Our 2023 favorites: Black Americans are reclaiming their relationship with nature

By Kevin Chang Barnum,

Wayne Edwards, Khalilah Brown-Dean, Meg Dalton, Catie Talarski

Published December 27, 2023 at 11:27 AM EST

Two photos side by side. On the left is a photo of Leah Penniman standing in a field of tall grass. On the right is a photo of Dr. Dorceta Taylor with greenery in the background — Farmer, activist and author Leah Penniman (left) told Disrupted that there is more to the relationship between Black people and the land than the trauma of slavery. "The history that we're not taught is that so many of the beautiful ways that we take care of land— organic farming itself... farm-to-table, co-ops, these come out of Black agrarian practices." Professor at Yale School of the Environment Dorceta Taylor (right) says reckoning with discrimination is critical to the environmental movement. "We want playgrounds for our children. We want to go to the beaches and not be shot and killed. But we also are looking at that systematic destruction of especially Black communities, Native communities with uranium."

The Disrupted team is welcoming the new year by choosing a few of the episodes we loved from 2023. We have so many favorites that we couldn't reair all of them, but these are a few that we wanted to listen back to. This week, our host Khalilah Brown-Dean chose our episode on how race has impacted agriculture and the environmental movement.

Leah Penniman, Co-Executive Director and Farm Director at Soul Fire Farm, talks about her new book Black Earth Wisdom: Soulful Conversations with Black Environmentalists. The discussion touches on everything from Leah's childhood to how the creation of some of the most prominent national parks in the U.S. is linked to the eugenics movement. And Dr. Dorceta Taylor, a professor at the Yale School of the Environment, explains what environmental justice is, and why we need to think about marginalized communities when we think about the environment.

For more information on Soul Fire Farm, you can visit their website.

You can read Dorceta Taylor's research on disparities in environmental grantmaking through ResearchGate.

GUESTS:

Leah Penniman: Co-Executive Director and Farm Director at Soul Fire Farm, author of Black Earth Wisdom: Soulful Conversations with Black Environmentalists.
Dorceta Taylor: Professor and Senior Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the Yale School of the Environment. She was interviewed for Leah Penniman’s book Black Earth Wisdom and is author of multiple books herself, including The Rise of the American Conservation Movement: Power, Privilege, and Environmental Protection.

This episode originally aired on April 26, 2023.

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