From October 24-27, 1991, nearly 300 people gathered in Washington, D.C., for the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit. African, Latino, Native, and Asian American citizens with delegates from Puerto Rico, Canada, Central and South America, and the Marshall Islands united to raise public awareness of environmental justice and environmental racism. To “fight the destruction and taking of [their] lands and communities, re-establish [their] spiritual interdependence to the sacredness of Mother Earth, to [obtain the] respect… [their] cultures, languages, and beliefs about the natural world deserve, ensure environmental justice, promote alternatives to the development of environmentally safe livelihoods; and secure political, economic, and cultural liberation", the group declared seventeen different principles of environmental justice.
The seventeen principles of environmental justice called for many changes to help protect both their livelihoods and environment, including:
Making public policy free from discrimination and bias and based on mutual respect and justice for all peoples
Ensuring the sacredness of Mother Earth by making her free from ecological destruction
Calling for universal protection from nuclear testing, disposal of toxic/hazardous wastes, and anything else that threatens the right to a clean environment
Calling for opposition to destructive operations from multinational corporations
Emphasizing educational efforts around social and environmental issues based on experience and an appreciation of diverse cultural perspectives
Churches, civil rights groups, health organizations, labor unions, and academic institutions alike supported the summit in the fight for environmental justice. From stories of the poor treatment of Native Americans in Oklahoma and an African American community in Revilletown, Louisiana, they all shared accounts of environmental racism (1).
But while the summit took place thirty years ago, environmental racism still occurs every day around the world, especially in America. However, many questions arise when people attempt to discuss environmental racism, such as: “So… are you saying that the environment is racist?”, “Are you trying to say that people are racist towards the environment?”, and “Why are you bringing race into the topic of environmental protection? Shouldn’t environmental protection be focused on everybody, everywhere?” It’s easy to understand why such questions arise when education about and discussion of environmental racism is so limited. Environmental racism is not always easy to trace back to a specific person or group of people directly targeting another group of people based on their race and/or nationality today. Many times, it’s the byproduct of many decades of racial injustice and discrimination by a whole society. There are many layers to environmental racism, but the core is systemic racism.
Over the past two weeks, The Vinny Demme Portfolio has brought forth the stories of three former slaves--Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Tubman--who found their ways despite everything against them through heroics, speaking, writing, and bravely sharing their messages. Now, we take you to a time after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation called the Reconstruction era, the period following the Civil War that still causes Black Americans and many other minorities hardships some hundred or so years after the slaves were set free. And while racism had always existed, it evolved into something that made the new supposed-to-be-equal society into anything but.
So… what even is systemic racism?
Systemic racism is perhaps the most prominent human rights issue in America as it can be seen in nearly all aspects of American life. For example, in 2019, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that the wage gap between Black and white Americans had grown from 59% to 62% between 1967 and 2017, and per capita income of Black Americans ($24.7K) was $18K less than white Americans in 2018 ($42.7K) (2). 2014 statistics from the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights also showed that Black students were three times more likely to be suspended or expelled from schools (3). Despite facts like these, many people--including conservative social media influencer Ben Shapiro--fail to grasp just how complex the issue is. Because of this, they fail to ask and discuss the correct questions to combat it.
“If you cannot define a problem clearly, you cannot propose a solution,” Shapiro tweeted on June 5, 2020, “‘Systemic racism’ or ‘institutional racism’ or ‘implicit racism’ is a miasmatic, deliberately vague charge. Name the racist policy, name the racist person, so we can all fight the racism together” (4). As mentioned, there are layers upon layers that contribute to environmental racism issues just as there are layers upon layers of problems that contributed to Breonna Taylor and George Floyd’s deaths. Overall, systemic racism refers to not just one racist policy or person that can be defeated easily; it refers to decades of racist policies and people using political jargon to disguise their intentions and the resulting scarcity of opportunities, money, and chances for higher education for minorities and people of color. Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, the founders of Ben and Jerry’s, have even dedicated 30 separate pages on their website to explaining systemic racism, perhaps because there is so much ignorance towards the issue and the fact that it is so little discussed on a national scale in America today.
People are far more familiar with the “For Whites/Whites Only” and “For Colored/Colored Only” signs in documentaries about Jim Crow laws and America’s segregated past. Still, segregation only got worse over time, the process of redlining being a prime example. In its simplest terms, redlining was essentially when banks and city-wide institutions would take a map of an integrated community and begin marking minority-majority areas red, separating them from white-populated areas. These minority-majority areas would be labeled as “hazardous” or “undesirable”, leading banks to have little interest in lending money to those areas even if the regions and individuals redlined were wealthier than regions and individuals that were not redlined. This led people in redlined areas to miss out on public investments, public transit, sufficient education, and even general health services at no fault of their own (6).
This practice was concluded with the Fair Housing Act (7), yet the years of being denied things that many others nearby had rights to has had a lasting effect. Older family members having had little to no good education has resulted in fewer young people pursuing--or having the resources to pursue--higher education, leading to lowered earnings and financial stability. Less money has also led to fewer opportunities to acquire necessities or only enough money to acquire these necessities, which in turn has led to individuals having to choose between methods of furthering their lives… “Do I go for a car? Do I go for a new place to live? Do I try college when I can barely afford my rent?” This, along with the issue of implicit bias--how we perceive people we do not know based on their race, gender, language, etc.--has been shown to impact situations like employment as some employers have been known to discard applications with “Black” or ethnic names on them (8). Systemic racism and implicit bias have also led to banks not giving Black or ethnically diverse people the same opportunities as others (9), and one of the most significant issues of the 21st century, heightened suspicion towards Black and minority people by the police force (10, 11, 12).
So, where does environmental racism come into play?
Considering how the effects of systemic racism and implicit bias have evolved and become even more widespread, one can begin to understand how environmental racism has also evolved in America. Think about how all the redlined communities were given fewer financial opportunities than other communities. Now, think about your local minority-majority community and where it is. Is it near a luscious park filled with trees and newly refurbished businesses, or is it next to an industrial plant or maybe even a bustling interstate? (Chances are, it could be either one, but it is far more common to see a minority-majority community rather than a white-majority community near an industrial plant or bustling interstate.) When one community or a portion of that community is granted fewer financial opportunities and resources than another, environmentally damaging companies can take advantage of that community. On account of local properties being near more run-down homes, roads, and schools, lower property values make it much easier for these kinds of companies to make these places their home. While industrial plants may bring new jobs, what else do you associate with them? You probably think of large brown or grey colored brick buildings with semi-trucks going in and out all day every day. But what’s on top of those buildings? Smokestacks. And what comes out of those smokestacks beyond the neverending stream of white smoke? Toxins.
Many minority communities have been irreparably damaged by both racism and environmental contamination. “Morrisonville [Louisiana] is one of the sad stories that had so much promise at the end of slavery and fell to tough circumstances during Reconstruction,” said Pat Bryant, a sharecropper and resident of New Orleans in a 2020 interview with talkpoverty.org. Bryant explained, “The people were able to make a living. They built houses. They educated their families where there was no public education for African Americans. And some of them were able to send their kids to college to build a better life.” Still, the residents of Morrisonville could not escape the hazardous environmental conditions all around them that eventually led to adverse health outcomes.
The record of the inhabitants of Morrisonville, LA, is similar to those of Diamond, Mossville, Sunrise, and Revilletown. After the Civil War, each city was founded by emancipated slaves on the Mississippi River banks. As Black Americans had no real representation when large companies arrived in their communities, they had no real say as to which of those companies and agencies made these areas their home. Each town was harmed by the onslaught of toxins emitted into the air, soil, and water by companies that created chemicals using petroleum and other fossil fuels called petrochemicals. Many compounds found in petroleum alone are hazardous to humans, so one could imagine just how deadly these petrochemicals were. As the petrochemicals found their way into homes--homes one could imagine were not necessarily built with the highest quality materials and methods--people were poisoned, and those who did not die from petrochemical contact were forced to move.
When one explores the area formerly occupied by Morrisonville and its residents, all that is left is its town cemetery. It is brimming with the graves of those who suffered and died due to the petrochemical companies such as Dow Chemical Company, the largest petrochemical company in the state of Louisiana. Dow first established itself in the small city of Plaquemine in 1959 and emitted a colorless, cancer-causing gas with its production of plastics and plastic products. Although new regulations have been instituted, many modern cities along the Mississippi River from New Orleans to Baton Rouge are affected by similar plants as over 150 industrial plants and refineries have made the stretch of land their home. The historic river area is referred to as “Cancer Alley'', and the numbers support that claim (13, 14). According to Becker’s Hospital Review, Louisiana ranked sixth out of all fifty states in cancer deaths with 169 per 100,000 people dying from the disease--despite it only having 1.4% of the U.S. population (15). “You put poison in the land, water, and in the air, the result is sickness and death. The planned killing of any group is genocide.,” Pat Bryant stated in 2012 about the issue (13).
Another example of an issue caused by environmental racism is the Flint Water Crisis of 2014. Like many other smaller cities in America, Flint received its water from one primary source, and a vast majority of the residents used the same water source in their homes to drink, cook, clean, and bathe. Flint had long been getting its water from Lake Huron after the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department properly purified it, but as Flint had been an impoverished town for many decades, city officials determined in 2014 that switching to another water source would likely save the city money. Consequently, they switched Flint’s water source from Lake Huron/Detroit to the nearby Flint River. Soon, the water in Flint was anything but clean.
“My youngest would tell me, ‘Mom! It’s yellow, and it’s a filmy gross foamy thing!’” Flint resident Melissa Mays stated in a CNN interview, “And it would smell like open sewer. But - we were being told [by city officials] ‘we’re still getting used to the new system - it’s safe, it’s okay” (16). Mays wasn’t alone in this experience, as those living in Flint, a majority-Black neighborhood, were soon all experiencing the same foul-smelling, discolored water. This water caused upwards of 12,000 children to experience high blood levels of lead, an element that can lead to brain damage and severe illness as well as hair loss, skin rashes, and even America’s third-largest outbreak of Legionnaires disease. This pneumonia-like illness infected at least 87 Flint residents and killed 12.
Throughout the history of the Flint River, many large industrial companies, similar to those found in the Cancer Alley region of Louisiana, dumped waste and toxins into the Flint River. With Michigan being famously known for its history of automobile manufacturing, many of the GM plants found in Flint were flagged for noncompliance with EPA regulations and added to the river pollution. Along with that, road salt being used on interstates and highways throughout winter months found its way into the Flint River.
Protesters carried jugs of the polluted water to the offices of city officials, but those responsible continued to respond with four simple words--“the water is safe”. Soon, they muttered a form of response by admitting there was E.coli, a bacteria that can cause vomiting and som
Soon, in an effort to petition the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to begin a federal response to the crisis, many residents joined various groups like the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) to bring light to the issue. However, the EPA failed to address the situation adequately, which led the residents to push further and eventually sue Flint city officials with the help of the NRDC and other organizations like the Concerned Pastors for Social Action, a local church group, and the American Civil Liberties Union, (ACLU). A motion was soon passed to ensure that everybody in Flint would quickly access safe water through a water bottle delivery service and a water purification system installed in their homes. A settlement was also quickly passed that ensured the city would replace lead pipes, execute better water testing, and establish health programs to help the residents overcome new illnesses brought upon them by the polluted water. Nowadays, the situation in Flint is improving. Still, it is an ongoing matter for the citizens who have had to take it upon themselves to continue pushing legislation and awareness to keep Flint’s residents safe.
During the 2016 Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton said quite frankly, “[I]f the kids in a rich suburb of Detroit had been drinking contaminated water and being bathed in it, there would’ve been action,” a statement which perfectly summed up the environmental racism involved and was supported by the fact that nearly two years had passed between the initial switch and the acknowledgment of E.coli. Now, many are asking what will happen to Flint next. Exposure to the polluted water is expected to cause lasting health issues, including learning disabilities in children. As Flint’s poverty seemingly just got worse, it is very possible that the catastrophe has paved the way for the emergence of more companies in Flint like those that brought both Death Alley and Flint the problems they are facing today. As Dr. Robert Bullard, Dean of the School of Public Affairs at the Texas Southern University--and a person many call the father of environmental justice--said, “Racism trumps class. Even middle-income African Americans are more likely to live in polluted neighborhoods” (17, 18, 19, 20). But while the Cancer Alley and Flint communities maybe two prime examples of the effects of environmental racism, many other examples of the issue exist in all corners of America.
Not only does environmental racism cause deaths but many of these toxins now occupying the environment also cause health defects and problems that lead to many minorities in America being disproportionately affected by issues that have the potential to affect every American. According to the Stanford Medicine News Center, “Black and Hispanic people made up 58% of all patients hospitalized for COVID-19 and 53% of those who died from the disease” (21). Early on in the pandemic, it was also found that “people with COVID-19 who live in countries with higher levels of PM2.5 exposure are more likely to die from the virus” (22). PM2.5 is the scientific compound name of particulate matter, inhalable particles with diameters of 2.5 micrometers or smaller, the same particles spread by industrial plants. The same particles lead to heart disease and other lung problems, two preexisting conditions that lead to more deaths from COVID-19 (23). In Cancer Alley, Louisiana, some places have reported the cancer risk being 50% higher than the U.S. average due to such pollutants, cancer being another severe underlying health condition.
Morrisonville, Louisiana, and Flint, Michigan, are just two examples of predominantly Black communities facing environmental racism in America. The issue is also present in places like Pahokee, Florida, where the smoke from sugarcane burns in fields near predominantly Black communities has led to asthma in children (24). It’d be nearly impossible to pinpoint every instance of environmental racism in America due to how much it occurs across the country--and it’s not just in America. In West Papua, Indonesia, Freeport-McMoRan, the operator of one of the largest copper and gold mines in the world, has been found to dump 130,000 tons of waste rock into local rivers near predominantly Black communities--one example of environmental racism being a global issue (25).
Unfortunately, environmental racism is not an issue that is so quickly solved. It is an issue rooted in both systemic racism and implicit biases, but there is hope as people address systemic and environmental racism alike. Many organizations raise awareness every day by sharing academic studies and pushing for campaigns to combat these problems. Understanding and education are great ways to get messages across, as is honest education covering Black people’s oppression in America for centuries. There is also the issue of many Americans downright denying the many environmental crises Earth finds itself in, an issue since the Ronald Reagan days (26). Through education on all these factors, America could get back on track.
In fact, America needs to get back on track, and you, yes you, can help make that happen. For starters, you can find a voice in community organizations. While you yourself may not be a community organizer, raising awareness of major issues and racist policies through petitions, virtual rallies (at the moment), Facebook groups, and anything that could get the message out will get more people interested and informed. Look at the people of Flint. Everything may not be solved, but a lot more has happened than would have if they never did anything about it. Make phone calls to city halls, church groups, good-doing non-profit organizations, your teachers, your friends, really anybody.
Environmental racism and injustice are devastating issues, and it’s going to continue affecting minority communities if we don’t do anything. Look around--is anyone really stopping you? And if they are trying to stop you, wouldn’t you rather fail trying to succeed rather than not try at all? Push for the support of candidates that will work to solve this issue. No one is saying that you can’t do anything to make the world a better place. And heck, it may not be easy, but no one is saying that you yourself can’t run for office. America will make it if we try.
Learn more about the fight against environmental racism and how you can assist in the fight:
Sources and Links
Civil Rights Data Collection, Data Snapshot: School Discipline Issue Brief No. 1 (March 2014) - U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights
Ben Shapiro Systemic Racism Tweet - @benshapiro - Twitter.com
7 Ways We Know Systemic Racism Is Real, Ben & Jerry’s - benjerry.com
(Type “racism” in the search bar to see all related pages)
Housing Segregation and Redlining in America: A Short History | Code Switch | NPR - NPR.
A ‘Forgotten History’ Of How The U.S. Government Segregated America - NPR
Minorities Who “Whiten” Job Resumes Get More Interviews - Harvard Business School
For people of color, banks are shutting the door to homeownership - Reveal News
10 things we know about race and policing in the U.S. - Pew Research Center
Environmental Racism Is Killing Black Communities in Louisiana - talk poverty
Welcome to “Cancer Alley,” Where Toxic Air Is About to Get Worse - ProPublica
States ranked by cancer death rates - Becker’s Hospital Review
Lead-Laced Water in Flint: A Step-By-Step Look At The Makings Of A Crisis
Sugar field burning plagues poor Florida towns with soot - The Philadelphia Tribune
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