Extractivism is also directly connected to the notion of sacrifice zones - places that, to their extractors, somehow don't count and therefore can be poisoned, drained, or otherwise destroyed, for the supposed greater good of economic progress.
The Privilege of Place
I grew up middle class and white, and I usually felt uncomfortable in situations when self-consciously my being white met someone else's being black. For example, when I was about 10 my sister and I wandered farther in a particular direction from home than we previously had. We ended up in an apartment complex's parking lot, and there were about 15 black kids there hanging out. We looked at them, they looked at us, and I felt uncomfortable.Until recently, I always looked back on my feelings from that and similar experiences as feelings of fear for my safety, born from a racist perspective. But I can now see that the feeling then is one I still feel at times, and it's not mainly fear. It's discomfort, sometimes thick discomfort, at being privileged and not knowing what to do about it. And that discomfort is always flavored with fear, guilt, shame, pride, arrogance, or other feelings.
I'm glad to finally now see that privilege isn't a bad thing. It doesn't mean I did something wrong or that there's something I should feel ashamed of. In fact, privilege could lead me to feel all sorts of valid ways and they're all okay. I don't have to do anything with those feelings.
However, the most empowering perspective on privilege that I now take is that privilege is an opportunity - it's an opportunity to use fortunate circumstances to affect meaningful change.
Not In My Back Yard - NIMBY
It was easier to be okay with U.S. slavery as a white person in the 1830s. It was easier to be okay with anti-semitic laws as a Catholic Italian or a Christian German in the 1930s. It was easier to be okay with the Iraq War as an American in the 2000s. And it's easier to be okay with past, present, and future environmental degradation so long as it's Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY).Our willingness to be okay with devastating extraction -> processing -> manufacturing -> and transporting effects on humans and non-humans is a result of our dissociation from the places and people directly impacted. This is the privilege of place - we are privileged to remain detached from the continued negative impacts of our society's way of life.
In the fairly affluent community where I live, it would be preposterous to consider the construction of a waste incineration plant (a plant where trash is burned for energy, like Baltimore's conspicuous one in the image below). A few years ago, however, Maryland approved a permit for an incinerator in Curtis Bay, Baltimore. NIMBY = it's fine with me, so long as it's Not In My Back Yard.
The Curtis Bay community, however, successfully organized and effectively fought the permit. To keep this from being solely a NIMBY battle, though, unclean incinerators need to be fought everywhere.
Baltimore stands apart as the American big city with the most deaths caused by air pollution, and Curtis Bay is its dirtiest community. Several years ago, the air there stood to get even worse when the state approved a permit for a giant incinerator that would burn 4,000 tons of trash every day and emit up to 1,240 pounds of lead and mercury every year.
Privilege as an Opportunity
There is no middle of nowhere, nowhere that doesn't 'count'... On some level we all know this, that we are part of a swirling web of connections. Yet we are trapped in linear narratives that tell us the opposite: that we can expand infinitely, that there will always be more space... more resources... more people.
- Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything
Becoming aware of our privilege of place does not necessitate caring or commitment. There isn't a 'should help' inherent in any privilege. However, I think that becoming aware of our privilege of place is likely to awaken latent compassion for those we are impacting.
