Black Futures: Antiblackness as a theoretical ontological framework through which to uncover truths in climate change discourses

Keywords: Antiblackness, climate coloniality, liberatory, emancipatory, environmental crisis
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

The legacy of the violent enslavement of Africans created the indelible image of Black people as nonhuman (Mushonga et al., 2022). Where the colonial endeavour brings varied oppressions (Sultana, 2022), little ingress is made in linking chattel slavery with the environmental crisis, not fully unpacking the encounter, or the lack of emancipatory practice. Environmentalism mirrors other social institutions where Black lives are definitely not mattering.

Antiblackness, the delegitimising and de-humanisation of Black people in modernity, has a pernicious selective targeting (Gordon, 2018; Grimes, 2020), which I argue deserves a requisite focus within environmentalism.

Antiblackness causes social death (Patterson, 2018), which mitigation and adaptation practices reinforce (Abimola et al., 2021). Policy too fails to bring emancipatory succour, for example, exceeding 1.5ºC increases mortality for Black communities. I expect we will find antiblackness in environment foments extreme anti-societal entanglements such as failures to pay loss and damage, abandonment of futures for many Caribbean islands, depriving of sovereignty across Africa by land grabs for renewables, or even “fortress Europe” as a response to climate driven migration.

This paper uses the lens of antiblackness as a theoretical ontological framework through which to uncover truths in climate change discourses.

This draws on my MSc dissertation at the Graduate School for the Environment, Wales, which examined barriers to Black environmentalism; it raised more questions than answered, with some becoming the focus of my PhD research at University of Southampton. Interdepartmentally, I explore antiblackness in environmentalism, research and policymaking, working alongside UK Black environmentalist projects.