By Aissata Sow and Maya Samuel
In their podcast Black Futures Scholars, Aissata Sow and Maya Samuel, evaluate Black Futures and Ecologies in connection with their research for Race, Inequality, and Public Policy (PAF 3010). They discuss climate change and environmental racism, the impact on people who suffer from sickle cell disease, and the intersection with factory farming.
Continue reading “Hook, Line, & Sinker: The Food is Poisoned, The Overlap Between Environmental Racism and SCD”By Jacquelyn Ortiz
Jacquelyn Ortiz links education as a fundamental right and key to unlocking full human potential to Black futures in this final paper for Race, Inequality, and Public Policy with Professor Angie Beeman. This paper addresses the history and continuing legacy of racial inequity in education and how to better engage in efforts to create change through social justice advocacy. The paper takes a critical look at the role color-blind and post-racial ideologies play in maintaining structural inequities. Using works by Lindsay Perez Huber, Susana Muñoz, Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Curtis Ivery, Joshua Bassett, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and Paolo Freire, this paper explores the disconnect between ideologies of equality and implementation of equity-based policies and practices.
Continue reading “Black Futures Project: Education and Advocacy – Toward Equity”By Alexandra Acevedo
The foundations of Brazilian society are racist, anti-LGBTQ, patriarchal, and capitalistic. The same could be said about all the Americas and the United States. The colonizer European powers built these societal structures in Latin America. As a result, many indigenous and enslaved people (and their descendants) lost their relationship with the land and their ancestral communities. They partially lost the knowledge they held and their culture. Now, these belief systems of racism and so on are embedded in the way we view the world. However, we can repair these relationships through reconnection between people and the land. Through both the Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil and Khalil Haywood’s essay “Paraíso Negro” we can see how reconnection to the land is crucial for the Afro-Latinx diaspora. We must unlearn these harmful belief systems and gain new knowledge to deconstruct these systems through reconnection to nature; in doing so, we can become closer to ourselves, our culture, and our families and communities.
Continue reading “Breaking Down Harmful Structures Through Ecological Relationships”By Peter Balluffi-Fry
In spring semester 2023, Black Futures Scholar Peter Balluffi-Fry developed a research paper for PAF 3010 in response to Dr. Nisrin Elamin’s talk on land dispossession and corporate investment in Sudan. His paper, Environmental Racism: The Centuries-Long Exploitation of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, examines policies to address climate justice on a global scale. Click on the link below to read Peter’s research.
Continue reading “Black Futures and Environmental Racism”