Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò: Keeping Justice Alive on a Burning Planet
What does it mean to think and act like an ancestor now?
Dear friends,
My new piece for The Nation is an interview with Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, the Georgetown philosophy professor and keen observer of social movements whose work on climate and racial justice has been a profound inspiration to me in recent years. It was nice to have a chance to talk and compare notes with him, especially in this moment of acute crisis and uncertainty for the left and for the world as a whole. Here’s how I introduce the interview; you can click through to read the whole thing:
It has long been an article of faith within the climate-justice movement that climate justice is racial justice. But what does that actually mean, Georgetown philosophy professor Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò asks, in the face of a climate catastrophe that threatens to destroy the social and political conditions required to carry on the historic, multigenerational struggle for justice on a global scale?
“If slavery and colonialism built the world and its current basic scheme of social injustice, the proper task of social justice is no smaller: it is, quite literally, to remake the world,” Táíwò writes in his seminal 2022 book, Reconsidering Reparations, now out in a new paperback edition. On a burning planet, he continues, “climate justice and reparations are the same project: climate crisis arises from the same political history as racial injustice and presents a challenge of the same scale and scope.” Succinctly explaining why this deep connection is of the utmost urgency now, Táíwò goes on to argue, “our response to climate crisis will deeply determine the possibilities for justice (and injustice) in what remains of this century—and if we survive to the next. … [The] possibility of keeping justice alive in our time hinges on our response to the reality of a warming planet.”
The reissue of Reconsidering Reparations could hardly be more timely. Faced with a fossil-fascist Trump administration attempting not only to dismantle whatever progress the United States has made toward serious climate action, but also the democratic institutions, and democracy itself, that make such progress possible, the prospect of salvaging any hope of racial and climate justice is under grave and immediate threat.
In personal news: My new book, Learning to Live in the Dark: Essays in a Time of Catastrophe, went to press in April and will be out on June 24 (yes, you can pre-order it!). I’m truly and deeply grateful for the warm endorsements from Amitav Ghosh, Bill McKibben, Anthony Rogers-Wright, and Gus Speth, and for all of the encouragement many of you reading this have offered over the years. There’s a certain amount of anxiety involved in releasing a book into the world, especially when one has been known to take some unpopular stands. But the book is ultimately about resolve and solidarity—a radical human solidarity—in the face of our converging catastrophes. Because that, to me, is the only way through, and just possibly out, of the dark.
-Wen