Post Nine

I had only looked at ecocriticism through a somewhat limited lens prior to reading these articles and watching the TED talk. The chapter from Earth Democracy by Vandana Shiva really stood out to me. The idea of looking at issues around the environment not only as environmental issues is something that I must have overlooked prior. What I took from this chapter was that environmental issues are not only environmental, but they are human problems. When looking at the principles of Earth Democracy as described by Vandana Shiva it is easy to see the strong correlation between ecological concerns like global warming or extinction and human concerns like racism and genocide. If we are unable to address issues of environment, we are likely to struggle in solving issues on a human level and vice versa. They go hand in hand in that aspect. The lack of respect shown for people of other race, culture, or identity is not so different from the disrespect shown to our planet. This message is echoed in the second reading titled Toward an Environmental Justice Ecocriticism by T.V. Reed with a somewhat different twist. One of the things that stood out to me about this reading was the examples of racism and phrases used to describe out natural world. The examples in the text included “urban jungle” and “savage wilderness”. It is powerful to read these phrases and have the awareness to recognize that even phrases in relation to nature can perpetuate themes of racism.

The thing that in a way drew all these themes together was the TED talk titled Green is the New Black by Shannon Prince. In this TED talk the presenter looked at the similarities between slavery and the exploitation of our natural resources. I enjoyed her use of Tupac to further emphasis her point and her somewhat literal translation of the lyric. Shannon Prince went further to compare the difference in birth weight between a mother that has access to green space, and a mother that has not. This video helps blend critical race theory and ecocriticism in a way that helped this all come together.

What I took away from the two readings and the TED talk was that we are often separating two issues that should be looked at collectively. We are very unlikely to address the issues of racism if we cannot respect the environment, and issues of environment without addressing racism. They are connected and a result of a of similar exploitative and colonial beliefs.