The Congressional Black Caucus has joined forces with a group that calls itself the Hip Hop Caucus to fight a new form of racial injustice. Its name is climate change, and “communities of color bear” its “biggest burden.” The coalition has even released a consciousness-raising video:
The International Journal Report notes that the campaign is being led on the CBC side by Reps. Keith Ellison and André Carson, who are taking their show on the road, visiting predominantly black college campuses. In an interview, Ellison strained to explain why the black community is disproportionately hurt by climate change:
If you’ve ever wondered about test scores between black students and white students, if you’ve ever wondered about health disparities, if you’ve ever wondered about who gets to make it through the flood and the big bad storm and who doesn’t, you really don’t have to look any further than this issue of climate change.
It’s a pretty loony assumption, but Ellison isn’t the only conspiracy theorist. An online annotated bibliography compiled by someone named Robert D. Bullard titled “Climate change and African Americans” posits that “Global climate change looms as a major environmental justice issue of the 21st century.” Bullard cites about a dozen articles published between 1992 and 2008 that outwardly appear to substantiate his claim. However, almost all of the links are non-functional, and the few that work link to articles that seem to have been chosen for their shoddy scholarship and/or lack of documentation.
