“For far too long, people of color have been at the bottom of the pile”: Why black churches are embr

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“For far too long, people of color have been at the bottom of the pile”: Why black churches are embracing the clean energy revolution

by Lindsay Abrams at Salon

http://www.salon.com/2015/08/23/for_far_too_long_people_of_color_have_been_at_the_bottom_of_the_pile_why_black_churches_are_embracing_the_clean_energy_revolution/

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Of course. The African American community has always been very close to the land, and they’ve also been very sincere as a people of faith. So yes, as the pope talks about our spiritual and moral responsibility to take leadership on this issue, and about why it’s important not just for the survival of man, but to our humanity — to the fact that we cannot be all that we should be as human beings if we are unattached to the Earth — we think that that’s important.


As African Americans as well, though, living in inner-city and even some in rural areas — we are people who come out of slavery, we are people who have worked the land, have been connected to the land, for the last 60 years or so, and in our urban environments, we have become so disconnected from the land itself. That is affecting or food consumption, what things we are putting into our bodies, because our urban centers are often places where there are higher levels of pollution and things of that nature. It stresses even more why we need to pay attention to these issues, and that our voices need to be heard. We have high levels of diabetes, of asthma — a whole lot of issues that are affecting our life on the planet, and also the health of the planet.

In U.S. surveys, African Americans, and people of color, in general, are much more likely to say they believe that climate change is happening, and that they’re concerned about its impact, than the general American public. Do you think some of these factors help account for that?

I think so. I’ve been in church meetings with 200 people, and we raised the same question: do we believe the climate is changing? And then we began to ask why. And of course, yes, living in West Oakland, we are in the midst of a five-year drought; we know that things are changing. But one older woman in the congregation said, “Oh, I know the climate’s changing, because the tomatoes are smaller in my garden.” And that struck me, because even in our urban environments, there are individuals who moved with the African American migration in the ’40s and ’50s, and they are still very tied in to the Earth, as they were before they left Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana. It’s just a part of the culture to pay attention to the natural order, and many come from that vantage point. I grew up in a household where people would tell you it was going to rain depending on how their knees felt. We’re very connected to the Earth and to the environment, and I think that’s why you have a larger percentage of African Americans saying that climate change is real.




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