Humanity`s Last Stand – Confronting Global Catastrophe
Autor Mark Schuller, Cynthia Mckinneyen Limba Engleză Paperback – 14 ian 2021
Are we as a species headed towards extinction? As our economic system renders our planet increasingly inhospitable to human life, powerful individuals fight over limited resources, and racist reaction to migration strains the social fabric of many countries. How can we retain our humanity in the midst of these life-and-death struggles?
Humanity’s Last Stand dares to ask these big questions, exploring the interconnections between climate change, global capitalism, xenophobia, and white supremacy. As it unearths how capitalism was born from plantation slavery and the slaughter of Indigenous people, it also invites us to imagine life after capitalism. The book teaches its readers how to cultivate an anthropological imagination, a mindset that remains attentive to local differences even as it identifies global patterns of inequality and racism.
Surveying the struggles of disenfranchised peoples around the globe from frontline communities affected by climate change, to #BlackLivesMatter activists, to Indigenous water protectors, to migrant communities facing increasing hostility, anthropologist Mark Schuller argues that we must develop radical empathy in order to move beyond simply identifying as “allies” and start acting as “accomplices.” Bringing together the insights of anthropologists and activists from many cultures, this timely study shows us how to stand together and work toward a more inclusive vision of humanity before it’s too late.
More information and instructor resources (https://humanityslaststand.org)
Humanity’s Last Stand dares to ask these big questions, exploring the interconnections between climate change, global capitalism, xenophobia, and white supremacy. As it unearths how capitalism was born from plantation slavery and the slaughter of Indigenous people, it also invites us to imagine life after capitalism. The book teaches its readers how to cultivate an anthropological imagination, a mindset that remains attentive to local differences even as it identifies global patterns of inequality and racism.
Surveying the struggles of disenfranchised peoples around the globe from frontline communities affected by climate change, to #BlackLivesMatter activists, to Indigenous water protectors, to migrant communities facing increasing hostility, anthropologist Mark Schuller argues that we must develop radical empathy in order to move beyond simply identifying as “allies” and start acting as “accomplices.” Bringing together the insights of anthropologists and activists from many cultures, this timely study shows us how to stand together and work toward a more inclusive vision of humanity before it’s too late.
More information and instructor resources (https://humanityslaststand.org)
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9781978820876
ISBN-10: 1978820879
Pagini: 272
Dimensiuni: 152 x 228 x 30 mm
Greutate: 0.39 kg
Editura: Wiley
ISBN-10: 1978820879
Pagini: 272
Dimensiuni: 152 x 228 x 30 mm
Greutate: 0.39 kg
Editura: Wiley
Notă biografică
MARK SCHULLER is a professor of anthropology and nonprofit and NGO studies at Northern Illinois University. Recipient of the Margaret Mead Award and the Anthropology in Media Award, he has written or co-edited eight books, including Humanitarian Aftershocks in Haiti and Killing with Kindness (both Rutgers University Press).
CYNTHIA McKINNEY is an assistant professor at North South University, Bangladesh. As a member of the Democratic Party, she served six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. She was the first black woman elected to represent Georgia in the House. She left the Democratic Party and ran in 2008 for president on the ticket of the Green Party of the United States.
Extras
Foreword
by Cynthia McKinney
I was green, before I was a Green. I grew up playing in the creek across the street from my house; the woods through which I trekked to school whenever I missed the school bus were my biology class. Snakes and lizards and frogs and ticks populated my lab. And, so naturally, I would never approve of turning Mother Nature, herself, into a profit center. Afterall, it’s the air that we breathe, the water that we drink, and the earth that nourishes us. I have never accepted any reason whatsoever for any activities that pollute or contaminate the air, water, and soil that humankind and other animals need for life. For me, all life is important.
And that’s what makes Professor Mark Schuller’s call to action so important. In Humanity’s Last Stand, Schuller asks us to think at an entirely different level (for most grassroots activists): he asks us to think at the anthropological level. In short, Humanity’s Last Stand is a call to arms to elevate our thinking to the species level or, he cautions, the species will face extinction. When I was first sworn into Congress, I was readily embraced by the Office of Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder who had been dubbed “America’s Congresswoman.” When her staffer came to give my staff an orientation on life on “The Hill,” one of her sayings always stuck with me, “The bankers always win.” And I would modify that a bit for this context and say, “In the end, Planet Earth will always win; Dr. Schuller reminds us that humankind may not. And therein lies the urgency of his message.
At this very moment as I write , a mere few milliseconds (in geologic time) from the global climate change protest called Global Climate Strike, it is acknowledged that the Earth is experiencing momentous changes: decreased geomagnetic field,[i] magnetic pole shifts,[ii] discoveries of extinctions[iii] and emergences of species,[iv] and climate change. Add to these phenomena the impact of the sun on the climate of the Earth the science seems to carry us from theory to speculation.[v] Thus, it seems to me that while much more is known today about climate than, say, 100 years ago, there is much more now known, also, about what is not known. And I gather from the current climate debate that that’s a lot!
The reality of human degradation of the human habitat is unquestioned. What is questioned is the extent of anthropogenic climate change. On September 26, 2019, 500 scientists and professionals from Europe, Brazil, Canada, Australia, and other countries, sent a letter to the United Nations Secretary General stating that there is no climate emergency, writing: “Our advice to political leaders is that science should strive for a significantly better understanding of the climate system, while politics should focus on minimizing potential climate damage by prioritizing adaptation strategies based on proven and affordable technologies.” The title of their submission to the United Nations is, “There Is No Climate Emergency.”[vi] This comes after a November 29, 2012 letter to the United Nations from 125 climate scientists challenging a a statement made by then-United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon that “extreme weather caused by climate change is the new normal.” Ban Ki-Moon went even further later, stating that the science was clear and “We must reduce our dependence on carbon emissions.” The 2012 Open Letter was sent as a challenge to all of the Secretary General’s statements.[vii]
While I don’t take a stand one way or the other on anthropogenic climate change; I have long opposed the unbridled despoliation and worse that has been done to our environment. And I do believe that humankind’s uneven distribution of access to Earth’s gifts is a large part of the problem. Also, straying away from Indigenous “ways of knowing” and living also contributes to this readiness to render our environment toxic to some people.
The problem is that those who are largely responsible for human habitat despoliation are the ones who are not being asked to pay for their crimes against the rest of humanity and Planet Earth. I view as positive forward movement laws passed in some countries that accord a right to a clean environment to humans, and a right to not be polluted to Mother Earth.
As I was reading Humanity’s Last Stand, several thoughts crossed my mind. But, foremost was the question I asked myself throughout: For whom has Dr. Schuller written this book? I believe this book is most effective for those who are newly awake to Earth’s climate issues and are wondering how we human beings and the planet came to be in this condition. Arguing for an “Anthropological Imagination,” Schuller believes that this particular outlook is the best way for human beings, divided systematically for the last 400 years, to overcome both their real and fabricated differences. Thus, an “Anthropological Imagination” begs humankind to look at itself through a species level lens. Dr. Schuller believes that such a lens, then, lifts all human struggles, especially justice struggles, to one common denominator—justice—that binds us all together. Because all “the good guys” want justice.
While reading Dr. Schuller’s manuscript, I was reminded of the courage of Robert F. Kennedy, who ventured into deepest, darkest Capetown, apartheid South Africa and told the young people he addressed that he had traveled around the world from Congo, to Russia, to Peru, the U.S. who pleaded that the struggles—all detailed differently in the local—shared a common goal in the global. He issued a call to young people in South Africa to join that global struggle for justice and dignity and to “take the lead for a new order of things.” He reminded us that there is a role for even a single person: He said, “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”[viii]
Schuller asks nothing less of today’s generation than Bobby Kennedy did in 1966; however, two years later from giving that speech–almost to the hour–Bobby Kennedy would lie dead on a hotel ballroom floor after he had just won the prize of the California Presidential primary, on his way to the White House. Bobby Kennedy’s assassination was the first time I shed tears. At that very moment, both the best and the worst of U.S. leadership was manifested and indicates the challenges that “We, the people" have before us in achieving this “anthropological imagination.” Bobby Kennedy represented the absolute best example of leadership of that generation; those who conspired to kill him to protect their very powers that he was rallying us all of his generation to challenge, represent the absolute worst in the leadership of that day. In fact, the absolute worst leadership of that time chose to kill (“expose, disrupt, or otherwise neutralize” in the language of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s founding documents[ix]) the young leadership of that time in what became known as the COINTELPRO[x] program of the United States government. U.S. Intelligence activities at that time included assassination plots of foreign leaders as well as real assassinations of real dissenters to the common injustices of that time. I’ve seen and studied what the decade of the 1960s U.S. government COINTELPRO countertransformation repression did to the Black Power, anti-war “New Left,” Puerto Rican independence, and American Indian (AIM) movements.11 12[xi]
Which leads me to today.
We know what the problems are; and we know what the solutions are. Yet, the necessary ingredient—behavior change—is missing.
The college fix,com reports on an effort to bridge the cultural gap on a U.S. college campus by hosting a discussion on “White Consciousness.” No matter how one might approach the topic (with enthusiasm or with skepticism), the results should be shocking: that is, on a campus of 30,000 students, fewer than ten students attended the workshop and of that number, two were journalists, two got extra credit from their professors for attending; the remaining five of the total nine present were from the Young Americans for Freedom campus chapter who showed up out of curiosity, according to the news story.[xii] And while we celebrate the nine who came for whatever reason, how are we going to accomplish building a movement on anthropological imagination with such numbers? Or better still, what kind of engagement do we need if we only have such small numbers?
I have long wondered how to build a trans-partisan movement in the U.S. based on our shared values, grounded in our diversity. As I was reading Humanity’s Last Stand, I thought about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter From A Birmingham Jail,”[xiii]in which he laments the not-very-helpful role of so-called “White Moderates” during the Civil Rights Era. Yes, an anthropological imagination would have catapulted the Civil Rights Era, I believe, to the list of most successful U.S. movements in modern times. Thus, Dr. Schuller’s call in Humanity’s Last Stand to understand how White Supremacy works in real life and in academia. But, our conundrum again revolves around how to deprogram hundreds of years of programming. Donald Trump proclaimed that the U.S. “system is rigged.” And I maintain that the people have also been rigged in order to maintain a rigged system. Now, just understand that the global system (of apartheid) has also rigged outcomes so that a few people, approximately one billion around the world, are winners and the rest languish for generation after generation in a system not meant to benefit them. (For example, I currently teach in a part of Asia that was colonized by the U.K., and the students I teach have never had the opportunity to play with a doll that looks like them, reaffirming their looks!)
So, how do we unrig ourselves?
I have decided to dedicate my ruminations for this book to a very dear friend whom I have not seen in more than a decade. Her name is Tracy. And I believe she did exactly what Dr. Schuller recommends with his idea of us all adopting an “anthropological imagination.” I never will forget Tracy literally screaming and crying at me trying to get me to understand why she was so terrified.
Tracy said, “I gave up my White privilege and I’m terrified of what that means for me.”
First, some background: Tracy was way cool, counter culture, and way green—just like me— but even more so. She had converted her diesel Mercedes to run on normal old, used restaurant grease. So, she could go from restaurant to restaurant and collect their used cooking oil, filter it, and use that instead of gasoline in her car! I just thought Tracy was too cool to be true. But, for some reason, Whites seemed less comfortable around her than non- Whites. And one day, I found out why.
Tracy understood that she had been “rigged” (to put it into today-speak) and that as a White person in the U.S., she enjoyed certain privileges that I could never understand or access. But, just like Tracy had decided to transform her car to become “solutionary,” she had also transformed herself. Not only did she recognize her White privilege, she acted in ways that acknowledged and shed her hidden privileges—whatever they might be. That also entailed speaking truth to the powers-that-be inside organizations—yes, even the so-called socially progressive ones—that didn’t want to hear what Tracy had to say. I am only just now understanding the profundity of what Tracy really meant on that last day that I saw her. She had created for herself—a world without White privilege—she was terrified, but she did it. She was building her bridge as she walked on it to a more perfect world and she didn’t know what dangers lurked just around the bend. But, what she did realize, is that she was alienating a lot of her White colleagues by exposing the contradictions in their own behaviors. In my opinion, Tracy is a pioneer and she forged a path that many others are now attempting to recreate.
There are people who are doing the heavy lifting and the hard work against this particular type of rigging that has been ongoing since the dawn of capitalism and the “creation” of the “White” race. Anibal Quijano,[xiv] writing specifically about the American experience, called it the “coloniality” of power; he wrote that capitalism is the main global structure for control of labor. The life work of Dr. Jeffrey Perry[xv] has been to curate the work of Theodore Allen whose two-volume epic work, The Invention of the White Race, chronicles the creation of the “White” identity as a method of social control after Black and White laborers in colonial U.S. joined together in solidarity to press for employment/labor reform. Perry writes:
On the back cover of the 1994 edition of Volume 1, subtitled Racial Oppression and Social Control, Allen boldly asserted ‘When the first Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619, there were no 'white' people there; nor, according to the colonial records, would there be for another sixty years.’” . . . ‘White identity had to be carefully taught, and it would be only after the passage of some six crucial decades’ that the word ‘would appear as a synonym for European-American.’[xvi]
Importantly, Dr. Perry focuses his work on the role of white supremacy as a retardant to progressive social change and, therefore views the struggle against White Supremacy as a key part of any effort to create progressive social change.
My friend, Tracy, understood what Quijano, Perry, Allen, and Schuller were studying and writing about—some writing even in academic journals only. But, it was her lived experiences and her critical thinking that allowed her to arrive at the same conclusions as these most eminent thinkers. That means that transformation is possible. And that gives me hope.
I’m wondering how many Tracys are out there, already having done some heavy lifting in their own lives in order to save humanity and this Earth as we know it. Writing this made me realize how much I miss Tracy and how I had neglected my friendship with her for too long. So, I searched and found an old e-mail address for her and clicked the send button. She responded almost immediately. She has relocated to the East Coast and is happily partnered up with a young man she’s known for most of her life! And she is happy.
While Schuller grounds his call for an anthropological imagination within the current issues regarding climate change, he is smart enough to realize that no change at all will occur if we human beings are not able to act with compassion that “give[s] rise to the power to transform resentment into forgiveness, hatred into friendliness, and fear into respect and love for all things.”
Now, that’s a reality that’s worth struggling and sacrificing for.
Notes:
by Cynthia McKinney
I was green, before I was a Green. I grew up playing in the creek across the street from my house; the woods through which I trekked to school whenever I missed the school bus were my biology class. Snakes and lizards and frogs and ticks populated my lab. And, so naturally, I would never approve of turning Mother Nature, herself, into a profit center. Afterall, it’s the air that we breathe, the water that we drink, and the earth that nourishes us. I have never accepted any reason whatsoever for any activities that pollute or contaminate the air, water, and soil that humankind and other animals need for life. For me, all life is important.
And that’s what makes Professor Mark Schuller’s call to action so important. In Humanity’s Last Stand, Schuller asks us to think at an entirely different level (for most grassroots activists): he asks us to think at the anthropological level. In short, Humanity’s Last Stand is a call to arms to elevate our thinking to the species level or, he cautions, the species will face extinction. When I was first sworn into Congress, I was readily embraced by the Office of Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder who had been dubbed “America’s Congresswoman.” When her staffer came to give my staff an orientation on life on “The Hill,” one of her sayings always stuck with me, “The bankers always win.” And I would modify that a bit for this context and say, “In the end, Planet Earth will always win; Dr. Schuller reminds us that humankind may not. And therein lies the urgency of his message.
At this very moment as I write , a mere few milliseconds (in geologic time) from the global climate change protest called Global Climate Strike, it is acknowledged that the Earth is experiencing momentous changes: decreased geomagnetic field,[i] magnetic pole shifts,[ii] discoveries of extinctions[iii] and emergences of species,[iv] and climate change. Add to these phenomena the impact of the sun on the climate of the Earth the science seems to carry us from theory to speculation.[v] Thus, it seems to me that while much more is known today about climate than, say, 100 years ago, there is much more now known, also, about what is not known. And I gather from the current climate debate that that’s a lot!
The reality of human degradation of the human habitat is unquestioned. What is questioned is the extent of anthropogenic climate change. On September 26, 2019, 500 scientists and professionals from Europe, Brazil, Canada, Australia, and other countries, sent a letter to the United Nations Secretary General stating that there is no climate emergency, writing: “Our advice to political leaders is that science should strive for a significantly better understanding of the climate system, while politics should focus on minimizing potential climate damage by prioritizing adaptation strategies based on proven and affordable technologies.” The title of their submission to the United Nations is, “There Is No Climate Emergency.”[vi] This comes after a November 29, 2012 letter to the United Nations from 125 climate scientists challenging a a statement made by then-United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon that “extreme weather caused by climate change is the new normal.” Ban Ki-Moon went even further later, stating that the science was clear and “We must reduce our dependence on carbon emissions.” The 2012 Open Letter was sent as a challenge to all of the Secretary General’s statements.[vii]
While I don’t take a stand one way or the other on anthropogenic climate change; I have long opposed the unbridled despoliation and worse that has been done to our environment. And I do believe that humankind’s uneven distribution of access to Earth’s gifts is a large part of the problem. Also, straying away from Indigenous “ways of knowing” and living also contributes to this readiness to render our environment toxic to some people.
The problem is that those who are largely responsible for human habitat despoliation are the ones who are not being asked to pay for their crimes against the rest of humanity and Planet Earth. I view as positive forward movement laws passed in some countries that accord a right to a clean environment to humans, and a right to not be polluted to Mother Earth.
As I was reading Humanity’s Last Stand, several thoughts crossed my mind. But, foremost was the question I asked myself throughout: For whom has Dr. Schuller written this book? I believe this book is most effective for those who are newly awake to Earth’s climate issues and are wondering how we human beings and the planet came to be in this condition. Arguing for an “Anthropological Imagination,” Schuller believes that this particular outlook is the best way for human beings, divided systematically for the last 400 years, to overcome both their real and fabricated differences. Thus, an “Anthropological Imagination” begs humankind to look at itself through a species level lens. Dr. Schuller believes that such a lens, then, lifts all human struggles, especially justice struggles, to one common denominator—justice—that binds us all together. Because all “the good guys” want justice.
While reading Dr. Schuller’s manuscript, I was reminded of the courage of Robert F. Kennedy, who ventured into deepest, darkest Capetown, apartheid South Africa and told the young people he addressed that he had traveled around the world from Congo, to Russia, to Peru, the U.S. who pleaded that the struggles—all detailed differently in the local—shared a common goal in the global. He issued a call to young people in South Africa to join that global struggle for justice and dignity and to “take the lead for a new order of things.” He reminded us that there is a role for even a single person: He said, “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”[viii]
Schuller asks nothing less of today’s generation than Bobby Kennedy did in 1966; however, two years later from giving that speech–almost to the hour–Bobby Kennedy would lie dead on a hotel ballroom floor after he had just won the prize of the California Presidential primary, on his way to the White House. Bobby Kennedy’s assassination was the first time I shed tears. At that very moment, both the best and the worst of U.S. leadership was manifested and indicates the challenges that “We, the people" have before us in achieving this “anthropological imagination.” Bobby Kennedy represented the absolute best example of leadership of that generation; those who conspired to kill him to protect their very powers that he was rallying us all of his generation to challenge, represent the absolute worst in the leadership of that day. In fact, the absolute worst leadership of that time chose to kill (“expose, disrupt, or otherwise neutralize” in the language of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s founding documents[ix]) the young leadership of that time in what became known as the COINTELPRO[x] program of the United States government. U.S. Intelligence activities at that time included assassination plots of foreign leaders as well as real assassinations of real dissenters to the common injustices of that time. I’ve seen and studied what the decade of the 1960s U.S. government COINTELPRO countertransformation repression did to the Black Power, anti-war “New Left,” Puerto Rican independence, and American Indian (AIM) movements.11 12[xi]
Which leads me to today.
We know what the problems are; and we know what the solutions are. Yet, the necessary ingredient—behavior change—is missing.
The college fix,com reports on an effort to bridge the cultural gap on a U.S. college campus by hosting a discussion on “White Consciousness.” No matter how one might approach the topic (with enthusiasm or with skepticism), the results should be shocking: that is, on a campus of 30,000 students, fewer than ten students attended the workshop and of that number, two were journalists, two got extra credit from their professors for attending; the remaining five of the total nine present were from the Young Americans for Freedom campus chapter who showed up out of curiosity, according to the news story.[xii] And while we celebrate the nine who came for whatever reason, how are we going to accomplish building a movement on anthropological imagination with such numbers? Or better still, what kind of engagement do we need if we only have such small numbers?
I have long wondered how to build a trans-partisan movement in the U.S. based on our shared values, grounded in our diversity. As I was reading Humanity’s Last Stand, I thought about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter From A Birmingham Jail,”[xiii]in which he laments the not-very-helpful role of so-called “White Moderates” during the Civil Rights Era. Yes, an anthropological imagination would have catapulted the Civil Rights Era, I believe, to the list of most successful U.S. movements in modern times. Thus, Dr. Schuller’s call in Humanity’s Last Stand to understand how White Supremacy works in real life and in academia. But, our conundrum again revolves around how to deprogram hundreds of years of programming. Donald Trump proclaimed that the U.S. “system is rigged.” And I maintain that the people have also been rigged in order to maintain a rigged system. Now, just understand that the global system (of apartheid) has also rigged outcomes so that a few people, approximately one billion around the world, are winners and the rest languish for generation after generation in a system not meant to benefit them. (For example, I currently teach in a part of Asia that was colonized by the U.K., and the students I teach have never had the opportunity to play with a doll that looks like them, reaffirming their looks!)
So, how do we unrig ourselves?
I have decided to dedicate my ruminations for this book to a very dear friend whom I have not seen in more than a decade. Her name is Tracy. And I believe she did exactly what Dr. Schuller recommends with his idea of us all adopting an “anthropological imagination.” I never will forget Tracy literally screaming and crying at me trying to get me to understand why she was so terrified.
Tracy said, “I gave up my White privilege and I’m terrified of what that means for me.”
First, some background: Tracy was way cool, counter culture, and way green—just like me— but even more so. She had converted her diesel Mercedes to run on normal old, used restaurant grease. So, she could go from restaurant to restaurant and collect their used cooking oil, filter it, and use that instead of gasoline in her car! I just thought Tracy was too cool to be true. But, for some reason, Whites seemed less comfortable around her than non- Whites. And one day, I found out why.
Tracy understood that she had been “rigged” (to put it into today-speak) and that as a White person in the U.S., she enjoyed certain privileges that I could never understand or access. But, just like Tracy had decided to transform her car to become “solutionary,” she had also transformed herself. Not only did she recognize her White privilege, she acted in ways that acknowledged and shed her hidden privileges—whatever they might be. That also entailed speaking truth to the powers-that-be inside organizations—yes, even the so-called socially progressive ones—that didn’t want to hear what Tracy had to say. I am only just now understanding the profundity of what Tracy really meant on that last day that I saw her. She had created for herself—a world without White privilege—she was terrified, but she did it. She was building her bridge as she walked on it to a more perfect world and she didn’t know what dangers lurked just around the bend. But, what she did realize, is that she was alienating a lot of her White colleagues by exposing the contradictions in their own behaviors. In my opinion, Tracy is a pioneer and she forged a path that many others are now attempting to recreate.
There are people who are doing the heavy lifting and the hard work against this particular type of rigging that has been ongoing since the dawn of capitalism and the “creation” of the “White” race. Anibal Quijano,[xiv] writing specifically about the American experience, called it the “coloniality” of power; he wrote that capitalism is the main global structure for control of labor. The life work of Dr. Jeffrey Perry[xv] has been to curate the work of Theodore Allen whose two-volume epic work, The Invention of the White Race, chronicles the creation of the “White” identity as a method of social control after Black and White laborers in colonial U.S. joined together in solidarity to press for employment/labor reform. Perry writes:
On the back cover of the 1994 edition of Volume 1, subtitled Racial Oppression and Social Control, Allen boldly asserted ‘When the first Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619, there were no 'white' people there; nor, according to the colonial records, would there be for another sixty years.’” . . . ‘White identity had to be carefully taught, and it would be only after the passage of some six crucial decades’ that the word ‘would appear as a synonym for European-American.’[xvi]
Importantly, Dr. Perry focuses his work on the role of white supremacy as a retardant to progressive social change and, therefore views the struggle against White Supremacy as a key part of any effort to create progressive social change.
My friend, Tracy, understood what Quijano, Perry, Allen, and Schuller were studying and writing about—some writing even in academic journals only. But, it was her lived experiences and her critical thinking that allowed her to arrive at the same conclusions as these most eminent thinkers. That means that transformation is possible. And that gives me hope.
I’m wondering how many Tracys are out there, already having done some heavy lifting in their own lives in order to save humanity and this Earth as we know it. Writing this made me realize how much I miss Tracy and how I had neglected my friendship with her for too long. So, I searched and found an old e-mail address for her and clicked the send button. She responded almost immediately. She has relocated to the East Coast and is happily partnered up with a young man she’s known for most of her life! And she is happy.
While Schuller grounds his call for an anthropological imagination within the current issues regarding climate change, he is smart enough to realize that no change at all will occur if we human beings are not able to act with compassion that “give[s] rise to the power to transform resentment into forgiveness, hatred into friendliness, and fear into respect and love for all things.”
Now, that’s a reality that’s worth struggling and sacrificing for.
Notes:
[i] Please see “Earth's Inconstant Magnetic Field: Our planet's magnetic field is in a constant state of change, say researchers who are beginning to understand how it behaves and why,” NASA, December 29, 2003 located at https://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/ 29dec_magneticfield.html accessed October 9, 2019 and Fiona MacDonald, “New Study Shows How Rapidly Earth's Magnetic Field Is Changing, May 11, 2016 located at https:// www.sciencealert.com/new-study-shows-that-earth-s-magnetic-field-is-weakening-morerapidly- than-we-thought, accessed October 9, 2019.
[ii] “Earth's Magnetic North Pole Has Shifted So Much We've Had to Update GPS,” located at https://www.sciencealert.com/navigation-systems-finally-caught-up-with-the-mysteriouslynorth- pole-shift accessed October 9, 2019, reposted from the original at Sarah Kaplan, “The Washington Post, February 6, 2019 located at https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/ 2019/02/05/north-pole-is-mysteriously-moving-us-government-finally-caught-up/? noredirect=on accessed October 9, 2019. The U.S. Government magnetic model update is located at https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag/WMM/DoDWMM.shtml accessed October 9, 2019. See also, NASA, “2012: Magnetic Pole Reversal Happens All The (Geologic) Time,” November 30, 2011, located at https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012- poleReversal.html accessed October 9, 2019.
[iii] “Anthropologist contributes to major study of large animal extinction,” Science Daily, September 20, 2019 located at https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/ 2019/09/190920124648.htm accessed October 9, 2019.
[iv] Richard Conniff, “Meet the New Species: From old-world primates to patch-nosed salamanders, new creatures are being discovered every day,” Smithsonian Magazine, August 2010, located at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/meet-the-newspecies- 748819/ accessed October 9, 2019.
[v] NASA, Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE), located at https:// earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/SORCE/sorce_04.php accessed October 9, 2019. See also Charles Q. Choi, “Tiny Solar Activity Changes Affect Earth's Climate,” January 16, 2013, located at https://www.space.com/19280-solar-activity-earth-climate.html accessed October 9, 2019; “The Discovery of Global Warming, “Changing Sun, Changing Climate,” American Institute of Physics, February 2019, located at https://history.aip.org/climate/solar.htm accessed October 9, 2019; and De Wit, Funk, Haberreiter, and Mathes, “Better Data for Modeling the Sun’s Influence on Climate,” EOS: Earth and Space Science News, September 4, 2018, located at https://eos.org/science-updates/better-data-for-modeling-the-suns-influenceon- climate accessed October 9, 2019
[vi] European Climate Declaration, “There Is No Climate Emergency,” September 26, 2019
located at https://clintel.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/ED-brochureversieNWA4.pdf
accessed October 8, 2019
located at https://clintel.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/ED-brochureversieNWA4.pdf
accessed October 8, 2019
[vii] “Open letter to UN Secretary-General: Current scientific knowledge does not substantiate Ban Ki-Moon assertions on weather and climate, say 125-plus scientists,” Financial Post, November 29, 2012 located at https://business.financialpost.com/opinion/open-climate-letterto- un-secretary-general-current-scientific-knowledge-does-not-substantiate-ban-ki-moonassertions- on-weather-and-climate-say-125-scientists accessed October 8, 2019.
[viii] Robert F. Kennedy, “Ripple of Hope” Speech located at https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=h7gAM9xTLKU accessed October 6, 2019.
[ix] There were many operations within COINTELPRO whose official declassified documents are located online at https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro accessed October 6, 2019.
[x] COINTELPRO was a Department of Justice Counter-Intelligence Program that targeted political dissenters for dirty tricks, harassment, and even assassination. The definitive book examining the official government documents was written by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, “The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI’s Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States, (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1990, 2002).
[xi] Please see Cynthia McKinney, “Cultural Dimensions of Leading Change” located at https:// www.academia.edu/38209820/Cultural_Dimensions_of_Leading_Change.doc accessed October 6, 2019.
[xii] “Nine White Students Show Up for a “White Consciousness” Discussion,” The College Fix located at https://www.thecollegefix.com/on-campus-of-30000-students-less-than-10-attenduniversitys- white-privilege-workshop/ accessed October 1, 2019.
[xiii] Alton Hornsby, "Martin Luther King, Jr. "Letter From a Birmingham Jail"." The Journal of Negro History 71, no. 1/4 (1986): 38-44 located at http://www.jstor.org/stable/2717650 accessed October 6, 2019.
[xiv] Anibal Quijano, “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America,” located at http:// www.decolonialtranslation.com/english/quijano-coloniality-of-power.pdf accessed October 6, 2019.
[xv] Dr. Jeffrey Perry’s work is located at http://www.jeffreybperry.net/ accessed October 6, 2019.
[xvi] Theodore Allen, The Invention of the White Race (1994, 1997: Verso Books, new expanded edition 2012)
Cuprins
Contents
Foreword by Cynthia McKinney
Introduction: Careening Toward Extinction
1 Structuring Solidarity
2 Dismantling White Supremacy
3 Climate Justice Versus the Anthropocene
4 Humanity on the Move- Justice and Migration
5 Dismantling the Ivory Tower
Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Foreword by Cynthia McKinney
Introduction: Careening Toward Extinction
1 Structuring Solidarity
2 Dismantling White Supremacy
3 Climate Justice Versus the Anthropocene
4 Humanity on the Move- Justice and Migration
5 Dismantling the Ivory Tower
Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Recenzii
"Humanity’s Last Stand is a call to arms to elevate our thinking to the species level or, Schuller cautions, the species will face extinction."
"Schuller's brilliant book is critical reading for all of us who work to envision, and bring into being, a socially and ecologically just world. Grounded in a politics of solidarity built through the understanding of, and dismantling of privilege, he mobilizes a new vision for what 'an anthropological imagination' can afford us in terms of activist practice and radical empathy."
"An urgent and much needed contribution to our world in crisis. Schuller lays out crucial ground work for how an anthropological reimagining of global social, political, and economic relationships can save us from ourselves. In clear prose he shows the public how anthropology can be deployed as a way to create more empathy in these troubling times."
“Humanity’s Last Stand is an electrifying work that dissects a range of interconnected problems—climate change, ultra-right nationalism, and global inequality—and proposes concrete steps to avert total catastrophe. This highly readable book is prescient, if not premonitory. It is essential reading for anyone interested in our species' long-term survival. Anthropology at its finest!”
"Mark Schuller’s approach to the convergent crises pushing us toward human catastrophe and planetary disaster should be taken to heart. With admirable conviction and commitment to radical empathy and pragmatic solidarity, he makes a bold argument for a publicly-engaged anthropological imagination that contributes a holistic understanding of and concrete solutions to urgent global crises."
“Mark Schuller takes anthropology to the public with critical insights on the historical and contemporary that expose the catastrophic and complex realities of global racial capitalism. He implores the willing to forge futures where differences matter and praxis of solidarity are intentionally quotidian. Humanity’s Last Stand is a pivotal ecological intervention for these times of crisis.”
"Mark Schuller has an 'in your face' and challenging style. It conveys his passion and the urgency of the situation addressed in the book. It is more than appropriate--it is engaging. Humanity's Last Stand is an important intervention at a moment of economic, political, cultural, and ecological crisis in the United States and the world. This is a book that has the potential to change the minds of many."
"When I finished reading, I needed to catch my breath. The book is furiously and forcefully written, engaging both historical and contemporary issues. Most productively, Schuller puts analyses written by political organizers and anthropologists into conversation, showing how they inform each other and move us forward together. This book is needed for this moment in history."
“Humanity’s Last Stand illustrates how we are living in a moment of great turmoil and great possibilities for transformation. This is a timely text for activists and scholars committed to collective liberation. Dr. Schuller not only makes it clear that we are all connected, he makes a compelling case for us all to center the environment, and land, as stewards — not owners.”
"[Schuller's] invitation to use anthropology to imagine new ways of organizing society and economics is well taken."
"Schuller offers this not as a replacement for more traditional world systems theories (such as Marxism) but as a complement, one meant to guide the way to understanding that all struggles for a just world are tied to one another and all are mutually dependent upon all the others; understanding from the bottom up, if you will, to complement analysis from the top down."
Descriere
Exploring the interconnections between climate change, global capitalism, xenophobia, and white supremacy, this book dares to ask big questions about how humanity can stand together in a time of crisis. It teaches readers how to develop radical empathy, move beyond simply identifying as “allies” of disempowered peoples and start acting as “accomplices.”