Black Americans are braving climate disasters but turning the South blue

Way back in the mid-2000s and early 2010s NPR programs ran a series of reports on the Great Migration. 

Now more African Americans are heading back to the South to cities like Atlanta after facing discrimination in places like Detroit, Minneapolis and Chicago. Chicago is a notorious railroad bottleneck where spills of toxic materials are myriad and environmental racism is epidemic. The exodus continues especially after George Floyd was murdered by cops.

Dallas, Orlando, Tampa and Charlotte are among the ten most sought after cities for the "Reverse Migration."

It seems that in the attempt to escape the environmental racism and the poor health outcomes of the North and Midwest, Black people are essentially moving toward the epicenter of climate disasters, says Rhiana Gunn-Wright, the director of climate policy at the Roosevelt Institute. For generations, Southerners survived disasters by leaning on their communities. Along the Gulf Coast, formerly enslaved communities shared food and holed up together away from the swamps and wetlands that absorbed the worst of a hurricane’s blow. Historically, Black voters, a small but steady minority, are the tipping point in elections, and people of color across the region have already reaped positive political benefits. [Moving South, Black Americans Are Weathering Climate Change]

Michelle Alexander has been an associate professor of law at Ohio State University, is a civil rights lawyer, an activist, and was a law clerk for Justice Harry Blackmun. She is the author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. When she spoke in Santa Fe she reminded the mostly flaming liberal attendees that had Barry Obama been raised in the 'hood his chances would have been unremarkably grim.

Learn more at Stateline News.