Source: Race and the Climate Movement: What Our Black Colleagues Want the Rest of Us to Know – EcoWatch
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Climate movement, we have a problem.
We’ve been marching and speaking out demanding justice for George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and countless other victims of white supremacy.
But if we’re honest, a lot of us — white activists at least — still aren’t looking in the mirror. We don’t want to see our own privilege. We don’t want to acknowledge that we insult and anger our friends, colleagues, and partners of color every day without even realizing it. More than anything, we don’t want to admit that we inadvertently help keep racism and all its poisonous inequities alive and well. Yes, us.
Fixing that can’t be on people of color. They’ve been trying to get us to listen for decades. If we can spend the time researching the best schools in our area or the best car for our budget, we sure can spend the time educating ourselves about our privilege and unintentional racism (we’d suggest Robin DiAngelo’s excellent book White Fragility as a start).
But when people of color do speak with hard truths, we have to listen. It’s true for the movement and it’s true for us at Climate Reality.
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