One criticism I’ve heard leveled against Greta Thunberg is that this is a white girl, living in a prosperous country, who really shouldn’t be the face of climate change. This article addresses that ...

In some ways this is an important point – activists of colour like Mari Copeny a.k.a. Little Miss Flint, who has been raising awareness and funds for the water crisis since she was eight, have received far less attention for their activism. But I’m less interested in this criticism levelled towards Greta as a person – she is a 16-year-old, autistic girl who has endured a lot of ableism and misogyny in her time in the public eye. Instead, I think it’s important that we think about the structures that consistently centre whiteness, and white individuals, both within coverage of the climate crisis and outside of it. It is this that speaks to a larger problem of white supremacy and an obsession with individuals in the media.

We know that under white supremacism, both the media and its audiences disproportionately spotlight and uplift whiteness ... This doesn’t mean we should pay less attention towards Greta on the basis of her whiteness, but instead we should criticise the white supremacist climate that means that activists like Mari Copeny get sidelined.

Part of this problem also lies in the issue of fame in and of itself. To a certain extent, we buy into the cult of the individual when we inject 16-year-old activists into the realm of celebrity, when they really came to tell us to take action. The media prefers individual “star” activists to faceless movements. But this complicates representation – it’s impossible for one person to truly represent everyone ... the pressure and criticism directed towards her sometimes feels unfair – it’s worth considering that Greta didn’t ask to be a celebrity, we made her into one. We can address and deconstruct this problem by thinking beyond individuals – and also talking about movements, community groups and even our most abstract modes of thinking about the climate crisis (particularly with regards to decolonisation).

... When we bring focus towards activists of colour, we prove that activism isn’t a project that has only limited space for a certain number of voices. It reduces the amount of misogynistic and ableist abuse that young activists like Greta face, whilst in turn tackling the issue of putting whiteness on a pedestal. Importantly, this goes hand-in-hand with pushing against the media’s constant need to position individual people as the monolithic faces of particular movements.