Everyone is affected by pollution. Low-income, blacks, minority, and etc. have to live in bad environments due to the factory workers and white people dumping toxic waste into their environments. Environmental Racism is a problem that is affecting people around the world.
To begin, people are living in harsh environments. According to the article “Environmental Justice” it states, “Poor minority neighborhoods bear an unequal burden from hazardous facilities and waste sites.” This means the communities that are poor have to depend on other resources because they don’t have money to support themselves. In addition, the article “What is environmental racism?” According to page 1 paragraph 9 it states, “Low-income residents seeking affordable
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homes end up sharing a fence line with a refinery and a cluster of other polluting businesses.” This shows that people who don’t have enough money are looking for homes, but they don’t find one so they have to share a home with others that is located where the factory workers and wealthy people are dumping the toxic waste. The last example is stated in the article “Orlando Article”. “When the study Eggeletion is pushing would head in a different direction.” Looking for ways the state can avoid institutional racism and can communicate better with low-income or minority residents. Furthermore, pollution is messing up communities. In the article “ Climate Change” the author states, “The poorest people in the world, who have had virtually nothing to do with causing global warming will be high on the list of victims as climatic disruptions intensify, the report said.” This indicates that the people that don’t have anything to do with the global warming or pollution are suffering the most instead of the people who are causing it. As stated in the article “Climate Change” the author states, “Perhaps it even means that rich countries think their money is better spent on technology and “innovation” to shield them from climate catastrophe. And those tricks very well might shield some people from flooding, but it doesn’t shield the “poorest” from the kind of reckless capitalism that taps them in a perpetual state of vulnerability.” This means that the wealthy people don’t want to help the person that needs help because of pollution. They think their money is better spent on technology instead of the things that’s significant. The money being spent on technology will protect and benefit the rich countries, but it’s not going to protect the people that are poor. Also, stated in the article “What is Environmental Racism?” The author states, “people can’t escape the fumes indoors either.” This shows that because the pollution and the toxic waste are being dumped into communities it’s also circulate inside their houses and they can’t dodge it. Moreover, white people and factory workers are causing these problems.
Looking at the article “Environmental Justice” the author says, “Hazardous wastes landfills were disproportionally located in minority and low-income.” This shows that when factory workers don’t have places to put the waste they use the poor communities with less money at their waste site because other are out of portion. Another example is shown in the article “Climate change” he states, “The oppression, the bigotry, and fuckery of that argument is that it allows rich countries to continue perpetuating unrealistic demands on the world’s “poorest”- those who “virtually have had nothing to with” climate change.” This indicates that they continue to let the countries that are rich make unrealistic statements on how to help the poor people. The last example is, “These happen to both be things that the wealthy believe they can afford to ignore.” This means that the people who are wealthy think its ok to ignore the fact that pollution will destroy their country soon.
In a nutshell, Environmental Racism is a problem that is affecting people around the world. Low-income, blacks, minority, and etc. have to live in harsh environments due to the factory workers and white people dumping toxic waste into their communities. Everyone is affected by
pollution.
Nydia Velazquez is a representative for New York’s Twelfth Congressional District, which includes parts of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. In her essay “In Search of Justice,” Velazquez describes several unjust situations that happened in her district. She points out that the residents of Greenpoint, which is the heart of her district, are among the poorest in the country. She argues that large corporations carelessly dump their waste next to poor minorities’ living areas and emphasizes the terrible air conditions in her district. Velazquez believes that minority communities are treated unfairly under the environmental law, which targets large corporations.
Racism, a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human racial groups determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one 's own race is superior and has the right to dominate others or that a particular racial group is inferior to the others. Racism was one of John Howard Griffin, the writer of a very well known inequality book of Black Like Me, main topics for his writings. Being born and raised in the city of Dallas, Texas with his siblings and parents he saw much racism as a young child, but he never really noticed it until he left for Europe when he was fifteen. To broaden his education and continue his studies, he moved to France at a young age. Soon after living in France and Europe,
Next, Institutional or systemic racism refers to the laws, policies, practices, rules and procedures that operate within organisations, societal structures and the broader community to the advantage of the dominant group or groups and to the detriment and disadvantage of other groups. Institutional racism may be intentional or unintentional. Jim Crowe is a great example of institutional racism. Jim Crow laws were the name of the racist caste system put in place to segregate African Americans, Hispanics and any ethnic minority. Theses laws made it so non whites could not integrate with minorities. These laws applied to hospitals, buses, toilets and drinking fountains and restaurants. For example Buses: All passenger stations in this state operated
For example, the people of color are more likely to live in a polluted area than a person who is white. This is racist because the people of color are put in a bad area just because they are of color. The subject that will be connected to this is the drug war which is mostly based of of environmental racism. The drug war is a war on drugs
Native Americans have suffered from one of America’s most profound ironies. The American Indians that held the lands of the Western Hemisphere for thousands of years have fallen victim to some of the worst environmental pollution. The degradation of their surrounding lands has either pushed them out of their homes, made their people sick, or more susceptible to disease. If toxic waste is being strategically placed near homes of Native Americans and other minority groups, then the government industry and military are committing a direct offense against environmental justice. Productions of capitalism and militarism are deteriorating the lands of American Indians and this ultimately is environmental racism.
The second question that comes to mind when discussing what is just and what is unjust in regard to the environment through the lens of racism is whether or not we have a higher obligation to our own immediate kind as opposed to humanity as a whole, or even to the entire biosphere as a whole. This can be directly related to the previous question regarding the distribution of resources. Is it just for a group to hoard as many resources as it can in order to ensure that it continues to thrive and not diminish in any way? If we again accept equality as the end goal, the answer is no. Not only is it unjust for a group to deliberately hoard resources, it is unjust for a group to have the knowledge that there is another group suffering due to lack of resources and abstain from providing assistance to that suffering group. Peter Singer, in his article “One Community” argues this point through an anecdotal situation that applies well here.
Racism is commonly thought of as an act that is synonymous with violence; however, one common form of racism, environmental racism, often takes place without people being aware the events are happening before detrimental activities have been put into action. In Melissa Checker’s book Polluted Promises, she relates that Reverend Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. coined the term environmental racism while stating that there is “deliberate targeting of communities of color for toxic waste disposal and the siting of polluting industries” (Checker 14). This problem is important to discuss, as many groups of people around the United States continue to be impacted by these events every day. Such people include
Environmental racism is the “targeting of minorities and low-income communities to bear a disproportionate share of environmental costs. It refers to any policy or practice that differently affects or disadvantages individuals, groups or communities based on race or skin color” (Schill & Austin 1991). Environmental racism focuses on race as the primary factor why poor minorities in the United States are bearing a disproportionate share of the nation’s waste. According to research done by The Commission of Racial Justice of the United Church of Christ, areas containing two or more waste facilities or one of the largest waste landfills in the nation had on average about 40% people of color (Mohai, Pellow & Timmons
In the modern twenty-first century, there are many parts of society that are overlooked. Those that live in the higher rungs of the social order often live in the comfort of others. This phenomenon is known as environmental racism, which can be defined as any environmental policy, practice, or directive that disproportionately disadvantages nonwhite communities (Desmond and Emirbayer: 196). However, these policies can discriminate against poor whites as well since environmental racism categorically attacks communities that are less economically advantaged and live in poorer neighborhoods. Through environmental racism, the rich profit and the poor suffer, and this is done many times at the cost of people’s lives as seen in the case of Native
This means freedom from pollution, and dumping sites, access to clean water, and air quality, and freedom from environmental hazards, such as chemical toxins, industrial pollution, solid waste disposal and noise. Studies have shown that the social distribution of pollution suggest that poor households with low income, minorities, and poor African Americans in the United States are most affected by the environmental quality issues, (1) and “concerns about the environmental inequality led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency for Environmental Justice in 1992.” (1) The EPA is responsible for distributing and regulating the risks. (2) Since environmental Justice concerns where people work, live and play, it is also important for these people to be included in the decision making process.
The majority of the U.S. population is not aware of the problem of "environmental justice." Most people would not even know what the term means if they heard it. In this paper I will write about the discovery of "environmental racism" in the early 1980s and report what is known about it today. I will then argue that making the general public aware of the problem is a crucial step towards environmental justice.
Environmental racism refers to an environmental policy or practice that differentially affects individuals, groups, or communities based on their race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, or color (Hymer,1979). It has to do with the location of facilities that may emit dangerous or noxious fumes such as landfills, incinerators, hazardous waste treatment plants, storage, and disposal facilities owned by private industry or the government (Roxborough, 1979).
In reading James Cone and Evan Osnos’ articles on the relationship between environmentalism and racism and the Flint water crisis, I was particularly struck by what Bishop Frederick C. James said: "We in the Black community have been disproportionately affected by toxic dumping, disproportionately affected by lead paint at home, disproportionately affected by dangerous chemicals in the workplace” (Cone 5). The high levels of lead in Flint’s drinking water, and the relative inaction of state officials in response, reminded me of a discussion my classmates and I had in our Biology class just a few weeks ago. The course focuses on cancer and its causes, and while discussing environmental factors that contribute to high rates of cancer, we found
Air pollution according to the Wikipedia << is the introduction of particulates, biological materials, or other harmful materials into the Earth’s atmosphere, possibly causing disease, death to humans, damage to other living organisms such as food crops, or the natural or built environment>>. Therefore, human being should be aware of the facts that the environment and all living creatures are dying. They need to understand the importance of natural items, the nature, etc…
In short, environmental pollution, almost exclusively created by human activities, has a negative effect on the ecosystem, destroying