How's YOUR neighborhood's health?
Dear Leading Ladies,
President Biden’s administration last week expressed again its commitment to fighting the environmental hazards that disproportionately affect Blacks, Latinos, and other people of color in this country. However, the president and his team are reframing the problem as one that affects poor communities, rather than people of color. In other words, race is being taken out of the conversation.
Why?
The president and his administration fear that their Justice40 plan to distribute funds to combat environmental hazards in the most affected communities will be stymied by lawsuits if they are described as based on race or part of historical and systemic racism. If federal allocations are to be approved, the reasoning goes, they must be for those who live in economically disadvantaged communities. No through line to race can be drawn.
Dr. Robert Bullard, a professor, author, and pioneer in the environmental justice movement, thinks this is a mistake. He believes that race is the “most potent predictor” of environmental injustice. “Not income, not property values, but race. If you’re leaving race out, how are you going to fix this?”
We thought it was worth looking at the facts.
What is environmental racism?
Environmental racism, as defined by Bullard and widely accepted, is “any policy, practice or directive that differentially affects or disadvantages (where intended or unintended) individuals, groups or communities based on race,” by disproportionately exposing them to high pollutants such power stations, plastics plants, methane gas pipelines, landfills, trash incinerators, coal plants, toxic waste dumps, and even major highways, all of which are dangerous and lower the quality of life. The term environmental racism was first recognized by the US General Accounting Office in 1983 in a report that noted that 75% of communities near harmful landfill sites were predominantly Black.
Since that initial report, subsequent studies have found other hazards that disproportionately affect communities of color, such as poor water quality, a lack of sanitation, and high exposure to carbon dioxide emissions. Living in these conditions has been linked to health problems including certain types of cancer, asthma, and other respiratory ailments.
Some of these hazards exist in urban settings, but others are set in rural locations, along with slaughterhouses, ranches, and pig farms that pollute the air, water, and soil. In the case of these agricultural businesses, activists believe the owners build their operations in these areas because of the cheap land, but also because of an underpaid labor force and a population they think will not complain about the damage done to their health and the health of their communities.
This situation is never a random occurrence, according to Medical News Today. “The proximity of Communities of Color to hazardous environments is a systematic issue that affects civil rights. This is because it is easier and cheaper for policies and practices to place industrial facilities in communities where there are fewer resources to fight back with.” The Flint, Michigan water crisis, the arsenic contamination in the San Joaquin Valley, and the “cancer valley” in Louisiana are three current examples of people of color suffering from environmental hazards.
Numbers make the case
We get it. Biden will have a hard time selling programs to help Black and brown people. But the numbers don’t lie.
People of color face a 28% higher health burden compared to the general population because they live in proximity to facilities emitting particulate pollution like soot, according to a 2018 study by Environmental Protection Agency scientists.
For Black Americans, that number goes up to a 54% greater health burden.
Black Americans breathe 56% more pollution than they produce and Latinos breathe 63% more, while whites breathe 17% less.
Black people are 75% more likely than white people to live close to oil and gas facilities that pollute our air and change our climate.
In the US, approximately 68% of Black people live within 30 miles of a coal fired power plant.
Black people are 75% more likely than others to live near hazardous waste facilities.
In 46 states, people of color live with more air pollution than white people.
Public water systems that constantly violate the Safe Drinking Water Act are 40% more likely to serve people of color, according to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data from 2016-2019.
43% of white Americans say that they are “very confident” in their tap water, while only 24% of Black Americans, and 19% of Hispanic Americans indicate the same degree of confidence, according to a SOURCE Global PBC survey.
(The bulleted information above is from The Climate Reality Project and Forbes.)
What can we do?
Learn more about environmental justice and environmental racism. The Climate Reality Project is a good place to start. Their website is full of great information and they have a chapter in the Greater Boston area if you care to join.
And, while we wish that the president could rightly call the state of our environmental injustice a consequence and expression of our country’s historic racism, we still need to support whatever efforts he makes to right the situation. Will we look back and regret we made this compromise? Or will we have some satisfaction that fewer Black children were forced to live with asthma or suffer through hot treeless summers or watch their parents die of cancer?
Update on Black history curriculum
We took our own advice last week and asked Dr. André Morgan, director of opportunity, access, and equity for the Beverly Public Schools, what is being done in his schools to make Black history part of the curriculum. His response was reassuring and full of good news.
“Black history is American history; hence, we work to infuse this history into the curriculums," Dr. Morgan said, “in order that students may learn throughout the year, and throughout all disciplines, about the accomplishments, experiences and perspectives of Black people.” He offered examples, including that students read poetry, fiction, and nonfiction by Black authors; primary and secondary source documents by and about Black people are integrated into student assignments; and awareness of Black scientists and mathematicians is incorporated into class syllabi.
Thank you, Dr. Morgan. We wish communities nationwide were doing as much as the Beverly Public Schools.
That is our hope.
Venture out safely, but don’t throw your masks away yet,
Therese
Judy
Mary
Beth
Leading Ladies Executive Team
ladies@leadingladiesvote.org
leadingladiesvote.org