Deculturalization

Mainstream media environmentalism has a narrow and romanticized definition of environmental issues that more often than not, neglect people of color and low-income families. Its these communities that are not only affected the most but the ones that true environmental justice has always been reliant upon for the initiation of research, the definition of systematic issues, and leadership. Environmental issues cannot be discussed without also discussing the laborers and skills-people of land. In the Black community…for some that may not have been raised as privy to their rural roots as others, their first association with agriculture and horticulture can often be negative due to the generationally traumatic effects of antebellum slavery. The miseducated way in which popular history even teaches the narratives of African people pre-Transatlantic Slave Trade and during, further distances their descendants from sharing a connection with land as rich as that shared by Black agrarian infrastructures littered throughout history among the diasporas and continent. This deculturalization of Blacks from land cultivation practices is equally a result of the USDA and reconstruction era discrimination against Black farmers in its allocation of farm loans and assistance, as well as local enforcement preventing them from seeking farm work outside of debt peonage-styled sharecropping. As industrialization began and American family units shrank, it became the catalyst for segregation by lessening the use for Black exploited agricultural labor. More than 600,000 Blacks left the south for manufacturing work in the North and Midwest regions. With this, an emphasis on different skills were adapted for a more urban environment.