Black Women Against the Apocalypse: How Whitewashed Narratives of Climate Collapse Silence the Voices and Strategies That, Each and Every Day, Put Off the End of the World [OPINION]

Housing activist Camila Moradia and family at the 8M Black Women’s March in Rio de Janeiro in 2022. Photo: Press Release

Narratives perpetuated by traditional and corporate media industries, such as Hollywood, have been constructing a collective memory and narrative that reinforce the idea that “the end of the world” will happen suddenly—a demise that will devastate the entire planet at once and affect every single human being at the same time. By waiting for an apocalyptic end to our world, we ignore all the ways in which multiple worlds end around us every day. If we allow ourselves to view the end of the world more realistically, we then see how each one-off event has the potential to take away people’s lives—each oversight by public authorities, each extreme weather event, each child murdered by the State—is already the end of the world for so many.

“In broad daylight, televised by media channels, Rio de Janeiro’s Civil Police kill 24 people in Jacarezinho, the Blackest favela in Rio de Janeiro.” — May 7, 2021

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This article is part of a series created in partnership with the Behner Stiefel Center for Brazilian Studies at San Diego State University, to produce articles for the Digital Brazil Project on environmental justice in the favelas for RioOnWatch.