Month: February 2022

“New York’s Invisible Climate Migrants” and “Racial Capitolocence” both have different viewpoints on environmental racism. “New York’s Invisible Climate Migrants” made the reader more aware of how the Climate Change affected the Canarsie Community. “Racial Capitolocence” on the other hand is a more opinionated piece where a variety of authors have different perspectives of the impact race plays on climate change. After reading both articles it is prevalent that low income and race plays hand in hand to the injustice of climate change in your community.

Hurricane Sandy forced the people of Canarsie, a Caribbean neighborhood in Brooklyn to leave their homes, some even moving back to their home countries. Harold Jones, a resident in of the Canarsie neighborhood believes “a lot of people don’t have the resources to rebuild” resulting in companies wanting to “buy homes for cash” in the community. The Government programs designed to help the community were considered “inadequate” which forced people who did not want to move to move anyway.

“Racial Capitolocence” article goes on to add how business’ prey on flood ridden communities. The article describes Climate Change as “a project for colonial powers” and a “unintentional consequence of industrialization. As a result of this many communities will continue to suffer financially for years to come

 

While reading “Racial Capitalocene” by Francoise Vergès, and “New York’s Invisible Climate Migrants” by Sophie Kasakoves’ articles, I realized how governments take advantage of the poor communities/minorities to develop what they want those areas to be. In other words, the government is trying to make rich people happier so that they can receive more money from them by using those resources from the poor communities. 

“Growing up in a communist, anticolonial, and feminist family, I learned early that the environment had been shaped by slavery and colonialism — a reading of space that gave meaning to where cities were built, where poor people lived, and how the large sugarcane fields, rivers, mountains, volcanos, and beaches had been inscribed in the colonial and postcolonial economy” (Francoise Vergès). Slavery and colonialism are the foundation of the environment, so people are hard working will develop the area that they live in and create value out of it. Unfortunately, the government just doesn’t care about what they did, they only see the money opportunity or how much money they can make from these areas. Since the minority live there, the living condition definitely is low and probably everything just costs a low price. They just started building those chemical factories and just released the harmful gasses. Then the minorities’ health was inaccessible. Just like what the article said: “Some of his old neighbors are leaving, and they’re being replaced by those who can afford to take on the risk of living in a flood-prone area” (Sophie Kasakove). The minority houses were taken by the rich people, or house agency. Just because they see the money opportunity from it. No matter what consequences that minorities will face later on. It is not just about the race, it is about who does government is trying to get close to and satisfied their needs.

In the articles, “Racial Capitalocene” by Francoise Vergès and “New York’s Invisible Climate Migrants” by Sophie Kasakove, there was a sense of discussion when it came to race playing a big factor when it comes to environments. Both articles established the idea that the environments that people live in are influenced heavily by their race and it can serve as a detriment.

In the article, “Racial Capitalocene,” by Francoise Vergès, it states, “It showed that race was the single most important factor in determining where toxic waste facilities were sited in the United States and that the siting of these facilities in communities of color was the intentional result of local, state, and federal land-use policies…The report demonstrated that “three out of every five Black and Hispanic Americans lived in communities with uncontrolled toxic waste sites.” Many minority people are surrounded by toxic waste sites that are not controlled and it goes to show the lack of the amount of care that corporations and the government have for the people. The fact that many minorities live in areas with toxic waste sites establishes the idea that there is not much concern being put for their lives and well-being and it displays how race influences the environments that people live in.

The article, “New York’s Invisible Climate Migrants,” Sophie Kasakove,  states, “In the Rockaways, in Queens, and Brooklyn’s Canarsie, the median asking rent is $1,837 and $2,000, respectively, compared with an overall median of $2,199 in Queens and $2,500 in Brooklyn…In 2017, in Canarsie and neighboring Flatlands, 62 percent of the population identified as black and the homeownership rate was 57 percent, the highest of any neighborhood in Brooklyn.” The areas within New York that are more available to people of the middle class are the same areas that do not have good public transportation and they have to deal with climate change. Many minorities are within those areas and they have to put up with the circumstances that they have within their environments. Kasakove states, “Many who applied for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency are still waiting today. And flood insurance rates have increased in some neighborhoods by as much as 18 percent per year…” The people within the areas that suffered from climate change have to deal with agencies not giving the money to recover from the climate change and they also have to pay higher flood insurance rates within those areas. Many minorities are from those areas and they cannot afford living in other areas in the city due to the high prices and they have to deal with the climate change in their environments. Race is an influence for the environments that people live in.

Whether or not people are brave enough to face it, climate change will become an issue we have to respond to eventually. Along with climate change itself, we will also be forced to address the inequality that will come in terms of those who are affected by it. Both articles from Versobooks and The New Republic highlight one important thing: “it’s a race to the bottom.” While climate change is something that will be viewed as a catastrophe to the majority of the population, to businesses, it will become simply another venture. The New Republic’s article “New York’s Invisible Climate Migrants” gives us an existing example of how this happened with Superstorm Sandy. The article details how a significant number of lower-income residents were forced out of their homes because they couldn’t afford to repair their homes. These vacant residences were subjected to predatory businesses, and some took the bait because they had no other choice.  But it has always been this way; lower-income and minority citizens are always guinea pigs for the federal government. As demonstrated by Capitalocene, “race was the single most important factor in determining where toxic waste facilities were sited in the United States and that the siting of these facilities in communities of color was the intentional result of local, state, and federal land-use policies.” With this statement, we are forced to accept an uncomfortable truth, one that would be vehemently rejected by some: race is absolutely important in determining how your community is treated. Intentional policy in the 80s was intentionally designed to put toxic waste facilities near non-white neighborhoods, an action that is also a metaphor in itself. Until we learn how to stop valuing businesses and profit over the livelihoods of our citizens, we can only expect these problems to become ever more exacerbated as climate change worsens.

 

The increasing severity of global warming makes human society more and more unstable, the temperature rises, and climate disasters have made people’s ordinary life an unprecedented impact. In both articles, it is stated that the flooding has forced most people to evacuate from some coastal areas, and they are forced to sell their houses because they are unwilling to bear the economic damage after the disaster. In addition to the individual who can afford it, most of them think that this is something that will happen sooner or later. Even though the government has promulgated a series of solutions and disaster insurance, etc., there are still people who are unwilling to take this high risk. Clearly, both articles focus on one salient point, the incomparable importance of race to housing. The article “New Yorks Invisible Climate Migrants” by Sophie Kasakove mentions “They are some of the only places where homeownership is attainable for middle-class families, particularly for black families: In 2017, in Canarsie and neighboring Flatlands, 62 percent of the population identified as black and the homeownership rate was 57 percent, the highest of any neighborhood in Brooklyn. Homeowners in areas affected by Sandy were foreclosed upon at twice the rate of those in similar neighborhoods elsewhere in the U.S., according to an Urban Institute study published in April. And the rate was higher in areas where a majority of residents were nonwhite.” In this case, the choice of black families has become particularly difficult, and the government’s policies have not been able to help them, and they have also become victims of profit. Another article makes a similar claim: “the erosion of rights, the politics of nonraciality beneath which, as David Theo Goldberg has argued, lurk more sinister shadows of the racial everyday and persistent institutional and structural racisms — and racial capitalism. Global warming and its consequences for the peoples of the South is a political question and must be understood outside of the limits of “climate change” and in the context of the inequalities produced by racial capital.” They are well aware that this is a historic political issue, but no one wants to change it, especially from the aftermath of climate change, where we can see a lot of disputes of interests, and many of these black communities are neglected and underdeveloped , and the government just let them take care of themselves. Obviously, these are some of the darkest conditions of this age.

Whether we like it or not, Race does and will continue to determine what your community will look like. Even the blind eye could see how this all unfolds and how the black community is being treated with their way of living. With the city not helping to fund or help in any way, it makes it seem that they have to “pick up the slack” since that’s the only way it seems to be. So the main point I would like to make is that black neighborhoods are just not being taken care of and both articles support that claim. To start off in the “Racial Capitalocene” article, they mention how many decisions made was actually racially motivated which could explain some made by the Reagan administration. “In the 1980s, the Reagan administration’s practice of cutting the budgets of federal environmental agencies had aggravated racist decisions. The report demonstrated that “three out of every five Black and Hispanic Americans lived in communities with uncontrolled toxic waste sites”. Once again, those communities are not being taken care of and are seen as just some other. In “New York’s Invisible Climate Migrants”,  this article talks a lot about how climate change originally forced people out of their homes and how even if it wasn’t necessarily their fault they still had to find a way. With their lack of resources, the wealthy saw this as a money grab which made a lot of the residents in New York but specifically Canarsie eventually move out. “Even before Sandy, though, it wasn’t easy to keep a home in these neighborhoods. Targeted intensely by subprime lenders during the housing bubble, they have consistently had some of the highest foreclosure rates in the city. But after Sandy, it became even harder”. Now these two articles are not directly related but both addressed that the Black community is not being taken care of.

After reading Racial Capitalocene by Francoise Vergès and New York’s Invisible Climate Migrants by Sophie Kasakove, I learned that minorities tend to live in poorer conditions with various risks due to financial concerns. “Three out of every five Black and Hispanic Americans lived in communities with uncontrolled toxic waste sites”(Vergès). and “people of color make up the majority of those living in host neighborhoods within 3 km of the nation’s hazardous waste facilities”(Vergès). Living near waste sites could lead to health concerns since the neighborhoods in these areas are likely to be polluted due to the accumulation of wastes over time. Meanwhile in Canarsie, the neighborhood is unsafe due to the predictable floods that could occur at any time. Despite this, minorities were left with no choice but to live here since the rent in New York City is so expensive and they can not afford to live in normal neighborhoods. “In the Rockaways, in Queens, and Brooklyn’s Canarsie, the median asking rent is $1,837 and $2,000, respectively, compared with an overall median of $2,199 in Queens and $2,500 in Brooklyn, according to StreetEasy”(Kasakove). 

Instead of helping residents with their financial difficulties, FEMA increased the prices of flood insurances in order to “pull itself out of $20 billion debt”(Kasakove). The real estate was also taking advantage of this situation by offering cash to buy homeowners of Canarsie. Residents that sold their properties were forced to “move south, while others returned to the Caribbean islands they’d emigrated from”(Kasakove) because “[With] the house you sell here, you can’t afford anything anywhere”(Kasakove). This shows businesses only care about profits instead of helping the struggling minorities. Another example would be the genetically engineered trees in Racial Capitalocene which the company presents itself as a “leading global provider of conventional and next generation plantation trees”(Vergès) that cares about the environment. In reality, the company uses eucalyptus for profit in paper industries that “contribute to the depletion of water, desertification of soils, and loss of biodiversity”(Vergès).

One of the most prevailing issues currently circulating the globe is climate change. As scientists and analysts predict that the world may end in a matter of years, some people have already felt the effects of global warming right at the front of their doorsteps. Yet, during these troublesome times, the government has neglected to specifically help, and instead, further jeopardize the housing situation of low-income ethnic minorities. 

Understandably, citizens look towards the government for aid and security, however; those who are of low income and an ethnic minority race are met with racial disparity instead. Looking specifically at coastal New York City, the occurrence of floods and hurricanes isn’t new for its residents. However, the issue arose from the rise of housing and insurance prices due to the raging climate. As discussed by Sophie Kasakove in her article, “New York’s Invisible Climate Migrants,” an area such as Canarsie, which is a predominantly black neighborhood in Brooklyn, have been described as constantly being on the back end of climate strife’s. Since the government programs that were supposedly intended to assist its residents with recovery costs were “notoriously inadequate” (Kasakove), the residents were eventually forced to leave with limited options to relocate elsewhere. Not only were the government policies of little to no help, but the situation of the majority-black residents was also exploited by real-estate businesses to be made a profit off of. Outside of coastal regions, racially motivated governmental neglect continues to persist in the form of toxic waste sites. As stated in Francoise Vergès’ article,  “Racial Capitalocene,” in a 1987 publication of Toxic Waste and Race of the United States, it was revealed that “race was the single most important factor in determining where toxic waste facilities were sited in the United States” (Vergès). Instead of being protected by the government, Black and Hispanic communities were “intentionally” made a target for the disposal of dangerous toxic wastes, which were described as byproducts of colonialism contributing to the “Man” (Vergès) influenced global warming. Racially motivated agendas such as this have unfortunately always existed in history. Within the sphere of climate change, especially, the impact the government has on the quality of life for ethnic minority communities should not be overlooked as it has and will set the precedent for the future.

Your race primarily determines the conditions in the community you live in. Often black communities lack city and federal funding. Consequently, they are either forced to pick up the government’s slack or be driven out of their neighborhood. The article “New Yorks Invisible Climate Migrants” by Sophie Kasakove mentions how many black people in Canarsie and other flood-prone communities in New York are being forced out due to housing affordability. Following Hurricane Sandy, Flood insurance rates have skyrocketed, making it harder for homeowners to keep up with these payments. Lack of funding has also played a role in delaying the restorations of the damages brought by Hurricane Sandy. Many homeowners have given up or moved out, leaving these homes for developers to restore. She mentions, “The flight of working-class homeowners from these neighborhoods has accelerated gentrification, as deep-pocketed investors and developers were best equipped to take on the financial risk after the storm.” The actions of many developers have also made it worse for those who choose to stay in Canarsie as it becomes more gentrified and rent continues to increase. Likewise, In the article “Racial Capitalocene” by Francoise Verges, she states, “It showed that race was the single most important factor in determining where toxic waste facilities were sited in the United States and that the siting of these facilities in communities of color … the Reagan administration’s practice of cutting the budgets of federal environmental agencies had aggravated racist decisions.” This quote reveals how toxic waste facilities are more common in black communities bringing attention to the disparities minorities face. The shared theme in both articles is, Black and Hispanic communities are mistreated due to a substantial lack of funding from the government. This funding from the federal government is essential as it prevents many developers and big companies from taking advantage of minorities when they’re looking for assistance.