The Intersection of CRT and Ecocriticism

After reading the excerpts from and watching the Ted Talk I fell slightly more educated. Of course I already knew that CRT and Ecocriticism intersected in multiple ways but the ways that some of the reading and the talk explained it were ways I hadn’t really thought about before. In the book Earth Democracy there was one quote that really stood out to me. The author Vandana Shiva says, “The rise of extremism and terrorism is a response to the enclosures and economic colonization of globalization. Just as cannibalism among factory-farmed animals stops when chicken and pigs are allowed to roam free, terrorism, extremism, ethnic cleansing and religious intolerance are unnatural conditions caused by globalization and have no place in Earth Democracy.” This quote stood out to me because when animals and people are “caged” it makes them do things they would never do in their natural habitats. The Native people lived in peace and harmony with the earth until White settlers came and forced them into situations they had never had to deal with and they became “savage” because they had no choice but to fight violence with violence. In the Ted Talk by Shannon Price she speaks about the inequality of green space between the black communities in comparison to the white communities. She stated that while the white community has a hundred acres of green parks per thousand people the black community has 1.5 acres. She goes on to tell about how in black communities where there are more places to relax and enjoy the outdoors there is less violence and crime. The two theories overlap and make a lot of sense. The Natives lived a free life and while there were still land disputes there was never anything like the massacres that took place at the hand of the Whites.