Environmental Racism On Marginalized Communities

Environmental Racism in Marginalized Communities

Environmental racism has been an ongoing issue in the United States. This issue mainly affects communities of color, immigrants, and poor folks who live in urban areas and around public squalors. This creates an unsafe environment for low-income communities and there are hardly any resource to address these environmental destructions. Most poor communities are more than likely to experience pollution than anywhere else because of their social and class status. Due to this, it can determine their breathing and living condition. This builds the connection between race and environmental destruction because of the stigma of space that is attached to low-income areas. Even though environmental racism is more than the unloading of waste in poor areas, this paper focus more on this factor than other elements that correlate with environmental racism. In order to make space for toxic waste, society risks the safety and health of poor communities of color to ensure a capacity for industry to perpetuate environmental racism.

Throughout the United States, communities of color have been the dumping grounds for waste disposal and a space for manufacturing industries to sustain the pollution of lands. Cultural practices and government policies prolong and contribute to the ongoing cycle of environmental racism. Waste products increase as industry expands, and this creates a toxic waste for humans, animals, and plants. In most of these affected communities, there are not enough clinics or education to raise awareness on these matters. This is essentially problematic for Native people that depend on natural law for food and survival.

People of color, specifically Native Americans, are affected by A...

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...han likely to die from environmental pollution than a racist cop. Many children from urban areas are exposed to daily pollution from coal plants to busy highways and most of them suffered from asthma illness. In addition, when we think of how much our country consume every day, it is a no brainer on why we would need so much space for the wastes. In order to address environmental racism, we first would need to examine the wasteful of American people and the notion that it is acceptable to dump garbage in marginalized and oppressed communities of color. We must challenge systematic forces and institutions by changing their laws and policies. We should be in open-dialogue with other folks to spread awareness. If we remain silent when dealing with environmental racism and its crisis, the extinction of our communities will continue to rise unless we eliminate the problem.