Tags
african american life, displacement of animal life, environmental racism, habitat destruction, habitat loss, habitat restoration, urban wildlife, wildlife habitat
Before some of y’all get mad or confused, the title is not an attempt to co-opt the 
phrase “environmental justice” away from communities of color plagued by environmental, health, and economic inequalities. Nor is it an attempt to replace “animal rights.” This post is concerning issues of space and habitat I’ve been grappling with for a while. As I’ve started working directly with urban animals, urban black communities living in poverty, and this notion of interspecies community, I’ve had to rethink how I go about labeling some of these intersectional issues of habitat quality, the institutional shuffling of African Americans into ghettos that directly decrease their quality of life, the institutional displacement of animals in the city, unless they are “pets” under constant surveillance by “owners”, “entertainment” in a traveling circus, “livestock” in a backyard, captives in a zoo, or victims in a lab facility. Continue reading
