Hey guys, it's me, Erica. I hope everyone is having a great week! I was rather troubled when we watched a video is class earlier this week about environmental racism. For those of you who may not know exactly what environmental racism is, it is when corporations intentionally target low income and minority areas for the development of ecologically hazardous facilities. These facilities are harmful to the health of the people living nearby because the release massive amounts of toxins into the air. The video that we watched, below, was called Environmental Racism by Michael Franti. The video contains interviews with people who are subjected to this racism first hand and also contains many chilling statistics. Three of the major geographical areas of focus are Camden, New Jersey, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and New Orleans, Louisiana. I don't think it is any secret that these areas, especially New Orleans and Baton Rouge are predominantly minority communities. According to the video, in Camden 80% of Hispanics live in areas that violate U.S. air quality standards compared to 71% of African Americans and 50% of whites. This is because companies are targeting these minorities and low income areas. This is just incredibly disturbing to me that somehow, these people of different color and different economic status are inferior and their lives are not worth as much. I mean, the U.S. is supposed to a great country of equality, at least that is what we portray to the rest of the world yet we put certain group's lives at risk just to make money through our corporations. In Virginia over a 20 year period all landfills were placed withing one mile of communities that were 95% African American. To me, this fact is just chilling.
Another area that has a particularly high presence of environmental racism is "Cancer Alley', a 90 mile stretch between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana. This 90 mile stretch is home to one forth of the nations chemical manufacturing plants.
Along with many other health problems linked with the toxic developments, across the country African Americans are treated for asthma more than three times as often as Whites. Also, over 95% of African American children who live in inner cities have an unsafe amount of lead in their blood.
Through this link(http://www.youngpeoplefor.org/node/1976) I found more evidence to support the claims made in this video. The article called" Native Americans, Blacks and Latinos- The Effect of Environmental Racism on people of color in the US" on a news page called "Young People for Constitutional Liberties" provides even more evidence to support the claims against environmental racism. These people are being intentionally put in harmful situations and the government doesn't care.
Environmental Racism and Biased Methods of Risk Assessment by Daniel C. Wigley and Kristin S. Shrader-Fretchette, another story supporting claims on Environmental Racism can be found at http://law.unh.edu/risk/vol7/winter/wigley.htm.
Photo from Flickr.com
This is a sad testament to the state of our nation and the hypocritical nature of our country.
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