Justin Michalson
11-28-18
Dr.Moses
Research Paper: Environmental Racism
Environmental racism is the destruction of communities of color due to lack of access to clean water, proper land, and lack of rehabilitation from extensive natural disasters. Early instances of Environmental Racism was sharecropping post civil war. Black folks were not tied down to plantations anymore, so as functioning members of capitalist society, they needed money to survive. Sharecropping allowed black people to have a share of land in exchange to upkeep said land. Unfortunately, tenants “charged interest, charged for tool usage, and were still racist to black people” (Blackmon). They were still tied to land of both poor quality and that of hardly any business venture. Giving tough land and exploiting the black people who worked on it is one of the first examples of environmental racism and broken promises. Unfortunately, cases like this are still prominent today. For example, Black and brown communities still not having access to clean water, do not recover from natural disasters like hurricane katrina, and have to constantly move due to consistent gentrification. It is a basic right for us humans to have access to clean water, healthy land, and clean air. Unfortunately, most black and native communities do not have this access due to societal thought processes that favor wealthier (and whiter) communities. Communities of color, especially black and indigenous communities are more likely to live in areas that aren't healthy compared to their white counterparts due to negligence and systemic racism.
A prominent example of environmental racism that highlights communities of color at the hand of negligence. would be Flint, Michigan. It was colonized by white people in the early 19th century, and most jobs after this period pertained to carriage production.s that pertained within the community revolved around carriage production. This set up ground to progress in the transportation market by housing General motors, kickstarting a really prominent labor movement within our American society. Although, General Motors decided to move their production overseas in the 80’s, unfortunately that brought the halt of 70,000 jobs within Flint, signaling the ‘white flight’ complex, Flint never recovered from the deindustrialization that GM brought to their community. Since Deindustrialization, flint has suffered several troubles. Some of those being increasing poverty rate, increasing crime rate and several fiscal crisis (Highsmith) .Processes of abandonment have led the city to become more poor and Black, as opposed to those with more options (including white skin), left Flint. As of 2010, there were 102,434 residents in Flint, 56.6% of whom were African American and 37.4% white. The median household income is $24,679, giving the city a staggering poverty rate of 41.6% , 167% higher than the national average. The subprime housing crisis was so severe in Flint that the average home price dropped to $17,000 (Highsmith 2015, 273). From 2011 to 2015, Rick Snyder hired four different managers to consult Flint with its fiscal problem, in 2015 it was declared that Flint was withstading again. There are several factors and measures that go into having a ‘withstanding fiscally’ status when it comes to Flint. One of those factors was switching the water pipes from the Detroit river to the Flint river. This saved Flint over 18 million dollars a year. Which raises the question, “why didn't Flint use the river before?”.
Flint water has a history of being polluted from GM’s industrial activity. This furthers the point that Flint Rivers are extremely hard to treat. It's a valid reason to why no one would have thought to change the pipes from the Detroit to the Flint river. The remaining GM factory located in Flint asked for their pipes to be switched back to the detroit river due to their engine parts becoming rusted. There's no telling to what water rusted engine parts could do to human bodies. The water tests indicate, both their findings and the secrecy surrounding them, reveal a shocking disregard for human life. Testing indicated alarming lead levels. Some tests found lead levels seven times over the federal legal limit, while others were 10,000 times over (ACLU of Michigan 2016). The readings triggered discussions between environmental officials in Flint, the state of Michigan, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Miguel Del Toral of the EPA, a public health hero, was pivotal in uncovering the scope and gravity of the poison- ing, its deliberate nature, and the cover-up on the part of local and state officials. When Del Toral saw the lead levels, he immediately inquired about what kind of anti-corrosive agent(s) Flint was using. (Is there anyway to split this section in multiple paragraphs)
Flints residents faced the most harm. The water had traces of several dangerous contaminants although residents were repeatedly told their water was fine, despite the fact that it was cloudy, foul tasting, smelly, carried a host of contaminants, included E. coli bacteria, disinfectant, TTHM (a carcinogenic byproduct of chlorine), and lead (Del Toral 2015). The poisoned water resulted in an array of health problems, ranging from rashes, burning eyes, to Legionnaires disease. While ten people in Flint have died to date from Legionnaires, thousands have been permanently impacted by lead poisoning (Hulett ). Lead is a neurotoxin that is especially harmful to children, as it can result in reduced intellectual ability as well as a range of behavioral problems. This also affects day to day life, the increasing rate of plastic water bottle usage for everyday life. Cooking, showering, and drinking bottled water isn't sufficient for our environment, nor is it healthy for kids to learn that bottled water is the only source of water. It creates a false narrative.
August 23, 2005, a tropical hurricane hit the Southeastern part of the United States harder than ever before. Hurricane Katrina killed over 1800 people. This was also one of the costliest hurricanes, estimated at 106 billion dollars USD (maybe). Over 80 percent of New Orleans was flooded, and they didn't recede for weeks after (Zimmermann). This is a occurrence was not racist, yet the aftermath was unjustifiable and left black and brown communities needing help in every which way possible. “A majority of black people didn't have the opportunity to get out of the city.”(Williams). Like Jelani Cobb says, “There is a temptation to say that the storm also swept away a particular kind of innocence about American poverty, but, in the days afterward, polls showed stark disparities in how blacks and whites viewed the federal government’s tardy response to the crisis and the role that race played in it. Sixty per cent of blacks said that the response was slow because of the race of the storm’s primary victims; only about twelve percent of whites concurred. Sixty-three percent of blacks felt that the response was slow because the victims were poor, a sentiment shared by just twenty-one percent of whites.” This could be considered a type of an abandonment complex that has been ingrained within our society. Black and brown people were abandoned by the majority of our society. Our (majority white) government let them down. Post Katrina, over 60 percent of black people said that
Chester, Pennsylvania contains around 42,000 people, in the beginning Chester's economy would grow all the way up until 1940. The 1880 census shows Chester made a variety of things such as ships, steel, iron, brass, carriages, and pottery. It also had an oil refinery and a chemical manufacturing plant. Throughout the first part of this century, Chester was widely known as a center for economic growth. The town showed a large amount of financial and exponential growth. “Though unfortunately, From 1950 to 1980, 32 percent of the jobs in Chester disappeared. The economy collapsed. Much of the more upwardly mobile population moved away. Those that were left were predominantly minorities, transforming the racial makeup of the city” (Kelley, 1998). From 1950 to 1990 the population declined from 66,000 to 42,000. During the same time period the proportion of the population that was African-American increased from 20% to 65%. Which brings us back to flint, the large companies that are the backbone of the town go overseas and folks are left with little no access to jobs or financial resources. They become rundown and then new companies come in to exploit their town because it is seen as undesirable.
“Between January 1988 and December 1999, over 800 hazardous materials incidents were reported in Chester County (Shorten 2002). Sixty-five percent of Chester residents are African-American as are 95% of residents in neighborhoods closest to the facilities. The poverty rate lies at 25%, which is 3 times the national average. (Ewall). This County is also home to Pennsylvania's largest trash incinerator. Tons upon tons of trash comes from Delaware, New York, and several other East Coast states. When the first waste development plants occupied the county, local government tried to turn it into a positive by calling it “ economic redevelopment and resource recovery technology," she said. "Based on that we thought it must be something good." The $300 million construction, Mayfield said, took less than 10 months and it wasn't long before "truck, trucks and more trucks" started appearing. "That's when we knew something wasn't right," she said. Since then the area has averaged one facility per year, every year.” (Scarlett). Since these different waste management plants started occupying this space as their own, rates for morality sky rocketed. “The mortality rate in Chester is 40 percent higher than the rest of Delaware County. The infant mortality rate is 97 percent higher in Chester than the rest of Delaware County. The cancer mortality rate is 40 percent higher in Chester than the rest of Delaware County.” (Scarlett) This showcases the fact that a county with a significantly larger population of black people are being targeted by different types of dumping grounds.