Framing Protest: New Waves of Visibility in Environmentalism

wn / 2022
From Essays

Climate change exists as a controversial topic in the sphere of news media today. While mainstream news media has set about reporting climate change more frequently as unanimous consensus is garnered, messages are often presented as distant and incurable. When we discuss climate change, we can classify between two narratives: (1) future threats, both potential and guaranteed, and (2) current impacts damaging communities in the present. The latter is seriously overlooked. Impacts of climate change already have taken effect in many places, and mainstream media has generally evaded the program of distributing that knowledge. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has listed the “uneven distribution of risks that disproportionately affect particular groups” as one of its main reasons for concern (2018, p. 11) and so a discussion concerning media quiescence or misframing on these “particular groups” becomes necessary.

The news media play a critical role in shaping civic agendas (Walker et al, 2019 p. 3). As environmental problems rise to greater peaks of civic concern, discussions on disproportionate effects must be critically examined, so as to ensure these effects are included in actions of mitigation. Racial communities in Canada currently suffer a more severe risk and experience with environmental hazards and toxic industries (Ageyman, 2007, p. 127). Exemplifying how racism is deployed through environmental motions will serve to support Lori Kido Lopez’s definition of racism as a deeply rooted system, rather than a societal or individual characteristic (2020, p. 16). The aim in this paper is to examine in-depth how the media perpetuates these issues and misses opportunities to link environmental impact with racism and vice versa. I argue that linking environmental concerns to racial discrimination may elicit meaningful civil action, in that, environmental racism shows racism in its deepest state. Cultural texts in mainstream medias are analyzed in a case study fashion. My argument resides with producing uncertainty and the casting of longstanding stereotypes.




A History of Environmental Racism 

Lori Kido Lopez defines racism as an interlocking system of oppression, and occupies the position that it must not be defined as merely a characteristic of society (2020, p. 16). This means that, while an individual or community may inherit better or worse racial tolerance, racism is a part of society’s composition. Racism is not a binary metric, rather, racism is a social reality. To understand racial discrimination as environmentally systemic is to understand that this issue envelopes not only our policies, but our land, water, and air qualities. These directly relate to health and well being. Environmental impacts such as carbon emissions or rising sea levels are literally invisible (Moser, 2010), however their feedback are not. Because climate change and environmental disaster are viscerally unfelt by majority populations today, instances in which the marginalized are affected are swept under the rug.

In many ways, racism has always been environmental. If all that makes up reality is one’s “environment” then racial discrimination can be understood as any environmental distortion. The most sharp graphic of environmental racism covers the forced displacement of people from their original home. Nineteenth century industrial motives were to accumulate wealth by accumulating resources from the environment, often carried out by slave, or heavily subjugated labor practices. Not to mention settler colonialism and malicious land treaties, industrial leaders devalued both the natural environments they were metabolising, and the bodies through which they enacted their means. The Salvage Collective calls this relationship the “tragedy of the worker” (2020, n.p.). The tragedy here is that under capitalism the worker digs “her own grave” (n.p.).

These considerations have sparked controversial debate amongst environmental humanity theorists. The argument elicits the severity of anthropogenic climate change and the effects on the geological epoch. Turning away from the Holocene, to the Anthropocene, or the layer of human. The debate features a further specification to this epoch, because it is not humankind initiating a pending climatic disaster, but the values and practices of labour, discrimination, and capital aforementioned. Davis et al., bring forward the Plantationocene, subsequently there is also Jason W. Moore’s Capitalocene, as suggestions for the new moniker. Regardless, this discussion represents a societal shift in awareness that franchises white, capitalist superpowers as the racially and environmentally catastrophic expeditors.

Despite the longevity industrial society now has lying behind it, these issues have not simply gone away. Yusoff in their work A Billion Black Anthropocene’s or None comments that the complex history of slavery and resource accumulation lived on through chain gangs and coal mines (2018, p. 17). Facets of energy and resource accumulation have always been at the forefront of capitalist enterprise. Stephanie LeMenager comments that “oil literally was conceived as a replacement for slave labour” (Cited in Yusoff, 2018, p. 17). Through land dispossession, and brutal labour practices we begin to see connections between race and environmental injustice. Foundations like this still resound in communities and the environmental hazards they experience.

Environmental Racism

Robert Bullard points out that environmental-racial justice movements began with Black communities in the 1960s and 70s protesting the placement of landfills and toxic waste facilities in their neighbourhoods (2001, p. 72). These movements led Benjamin Chavis to define environmental racism in as:

“... racial discrimination in environmental policy-making, the enforcement of regulations and laws, the deliberate targeting of communities of colour for toxic waste facilities, the official sanctioning of the life-threatening presence of poisons and pollutants in our communities, and the history of excluding people of colour from leadership of the ecology movements.”

Chavis’ robust definition can help us delve into different facets of the issue. While news media focuses on stories of climate change and racial tension respectively, opportunities of connecting the two problems are often missed. News media tend to portray situations of conflict for dramatic purposes. This means singular conflicts are prioritized over modeling silent wars. Environmental racism is an ongoing problem in Canada and by the time stories surface significant damage has been inflicted already.

Mohai and Saha in a paper titled Racial Inequality in the Distribution of Hazardous Waste propose three factors for how environmental racism may be carried out. These can be economic factors companies consider when deciding the locations for their facilities, selecting locations in which operation and purchase costs are low (Mohai & Saha, 2007, p. 345). Another component comes to us in terms of representation and sociopolitical factors (Ibid, p. 345). Minorities have little representation among parties making important decisions. Therefore social imbalances between racial communities extend potential for environmental discrimination. Finally, in the most direct facet, are racial factors. These are instances where parties enact racial discrimination through environmental decision-making soley because of racial motives. Commonly, this is the “path of least resistance” decision when coordinating a location for effluent drainage or toxic waste facility (Ibid, p. 345). Decision makers understand that marginalized communities are less-equipped to fight back than affluent neighbourhoods.

Environmentally racial discrimination thus acts from hidden and intractable sources. Similar to Katz proposition on Whiteness, environmental discrimination embodies a “nebulous core” (2020, p. 154). To display this problem, this paper will turn to instances within Canada, looking closely at the media that involves Indigenous people. Specifically, different kinds of framing techniques that proliferate racism and perpetuate the deeply rooted, capitalist agenda of energy.

Media Framing

Media framing can be understood as the media’s collective action of meaning making. A process George Lakoff insists that reveals different groups or individuals roles, and relations, in society (2010, p. 71). When media—meaning any texts produced by the cultural industries that are distributed to audiences—portray social events, ideas about society and people are slowly constructed. There has to be special attention paid to these frames, and the structures that form them when race is involved. Minorities become marginalized, as frames become distorted and unjust. Majorities further subscribe to historic values, or in other words, the “interlocking system of oppression” (Lopez, 2020, p. 16). A closer look at the media industry’s consolidation reveals both how and why problematic frames continue to dominate semantic landscapes.

In 2017 alone, the ‘Big Six’ (Paramount, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, Universal, Columbia, and Walt Disney Studios) accounted for 80.4% of all box office earnings that year (Cited in Kim & Bevel, 2020, p. 22). This creates potential for a biased output (Kil, 2020, p. 27). If the media oligarchy is predominantly white and male, diversity in output fails, and what results is another powerful leg to hegemonic power structures, not to mention inharmonious racial tension. A state of hegemony can be achieved if certain social groups make the power of the dominant group appear both “natural and legitimate” (Watson & Hill, 2015, p. 125). One notion that describes this phenomenon’s origin comes to us in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Deregulating ownership and integration legislation (Cited in Kil, 2020, p. 27), essentially allowed large conglomerates to expand in vast ways. This is just one instance. Our cultural industries continue to be plagued by narrow, biased, and misdirecting media frames; fuelled not by justice but financial pursuit (Ibid, p. 22).

One of the prevalent dangers media can inflict are the perpetuation of stereotypes. The  proprietors of media are responsible for both the introduction and perpetuation of stereotypes that influence the public (Walker et al, 2019, p. 4). What roles are people of colour given within cultural texts? Lopez asks, what message do these roles send? (2020, p. 20). Racial minorities are presented in contrast, or as a complement to the white hero (Lopez, 2020, p. 20). For example, Asian people are presented as “nerds,” “martial arts villains” (Ibid, p. 20) or ornament. These issues do become corrected slowly, with instances like foreign film Parasite winning an Oscar, or Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians soaring high in box office sales (Lopez, 2020, p. 13 and Kim & Brunn-Bevel, 2020, p. 36). However, these contemporary examples only comprise a sliver of the cultural-industry’s history. A history that prioritized these frames, stereotypes, and misrepresentations mentioned prior. Assessing these stereotypes helps us understand normative attitudes of society (Walker et al, 2019, p. 3). Ultimately this leads towards a more robust understanding of Anti-Indigenous racism both in media and sociopolitical structures.

Indigenous people and stories experience a complicated relationship with the media. Indigenous stereotypes in popular culture are equally diverse: from “sexy princesses and warmongering savages, papoose-wearing squaws and wise elders” (Lopez, 2020, p. 20). Examples of these exist in many facets of popular culture. From the Simpsons Movie’s “Medicine Lady,” or the recurring Lone Ranger character “Tonto,” popular culture subordinates the Indigenous person to static, degrading frames. Tonto is especially remarkable, his name literally meaning “stupid” in Spanish—Tan and Fujioka write that he was posed as inferior to his “master” in everyway, besides wisdom which was acceptable as an Indigenous trait (1997, p. 267).

In a more realistic vein, stereotypes plague the Indigenous culture in print and television news media. Stereotypes like alcoholism have been associated with the Indigenous persona across time (Tan & Fujioka, 1997, p. 266). A qualitative study showed that some young people understood that their fathers held this stereotype (Ly & Crowshoe, 2015, p. 616). Other stereotypes focus on the Indigenous person’s work ethic (Clark, 2014, p. 43 and Tan & Fujioka, 1997, p. 266). The misconception is that Indigenous people are lazy and do not work hard. However, this stems from different values: wealth accumulation is not as important as family or spiritual needs (1997, p. 266). Finally, the other stereotype is that Indigenous have super citizen status (1997, p. 266). In reality, Indigenous groups have signed treaties entitling themselves and future members of the group to benefits in exchange deals from European settled governments. These latter two stereotypes when combined present a negative and racist frame for the Indigenous person. These judgements as we have seen perpetuate a shallow “othering” of the Indigenous groups. We have to work towards creating narratives that reach deeply into history. We need to reveal why things are the way that they are through responsible framing and adequate representation.

Environmental Racism in Media

While much of the media now works in ways that are politically correct, these values and injustices still move within the spheres of modern living. Hayden King in an article for the Toronto Star recognizes the newspaper’s historic problems with Indigenous prejudice and how these issues are still here today. King writes that the media often frames Inter-Indigenous tumult as the community’s “own anger or dysfunction,” rarely noticing conditions preceded by colonialism (2017, n.p).

Netflix documentary There’s Something in the Water finds three communities in Nova Scotia, Canada that suffer from environmentally racist action and policy. Canadian actor Eliot Page interviewed members of these communities to discover the problem and hear their stories on the ground. One small Black community suffers extreme levels of cancer due to a landfill the municipal government placed near residences and well paths. Other instances include industrial companies ruining Indigenous communities’ environment by running effluent and waste into natural water sources. This documentary frames these stories differently than most mainstream media: Eliot Page allows the communities to speak for themselves and show how environmental hazards wound people first hand. Rarely do we get a chance to see environmental hazards damaging communities like this in the present. That being said, the substance of this documentary does not leave out a close examination of the history and background of which these issues are founded.

Following the discussion on Indigenous stereotypes, I want to look closer at the framing by which Indigenous communities and activists appear in the media today. Specifically in an environmental context. The historic, hydra headed prejudice against Indigenous peoples means the selective frames media use can either maintain, mitigate, or worsen societal attitudes. Racial concerns should not fall back to environmental concerns, and equally vice-versa. The following section looks at instances of offsetting ratios between environmental and racial frames, as well as situations in which both race and environment become strategically omitted for economic and political concerns.

Indigenous Protest

The Trans-Mountain Pipeline currently runs 1,150km from Edmonton, Alberta to refineries along British Columbia’s West Coast. In 2013, Texas-based Kinder Morgan applied to expand the pipeline system from a capacity of 300,000 barrels per day to 890,000 barrels per day. The pipeline expansion would run through thousands of kilometres of unceded territory, disrupt extensive levels of wildlife and ecosystems, and produce a significant risk for spillage. The pipeline expansion also includes increasing tanker traffic in the Burrard Inlet sevenfold (Tsleil-Waututh Nation, 2015, p. 3). The Tsleil-Waututh Nation’s concerns follow this increased traffic. The nation’s assessment highlights that their reserves lie less than two kilometres from the proposed tanker traffic (2015, p. 3). Here we see enacted environmental racism enacted attending the “path of least resistance.” Rather than a corporate legal battle, Indigenous rely on more ‘grassroots’ forms of protest.

Indigenous protest has sprung up over the last decade in attempts to fight the pipeline expansion project. These are framed two ways: 1) Protesting jobs and 2) Defending the land. In other words, a frame that presents Indigenous as protesting against racism is often hidden. Framing protest as “anti-job” or “anti-progress” is a powerful, hegemonic frame which posits the White working class against the Indigenous groups, who are more realistically attempting to avoid environmental racism, not attack progress. This is prevalent in There’s Something in the Water as Miꞌkmaq in Nova Scotia defend their land and protest for clean water and population well-being. However, in the media there are examples in which subtle codes are propagated against Nations like Tsleil-Waututh on the West Coast, Aamjiwnaang in Ontario, or Miꞌkmaq in Nova Scotia. These codes include Indigenous protestors as resistant to progress (Walker et al, 2019, p. 4) or standing in the way of badly needed jobs (Clark, 2014, p. 56).

Indigenous people standing in the way of jobs and progress is supported by studies like Clark on television (2014) and Walker et al on print media (2019). I will be turning to texts circled on social media sites like Youtube and Twitter. These platforms function as mainstream media for the topic. Comparatively, alternative media will be discussed in contrast to mainstream to present instances of “hopeful” risk communication, those stories which positively provide responsible frames for Indigenous people, environmental racism and energy politics.

Pipeline Politics: A Case Study

In a Youtube video titled Oil industry worker speaks his mind at Kinder Morgan protests! some of these coding practices are present. The video features an interview with an out of work “oil industry worker.” This video has garnered over 600 000 views on Youtube, and also videos of this length and form are commonly shared on sites elsewhere, like Twitter or Facebook. The interviewer and oil industry worker state their side of the “pipeline debate,” declaring a pro oil and gas industry position. The central theme to the oil industry worker’s statement is hypocrisy. The worker states that “these people are wearing clothes, accessories manufactured by petroleum, they drove cars to get here, their homes are heated by gas…” There is immediate satisfaction in his response to Indigenous protest as much of his language attacks the protestors. They are disruptive, hypocritical, non-working, protestors that need to be provided for. These are common fallacious arguments made against Indigenous protestors or other protestors of other movements.

Another example comes to us from CBC. The video was posted on Youtube to a channel with over 1.05m subscribers in May 2018. The pipeline that’s divided Western Canada features  CBC reporter Nick Burton driving from Edmonton to Burnaby, following the trail of the expanded Trans-Mountain Pipeline and interviewing people along the way. The video takes a right leaning view, although division is the central theme of the video. The first several people Burton interviews are white, middle class people from small towns in both Alberta and B.C, in favour of the pipeline. The rhetoric of their position urges for creation of jobs and economy upturns. Images of rural poverty are combined with the underground, invisible pipeline.

The first anti-pipeline spokesperson is a white man from another small town in B.C who expressed his disappointment that the expansion will destroy his orchard. “It’s a 19th century technology he writes.” Next interview is Chief Ernie Crey of the Cheam Nation in Chilliwack, British Columbia. Ernie strongly favours the pipeline, also in favour of the jobs it will create, even stating that he would like to invest in it. Despite Ernie Crey’s pro-pipeline stance, an article by Angela Sterritt for CBC highlighted that much of the Cheam Nation is against the pipeline, most prominently the community’s youth (2018, n.p.). While it is true Indigenous people are also divided on this issue, the pipeline support arises only in hopes for economic development. What is missing in this video and many other cultural texts are considerations of larger temporalities. Not only are histories of oil spills often omitted, but future considerations of the oil industry in general are almost always bereft.

Finally the video takes us into Burnaby, which houses the biggest pipeline opposition in the country. This final segment of the video is perhaps the only component of the narrative that adopts the “defending the land” frame. The video shows images of protest camps and tents set up in blockade, as Burton speaks of the arrests that have been made. The first person Burton confronts is a nameless person reciting poetry. Following this, Burton speaks with a young woman declaring her purposes for protesting, and Burton asks her “are you proud of yourself for getting arrested?” These subtle coding practices taken by the news media team behind this video associate land protest with crime, as well as poverty, and disillusionment from economic advancement. The stereotype that Indigenous communities stand against development is addressed by Ernie Crey, who states that Indigenous do want to be a part of larger economic decisions. However, excluding chief Ernie Crey, widespread protest of the pipeline shows clearly that Indigenous groups mainly prefer development that is sustainable and consented.

Conclusion

Politics of pipeline controversy elicit many opportunities to speak of both Anti-Indigenous racism and lagging efforts of governmental climate change. Increased emissions in Canada symbolize delayed solutions on other problems as well, as mentioned in this article. It is crucial to examine these delays which are invoked from privileged media definers. We need our solutions and technology to move forward not in the same vein as early industrial motives, but in new motions of inclusivity and generational coordination. David Hall cited Hulme’s opinion that “the idea of climate change will – and should – mobilise a variety of ethical, political, theological, technological and epistemological movements as well as new practices in art, activism and adaptation (2019, p. 28). Included in this society wide mobilization is a delegitimization of standard media framing and normative prejudice. Further research on these methods should emphasize the future role of technologies in resolving cases of environmental racism. As we have seen, racist coding is not absent in media spheres today. Looking at patterns in algorithm, AI, social media might help us understand how intersectional issues such as environmental racism are veiled by powerful structures.



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