South Sound Gathering Archives | South Seattle Emerald

by Jack Russillo

In the battle to confront the effects of climate change, Emily Pinckney, a Black marine biologist working for the Point Defiance Zoo, has compared the process for BIPOC communities to crabs in a barrel.

First of all, crabs shouldn’t be in a barrel, she says. We should not be trapping ourselves in a scenario that forces us to claw at one another in a competitive struggle for survival and that ends with us getting boiled. There’s no reason for us to need to compete.

“Equality is not a pie, and there’s not just one slice for People of Color,” said Pinckney, a community-appointed member of the state’s Environmental Justice Task Force. “We need to make sure that we actually educate everyone and not necessarily empower people — because we do have power — but recognizing that power that we have and reminding us that we have it … Some people get it and some people just haven’t had the time to understand the concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion and why they’re valuable to this [environmentalism] movement.”

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