When The Yellow Brick Road of Racial Class Hierarchy, Meets The Consumerism of The Greenless Emerald City... We end up Soaked, Broke, and Woke!
The social dreams of the disenfranchised of many nations relies on the belief that in the future if they change theoutward apearances of their familty to the phenotypical appearance of the colonizer they will achieve socisl acceptance within the dominant society and all the systemic benefits that assignation holds. This is true in India, Australia, South America, and even in Korea!
It is not only social structures and archaic institutions that are primarily responsible for the maintenance of racial inequality. It is also the almost religious belief that if Ibecome lighter in complexion and eradicate everything visibly not European about myself I and my shall become acceptable as equal partners with the inheritors of the economic, and social power of my former colonizers, I will access whiteness through my phenotypical proximity and appearance as white.
Although Colorism is a form of discrimination based on skin tone wherein people with light(er) complexions are advantaged over those with dark(er) ones, it is also a form of self hate and self degradation. Inherent is the belief that darker skin is a justification for oppression and an adherence to the religion of the inherent goodness of lacking melanin. In a climate change world of global warming and high uv radiation this adherence will not lead to a beneficial future for your progeny but instead a lack of progeny who will have a less likely chance of surviving a world in which the three to four celsius rise of the mean temperature on the planet is an inevitability by 2179.
The social hierarchy posed by a belief in “transraciality,” is a feeble construct and has never been fully upheld in any society for hundreds of years since the creation of whiteness. The effects of climate change are not borne equally between everyone on the planet, and this problem will only worsen.But even the narrative of the consequences is skewed by white supremacist supposition rather than facts. The global narrative is that Black people, people of color and Indigenous people will face the most dire consequences in a warming world. For example, research suggests global warming of 2°C would leave more than half of Africa’s population undernourished. This narrative does not take into account the massive reservoirs of aquifers that Africa has which have been depleted or bought up by billionaires is the USA, Europe, Australia and other nations.
It also does not take into account the knowledge base of Africans which have held ancestral knowledge of how to survive and farm in these cases of severe weather changes in fact the Sahel is greening even as we speak and African ancient crops of millet are overtaking wheat and western crops as a climate resistant food crop. Evn Dubai is facing constant flooding because of the changing weather patterns back to a tropical clime that once kept the Sahara a green and lush area of tropical vegetation for millennia.
The British Isles face flooding as does the state of Florida which could lose half its land mass in less than two generations. Ironically kicking its migrant workers out and stealing little Haiti from Haitian migrants in Miami was an unexpected favor though some may not realize it for a few years. South Africa's adherence to social constructs of race put in place during apartheid will eventually crumble as people will find the inherent divide and conquer strategy in the construct that makes Boers smile every time a self proclaimed colored person shouts "this is a "Zebra Nation" and blames black South Africans for taking away the power class they longed to eventually access.Anerican youth would view this rhetoric as them saying... "We are not black, we are OJ!"
As for as climate resiliance in South Africa a recent 2014 report stated "a number of knowledge gaps remain in relation to the biophysical and socio-economic impacts of climate change." (Zervogel,New,Zarderen 2014). How does this phrase pertain to race hierarchy? First lket us clarify the meaning of Biophysical. There is a link between three terms that can sometimes be used interchangeably BIODIVERSITY, BIO-CULTURAL,and BIO-PHYSICAL! Climate change threatens biodiversity directly by influencing biophysical variables that drive species’ geographic distributions and indirectly through socio-economic changes that influence land use patterns, driven by global consumption, production and climate. We must also note that among the human species there is an inextricable link between cultural and biological diversity’. Thus we have colorism often dictating what part of the socieconomic strata one may enter within a culture.The caveat is that this may change arbitrarily when survival of the collective takes precedence over a cultural preference.
"Climate change also affects biodiversity through indirect human-mediated impacts: it drives the loss of livelihoods and displacement this can be seen in fishing cultures and farming and affects food and commodity production systems through its impacts on land productivity and human health and environmental suitability for different land uses6. Resulting global transitions of land use patterns are set to drive habitat conversion and may have dramatic impacts on biodiversity."
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