Black Displacement in the 21st Century

Climate displacement is here in the United States. It is estimated that 3 million people are already climate migrants within the country. Many of these people have been displaced by a changing coastline or events like wildfires. By 2050, there will be 50% more wildfires in parts of the US than there are now. The border between the United States and Mexico has been an issue of contention over the past decade. The border stands in contradiction with itself. Much of the labor of the US economy, such as agriculture, is done by migrants from Central and South America. Some are in the US season; others live here year-round. Despite migrant labor being crucial to the economy, the security around the US border has only tightened, and undocumented migrants have been more and more criminalized. This sense of precarity enforced by the US government at various levels through security agencies like ICE is designed to control the lives of laborers and to prevent them from taking action against their employers. Climate displacement is often discussed in the context of the Global South migrating to the Global North, such as people in Latin America or the Middle East moving by land or sea to Europe and the United States. Climate migration is also a localized and racialized issue within the United States. Climate catastrophes and instability has produced hundreds of thousands of climate migrants within the United States. Many of those migrants are being displaced from the land they lived on for generations.

The larger context of the late 19th and early 20th centuries would lead to one of the most significant movements of people in modern times. There were "pull" and "push" factors that had influenced many Black Americans to move from the South. Some of the push factors were racist terror and oppression by both the state and federal governments, which limited the ability of the formerly enslaved to find jobs, move homes, and find new employment and left them with very little support. Many formerly enslaved were working as sharecroppers on the plantations in which they used to be enslaved.

The first Ku Klux Klan, formed in 1865, had begun killing Black people and further increased the stress in which Black Americans were living under this new brutal racial hierarchy. Since most formerly enslaved were still working in agriculture, pests such as the boll weevil would devastate the livelihoods of the freedmen and women. In 1915 and 1916, 70% of cotton crops in Alabama were destroyed by boll weevils. Conversely, there will also be "pull" factors, drawing them Northwards. 

The new job opportunities in the urbanized North in factories were lucrative compared to those in the South. The men would work in factories while the women would work as domestic servants. Community leaders such as pastors sometimes advocated for migration northward, as did Northern companies. Instead of finding better job opportunities and a better quality of life, many of them found discrimination and hardship, often living in slum like conditions.

Some of the three current threats from climate displacement in the US are flooding, wildfires and heat. Although heat can be deadly and devastating, climate project deaths from heat are relatively low, but are projected to increase globally. The worsening heat is caused by and will affect millions of people across the US including much of Southwest, Southeast and Midwest, nearly half the country.

Hurricane Katrina was one of the most devastating natural events over the past few decades. The storm caused 160 billion dollars in damages, and the population of New Orleans fell by 29% between 2005 and 2011. Even with growth, the city population in 2020 was less than what it had been in 2000. Thousands of units of housing were lost and never rebuilt. Many of the city's poorest residents at the time evacuated, never to return, especially those who lived in public housing projects. Gentrification also began to accelerate after Katrina. Research has shown that the areas most damaged by the hurricane were the most likely to have gentrification. The hurricane shifted the city's social landscape and urban fabric, and it would never be the same.

Injustice in the wake of natural disasters is not unique to just the south. In 2013, Hurricane Sandy devastated much of New York and New Jersey. Low-lying places on the coast, such as the Far Rockaways in NYC, were hit especially hard. In the aftermath of the disaster, many families living in the communities were dealing with a lack of electricity, food, water, and hygienic products. A movement known as Occupy Sandy formed, which provided much needed resources to the families in the community. Occupy Sandy, which was made primarily of organized New Yorkers,  delivered food to the isolated high rise apartments. Occupy Sandy also ran free stores, mutual aid sites and collected donations. movement was largely formed from former Occupy Wall Street organizers. Occupy Sandy was able to provide essential goods such as food and hygienic products to communities trapped, and affected by the hurricane, without the help of any city, state or federal institution. In the aftermath of Katrina and Sandy, the FEMA and Red Cross responses were both inadequate as they couldn't provide essential goods, or did not understand the means to deliver them. Once some time had passed, and the disaster community which had formed, had largely dissipated, a new battle began in the Rockaways: the rebuilding process. Many folks living in the Rockaways rebuilt, or used government buyouts to live in newly constructed homes close to where they lived previously. Many residents did not want to leave the Rockaways and their established communities. For the Black communities in the Rockaways and in other places, their options are limited. However, research has found they are given more options for their white counterpart neighborhoods. White communities receive more assistance in FEMA funding, while neighborhoods inhabited by People of Color are more likely to accept them. Many Black Rockaway residents claim that white communities got more options in the aftermath of rebuilding (options to rebuild, repair, and elevate their homes) and also received the majority of relief fundings. In 2016, and 2022, buyout talks for properties in the Rockaways resumed, and some are questioning how long the Rockaways will be livable for. The Department of Housing and Preservation Development proposed an upzoning in the Far Rockaways in 2022 to build high-rise rentals and more residents. The community of the Rockaways was unanimously against it.

In a 2022 study, research found that Black and Latinx neighborhoods were most at risk from flooding of all racial demographics. In 2016, Eastern North Carolina flooded due to Hurricane Matthew. Some of the hardest-hit areas were Black communities. Thousands of people were displaced. Many of those families have lived in the area for generations, and their freed ancestors purchased the land in which they lived. However, the towns received fewer resources for levee construction and fewer resources for rebuilding than the white towns. After the flooding, the residents had a few choices: stay and rebuild with government assistance or accept a buyout. Many residents tried to stay, but the towns would flood again a few years later. More and more residents would accept buyouts and eventually leave. The once thriving towns were now ghostly. Princeville, the first town created by Freedmen in the wake of the Civil War, even got support from Al Sharpton to rebuild. One of the neighborhoods, Lincoln City, has a tradition of a yearly reunion for the people who used to grow up in the neighborhood. The reunion is one of the biggest economic draws to the town because of its size.

A new form of gentrification has developed with the increasing climate crisis: “climate gentrification.” Climate gentrification is caused by displacement due to changes in the livability of an area. By 2100, much of low-lying Florida is projected to be underwater, and Miami is no exception. There are now concerns from organizers and housing justice advocates that gentrification is spreading to the more inland areas of Florida. Climate change will displace millions of people living in Florida and one million in Miami alone. Black and brown communities living in areas less prone to flooding are now coveted by real estate developers.

In the 2020s, the political awareness of fascism and its principles has become widespread. The term “eco-fascism” has emerged in the popular vocabulary over the past few years. Eco-fascism can be defined as. These ideas connected to overpopulation are not new in Western thought and date back centuries. The famed economist Thomas Malthus believed that the planet's population would increase much faster than the food supply after a certain point, and mass starvation would ensue.  This legacy continues into the 21st century, not through the lens of pure overpopulation but through resource use and artificial scarcity. Much of the burden of climate change is placed on the Global South. Much of the blame is disproportionately put on the Global South. 

China, for example, has the world's largest emissions in terms of the total released, but the United States and Australia have much higher emissions per capita. Despite being the most populous nations on their respective continents, places like India and Nigeria have much lower emissions per capita than all Western nations. The world produces enough food for nearly 1.5 times the current population, but millions go hungry yearly. Many of the resources communities need worldwide are privatized through artificial scarcity. In 2020, companies such as Pfizer, Moderna, and others kept the patent and manufacturing knowledge of the vaccines secret, which made it much more difficult for nations in the Global South to produce their own vaccines. By October 2021, most vaccines produced by weather nations were sent to other wealthy nations. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the British empires committed several genocides by exporting food from countries such as Ireland and India. The imperialists made profits, while people in colonized places starved as their staple crops, such as potatoes and rice, were exported. As climate instability continues, the current EU foreign policy chief, Joseph Borrel, called Europe a prosperous “garden” and referred to the rest of the world as a “jungle.” These statements and the historical actions by the Global North show that their plans for the climate crisis are to continue to hoard valuable goods and services and to use the tools developed through colonialism and imperialism to increase global inequality. 

Within the United States, the story may be similar. In the 1990s, the term Brazilianization was coined to express the contradictory notions of development of the world that are similar to Brazil. Brazil is a nation with a large economy, modern infrastructure, and a rich culture. It also has extreme poverty, a sprawling informal economy, and massive wealth inequality. With the furthering of inequities in the US under capitalism, poverty, and economic precarity will worsen. Climate migrants, and victims of disasters in the US such as Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy already have lived with a sense of reality through recovering their homes, and neighborhoods. Nations such as the US, Australia, Canada, and some EU countries may also be facing forms of economic and social decline in the future because the foundations of their modern economies are built on imperial and colonial extraction at home and abroad.

Marshfield, Vermont-Despite much of the swirling and rising conflict around displacement in the US, there is organizing focused on addressing the potential challenges of living in an unstable  climate.  Cooperation Jackson, which aims to develop a solidarity economy network in Jackson Mississippi. They purchased land in Vermont to settle climate refugees from the South. Despite the South still having a hospitable climate, some organizers are starting to see a future in the South as limited. In the wake of many natural disasters communities often prove to be resilient, and many support their neighborhoods, and themselves as much as they can. Salvage Patching refers to salvaging usable and workable materials from ruin, and often reusing and finding new forms of relationships to survive. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, Occupy Sandy emerged. The movement was largely formed from former Occupy Wall Street organizers. Occupy Sandy set up mutual aid distribution, and methods to provide essential goods such as food and hygienic products to communities trapped, and affected by the hurricane. Just as climate instability is uneven,  in its geographies, it will also  be uneven what communities will be affected. BIPOC and queer communities may be more at risk from displacement and economic precarity from the effects of climate stability  The patchwork of emerging survival networks may be built on the legacies of resistance which already exist as well as new relationships between the land they live on.  Movements such as Occupy Sandy and Cooperation Jackson are contemporary examples of building climate resilience. The century will see displacement and migration, and that may be physical, but at its core that means the migration and displacement of the American soul.

In terms of battling the climate crisis, decolonization is crucial. Marginalized groups such as Black and Indigenous Americans have had their communities displaced and devastated by the United States and its colonial practices. Before, indigenous land stewardship practices were disregarded by Western leaders and scientists. More indigenous land stewardship practices are being used and are often more effective than current standards. Land back and decolonization are crucial in fighting the climate crisis. The United States is waging different practices of genocide and social death on Black and Indigenous communities across the nation. Israel is waging a genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people, which has displaced millions. Black Americans have a history of solidarity with the Indigenous peoples of the Americas and Palestine. Climate displacement and colonial warfare are the exact root cause of modern capitalism. In the US, Black communities face displacement due to real estate interest, negligent environmental planning, and being forced to purchase undesirable land as it was the only land that would be sold to them. In occupied Palestine, the Palestinian people are being forced off of their land due to air strikes, forced demolitions, and settler expansion. Although the methods are different, the causes are the same: capitalism. For communities and the planet to overcome climate change, collective care and decolonization systems must be deeply implemented across the globe.