rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

anyway, i would guess that anyone that has intense rage about a plant or immigrants would also rage about many other things which also don't deserve it at all, so better to unfollow/unfriend

― the world's undisputed #1 fan of 'Spud Infinity' (Karl Malone), Wednesday, March 9, 2022 4:19 PM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

oh these people aren't my friends lol they're just rando followers of national parks who pushed back very emotionally after i posted a note about xenophobic overtones along with this article https://e360.yale.edu/features/native-species-or-invasive-the-distinction-blurs-as-the-world-warms

xp haha, i don't know, i'll just agree to disagree on that, sorry. whacking invasive plants is the kind of family-friendly, normal activity that you can do with children to teach them about ecology

I swear I have never seen “invasive species” associated with human immigration or whatever. Most of this stuff comes over via shipping and our glorious international trade. So this whole “trying to combat invasive species is racism” train of thought is just weird to me.

same

like, if i were teaching 3rd grade or whatever, i think it would be good to take them on a short field trip to learn about invasive plants

I mean the emerald ash borer kills ash trees. We already lost american chestnuts and elms. I’d like to not have another eastern us tree species go bye bye.

well i have some bad news for you

Still a bit confused about whether we're talking about rhetorical framing (which is what the nib article I posted is about) or the actual effects of plants on ecosystems.

why not both?

i'm just postin tbh, drinking some coffee :)

Fascists will seize on anything, and there is evidence that eco fascists are performing exactly the kind of nudge nudge wink wink stuff that map is talking about. It isn’t to say that biodiversity isn’t important, of course it is, but like anything in this cursed world, beware of your fellow travelers who might agree with you on this one issue.

we need a thread about trees. trees are cool

Sometimes I feel like a character in Meredith Monk’s “Memory Game”:

I remember… elm trees
I remember… when it snowed in the DC area

So glad to have spent time confirming map wasn’t imagining things :)

Fascists will seize on anything, and there is evidence that eco fascists are performing exactly the kind of nudge nudge wink wink stuff that map is talking about. It isn’t to say that biodiversity isn’t important, of course it is, but like anything in this cursed world, beware of your fellow travelers who might agree with you on this one issue.

― mardheamac (gyac), Wednesday, March 9, 2022 4:42 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i'm a huge fan of biodiversity. i don't actually think weedwhacking is terrible. if we could really fight species loss by *ahem* losing species i would advocate for it, but i have my doubts.

that being said, people who are really into protecting wilderness have a vibe, and that vibe is friendly to extreme stances that emphasize purity.

So says California’s civil rights agency in a lawsuit filed against the electric-vehicle maker in Alameda County Superior Court on Thursday on behalf of thousands of Black workers after a decade of complaints and a 32-month investigation.

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Friday, February 11, 2022 6:24 PM (three weeks ago)

omg ... i feel like there's something here that speaks to the focus of the vocal activists against racism and white supremacy here in Alameda County, which is very vocal and active around these issues. I don't mean this in a negative way. But, considering we had major protests in the past couple months about public school closures (due to budget issues and population shifts) that were centered around race and racism, including teachers on hunger strike ... the fact that there weren't major protests and callouts about this is noteworthy. Maybe it's because the plants are out in the suburbs idk. Again, not wanting to be a "whataboutist" just that I actually wasn't aware of it, and Alameda County activists are very good at letting people know about racist shit going on locally.

* saying "Alameda County" as a way to concisely include Oakland and Berkeley people

kudzu discourse in the south has absolutely had racist overtones (or just tones) to it

Yeah, sorry, there being fascist over or undertones to some rhetoric in the environmental movement doesn't mean that invasive species don't exist and aren't totally destructive to native biodiversity.

To me it just seems like a real baby and bathwater moment.

"Oh these fascists are using the language of ecology to spread racist tropes? Might as well not care about the principles of ecology "

To me it just seems like a real baby and bathwater moment.

"Oh these fascists are using the language of ecology to spread racist tropes? Might as well not care about the principles of ecology "

I wasn't addressing anything you, just adding my pov? Why do you take everything I write as a personal assault on you? Calm down.

Always a good look, telling a woman to calm down.

xp
sorry, I may have muddied things even further. I wasn't even talking about the environmental movement, just kudzu discourse in general (the "green plague" the "thug plant"). I do not think the concept of invasive species is inherently racist

map, not sure if you can read this but it may interest you: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26225593

interesting.

i don't know to what extent this is really present in ecologic discourse but i think any time there's a framing of it in terms of "original = good" and "corrupted = bad" it's a weak point. it doesn't mean that some plants aren't too far on the extreme of hogging resources to be desired in a particular environment. but in general i think people should move away from trying to "preserve" and "restore" and acknowledge that stewarding biological diversity is an act of creation that includes human input in important ways.

i'm not trying to criticize or start a beef or anything, but i'll just note that "stewarding biological diversity is an act of creation that includes human input in important ways" sounds like a slogan for an oil company

i agree, of course, that humans are part of the environment and that the sum of what we do and don't do has an enormous effect on the rest of it

but in general i think people should move away from trying to "preserve" and "restore" and acknowledge that stewarding biological diversity is an act of creation that includes human input in important ways.

And so is fomenting destruction of biodiversity, map. "Just leaving nature be" is sometimes a laudable position when talking about certain environmental issues. For example, I'm pretty firmly against off-shore wind farms, because of the amount of destruction they do to already threatened aquatic habitats. But simply allowing threatening plant species or pests to destroy important parts of North America's biodiversity because some fascist assholes use it as a cover for their fascism is a non-starter for me.

ok

If the spotted lanternfly makes its way down to my county this summer, I'm picking up one of these fuckers and going to war.

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0475/2107/1253/products/BASGuns-OrangeCrush-1689.jpg?v=1634858446

i guess i'll just give an example to illustrate what i'm trying to get at. outside of boulder utah there is a small stream that runs off boulder mountain and eventually descends into the rock of the colorado plateau. right before it does, it passes through an area that used to be a cattle ranch. now it is half-ranch and half-rustic tourist resort. the ranch part still does single-crop alfalfa farming, but below that, the resort has modified the water flow in a few ways to create a very beautiful sanctuary for birds, bees, and plants. there are still areas of overgrazed and parched brush here and there, and afaik they do minimal planting or weeding to the grounds beyond a garden with a few crops, but the water motification has transformed the area into a place that is undoubtedly more biodiverse than it was as a cattle ranch, and possibly more biodiverse than it was as a single stream surrounded by pinion/juniper.

i think ecology discourse could use a little less of the american virgin / whore thing and take a more sober, clear-eyed view of the values that we want to instill in the gardens that surround us, possibly including one called "balance."

I'd simply say that the pinion/juniper and stream from pre-ranching days was garden enough, but your point is taken.

What the rest of us are getting worked up about, obviously, is that there are any number of pests (both insect and plant) that are actively killing parts of native forest. There are hardly any Ash trees left near where I live, and every warm season there are swarms of the spotted lanternfly, which are absolutely disastrous for many plants and the animals that depend upon them. So many trees have died in the years since it first got to metro Philly.

peace, man, one way to fight the lanternfly is to PLANT MILKWEED. The lanternfly loves it and is attracted to it, but milkweed sap immobilizes and kills the lanternfly :-)

Sweet! Will do

I would consider an "invasive" species to be any introduced plant, insect, crustacean, fungus, animal or other organism whose proliferation significantly degrades the food chain of an entire ecosystem, leading to large increases in mortality in all parts of that ecosystem. And, yes, I recognize that under that definition European colonization across the globe has been by far the most destructive instance of such invasion.

^ ^ ^ Yep

yalta.jpg

wait, table and Aimless may have never beefed

No, we have.

I swear I have never seen “invasive species” associated with human immigration or whatever.

So is this where we talk about the racist buzzwording about the "Africanized" killer bee invasion?

this seems relevant, I found this article very thought-provoking, ATTN table and map and Elvis

https://thenaturalfarmer.org/article/rethinking-the-invasive-species-paradigm/

that looks really informative, thanks.

wait, table and Aimless may have never beefed

― imago, Wednesday, March 9, 2022 2:26 PM (four hours ago)

lol what? it's rare to see them agree on anything remotely political!

okok, my initial instincts otm lol

thanks for the article post sleeve

thanks sleeve.

xp imago, i can say you were OTM 490 if that helps?

https://streetcarsuburbs.news/camp-reenacts-civil-war-battle-on-juneteenth-director-apologizes/

White guy wearing a Howard t shirt ?

Howard University? if so, then no

If not racist then…inappropriate?