that I—a white Latino, a Christian—do not stand nowhere: that this word is a particular placeholder, a way of holding a place open, from which things are currently emerging in our world for which the language does not yet exist.…”

“…We glimpse a complex of forces behind the bridge scene-no mere "natural" disaster, nor isolated event, but a crystallization of the world we have built: a climate-intensified storm meeting a sacrificially shaped topography. 11 The specifically racialized nature of this sacrificial topography has become increasingly well-known-a testament to long-term, hard fought success of environmental justice movements and scholars (see Bullard 2000). Decades of empirical research confirm racialized patterns of environmental degradation, while more recent work underscores that climate effects are largely following the same patterns: previously redlined neighborhoods-segregated through racist federal housing policy-are now the warmest, least green, least breathable urban spaces (Wilson 2020; see also Plumer and Popovich 2020).…”