So greenwashing is pretty well-established as being when corporations try to pretend that they’re “greener” than they actually are.
But recent conversations have made me realize that a similar phenomenon is happening with environmental and climate justice as well (and maybe it’s been happening forever but I’ve just been too naive to notice?).
I’ve seen it in the hierarchies of EJ-focused non-profit orgs, where white folks at the top make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, where if you put faces next to the org chart you would soooo quickly see that it gets darker the further you go down and significantly less compensated.
But still, they want to flaunt the pics of darker folks to the lighter donors…
(See Dr. Dorceta Taylor’s work at diversegreen.org for a systematic look at representation within non-profits.)
I’m still figuring out how to articulate what is often a gut feeling, but I’ve been having people tell me about how they’re trying to align their work with EJ because it’s becoming more popular (I can’t remember the exact phrasing but will try to track it better if it happens again).
I’ve been seeing folks about EJ when their current work is really focused on high income customers and there are only vague plans on how to actually serve everyone else (and like, it’s totally fine and sometimes necessary to focus on high-paying customers, but then, like, don’t try to pretend that EJ is at the core of your work).
I’ve been seeing them say that social justice is their priority while enabling more of the individual choices that have led us into this mess instead of thinking about the systems that influence our decisions.
I’ve seen orgs that deny the “relevance” of indigenous issues to environmental justice then turn around and center it in their programming, with predominantly non-PoC speakers, or who talk about how they’re on some EJ panels while brushing off the downstream impacts of their work on displacement rates, etc.
These experiences are making me wonder, is it even worth it trying to be part of some of these organizations or systems that have “low diversity”?
Like, it seems the want us so bad.
But maybe they just don’t deserve us.