Why Tackling Environmental Racism is an Essential Part of the 2020 Election

In the United States, it’s easy to forget that clean air and water is a privilege. However, capitalism demands that a decision be made as to who can be harmed in the name of profit. And it’s no coincidence that communities of color are the most affected groups. 56% of Americans who live in neighborhoods near toxic waste sites are people of color, and this statistic is a result of many factors. Firstly, it is the result of communities of color being poorer on average than white communities. Thus, affluent whites are able to afford to live in neighborhoods that are further away from pollution sources, or they are otherwise able to move out of neighborhoods close to pollution sources. But this discrimination is not all based on socio-economic status. It’s largely based on racism. As an example of what I mean, according to the sociologist Robert Bullard, Black families whose annual incomes are between $50,000 and $60,000 a year are more likely to live in polluted areas than whites who have an annual salary of $10,000. This discrepancy fits perfectly into the agenda of systemic racism. It dates all the way back to redlining, when people of color were denied homes in post-Great-Depression suburban neighborhoods and instead forced into neighborhoods with less resources and funding that were often closer to pollution sources. The Fair Housing Act in 1968 outlawed this practice but didn’t stop its legacy from continuing. Housing values in white neighborhoods continued to be high, and housing values in neighborhoods continued to be low, so non-white people could not move out of historically-redlined areas.

There are more explanations for why environmental racism exists besides redlining. Companies that engage in polluting industrial activities have purposely moved into communities of color. One of the most well-known examples of this is in a historically Black community located along the Mississippi river between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Aptly nicknamed Cancer Alley, this area is riddled with over 150 petrochemical plants. The locations of a lot of these plants were determined during the 1940’s, when Black people had no say in decision-making processes. These companies justified their entrance into the towns by promising to bring jobs to locals, but they never did, leaving them instead with a cancer rate 50 times the nation average and a poverty rate 9% above the statewide average.

These kinds of horrible situations are exactly when we need the federal government to intervene. But the Environmental Protection Agency is currently used as a kind of wrecking ball. To start, Trump has this obsession with revitalizing the coal industry, and in doing so he has loosened regulations on coal waste, which disproportionately impacts the minority communities who are likely to live close to coal ash dumps. The toxins from coal waste also leak into local waterways, and exposure to these chemicals can dramatically shorten life expectancy. He’s also worsening the lives of agricultural workers, the majority of whom are Latinx, by refusing to ban a highly toxic pesticide called chlorpyrifos that is linked to brain damage. The EPA is now proposing to loosen restrictions on how much mercury can be released into the environment, which will harm Black people most, since they are 75% more likely to live near a mercury-emitting power plant than white people. So in Trump’s mind, being poor or non-white makes you and your community a dumping ground, which is terrifying, unethical, and downright racist.

But wait — there’s more! Worsening climate change means that BIPOC will suffer the worst of extreme weather events and heatwaves. Take hurricane Katrina in New Orleans as an example. The seeds of the disaster were sowed many years before 2005 when discriminatory housing regulations like redlining forced Black people to live in more flood-prone neighborhoods of the city. It’s no surprise, then, that when the hurricane arrived, a home owned by a Black person was over three times more likely to be flooded than a home owned by a white person. For the same reasons, white-owned homes were worth more than Black-owned homes, which really affected Black people once the city started rebuilding because the city issued grants to homeowners based on housing value rather than the cost of rebuilding. This unequal grant process hurt Black communities so much that about half of Black residents have not returned to New Orleans since the hurricane. As proof of growing racial inequality, New Orleans’ median Black household income is significantly less than before the storm, and that of white people is about 40% higher.

And Katrina was not an isolated incident. Hurricane Harvey in Houston devastated the poorest neighborhoods with the highest concentration of people of color, in part because the poorest neighborhoods were in flood zones (racist housing practices again), but were denied federal aid because they did not have flood insurance — which they couldn’t have afforded in the first place. And nine months after the hurricane, these neighborhoods had barely recovered, while white neighborhoods had gone back to normal.

Clearly, environmental racism has been an element of systemic racism for a long time, but it’s really showing through now with climate change and our dictator-in-the-making president. Trump has the power to reform FEMA so that non-white people receive the same amount of aid, but instead, he’s decided to divert $115 million to detention facilities where young children are separated from their families and kept in cages. We need a leader who will put us back on the route toward ensuring the basic human right of access to clean water and air to all people. This means actually using the EPA correctly by directing it to investigate possible criminal offenses committed by polluters that the Trump Administration has ignored. This leader must hold industries accountable for excessive emissions, which they are now able to do without any prohibition. And this leader must not be a racist who says it’s okay to destroy non-white communities in the name of profit. Joe Biden is the only option we have now, and he fits all of the previously listed categories. His policies may not be progressive enough yet, but he’s our escape route from the house that’s burning down around us.