Intersectionality of Being Black

I don’t remember the first time I heard the term environmentalism. I’ve never really thought extensively about the environment until we did those reduce, reuse, recycle projects in class. I grew up learning to recycle and that every time you litter, that’s “one extra pound to the earth.” I was cautious. I was aware. However, growing up I didn’t focus that much on the “environment” because of everything going on around me. Growing up in society as a black woman and realizing that I was different from “the rest,” it’s challenging for those thoughts and experiences to not overpower my mind.

I never considered the environment to be important, or at least it never made it on my top ten list of priorities. However, when I really began to learn about the impacts of human activity in the environment, I learned it also had to do with me in a position I never asked to be in. As a black, low income, underrepresented and marginalized individual, this affected me.

I was just entering high school when I fully began to understand that the rich stay rich and money is the foundation of everything. We can’t talk about environmental injustice without understanding the historical context of colonization and capitalism. The moment I really began to dive deep into environmental racism was during my study abroad experience in China where I had the opportunity to take AP Environmental Science. Growing up as a black girl in urban America, I thought I knew what it was like to be a spectacle, but I didn’t truly learn what this felt like until I learned that the cup is always half empty when you’re black. Sitting in my Environmental Science classroom, it came as no surprise to me to learn about who was disproportionately harmed by lead poisoning, asthma, and mold — all of which are associated with factors such as substandard housing conditions and air pollution — due to living near industrial facilities, highways, and etc.

I grew up in a community full of environmental injustices without knowing it. I knew that those with wealth and political clout do best; if you had the money you could leave, but the poor can’t go anywhere. The poor are unseen, unheard and undervalued.

The environment has everything to do with me. This current society we live in focuses more on the needs of majority-white areas instead of black.

I knew that those black cracks in my bathtub weren’t simply the paint chipping off as my mother would always tell me. I knew that those loud banging sounds from the construction workers and the dust that would trickle into my room weren’t to just better my community but to make sure that our neighborhood looked up to par for the Caucasians moving in. That dust that my mom would try to sweep away as if I didn’t know that we were physically not in control of our environment. That dust that would make me short of breath and trigger my wheezing to where I would have to miss school. I then learned that African Americans and other minority groups in the United States have been disproportionately affected by environmental hazards and African Americans are three times more likely to stay in the hospital because of asthma and three times more likely to die from asthma than their white counterparts. I was powerless. I was placed into a position of uncertainty, developed economic anxiety and further came to understand that being at the very bottom of society makes you want to lose it.

I grew up with the idea that I had my own battles to face and always saw environmentalism and climate change as a white people issue. Little did I know that almost every social and structural determinant of life depends on access, power, and money, which were three things never granted to me. It’s well documented that people who live, work, and play in America’s most polluted environments are poor and people of color. This is no accident.

All this time I found myself considering the environment to be an affluent white people issue and concern until I found out that it hit me harder than anything else. The reality is health inequities exist and the result is from choices that I never made my socioeconomic status and the physical environment that surrounds and supports me. It is my belief that systemic racism has contributed to communities of color, like mine, being provided with insufficient resources, underfunded public services, and insane amounts of pollution. This has to end with my generation for future generations to come.