Graphic by Yujin Kim/The Choate News
In 1982, Ben Chavis, a Black man in Warren County, North Carolina, was pulled over and arrested for speaking out about the state’s decision to dump miles of contaminated soil in a Black farming community. As he was thrown in jail, he proclaimed, “This is environmental racism.”
Environmental racism — a form of systemic racism — refers to governments’ and corporations’ environmental policies that disproportionately affect low-income and minority communities. These policies enable, for instance, the improper disposal of waste and hazardous pollutants in impoverished communities.
In the United States today, three out of five Black people live in a community with an uncontrolled toxic waste site; three of the five largest hazardous commercial landfills are located in predominantly Black or Latiné communities. Since 1982, these incidents of environmental racism have been documented, yet policy-makers have taken little to no action in combating their disastrous effects on vulnerable communities.
Geographic areas that place a disproportionate environmental burden on minority communities have been termed “sacrifice zones.” According to the Center for Health, Environment & Justice, “Current federal air policies regulate facility emissions one stack at a time and one chemical at a time. Impacted communities, however, are exposed to the cumulative impact of multiple pollutants released over an extended period of time from a cluster of facilities.” Because of other forms of systemic racism, such as redlining, low-income, minority populations have been forced into sacrifice zones, where they face repeated exposure to the most industrialized and desecrated environments.
One of the most egregious examples of environmental racism is the lead contamination in the Flint, Michigan, water supply, when, the city changed its water supply to the Flint River to cut expenses in 2013. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Flint has a 54% Black and African-American population. More than 100,000 Black residents were subject to lead contamination. State officials dismissed concerns and complaints from residents until late 2015 when the city was all but forced to acknowledge the water contamination.
The Flint water crisis was a wake-up call that showed how deeply environmental racism is ingrained in this country. What if the Flint water crisis had happened in an affluent town in California or New York?
The reality is, nothing much has changed since the tragedy in Flint. Instead, there has been increase in examples of these crises, primarily concentrated in underprivileged neighborhoods. We simply aren’t taking enough action. Government policies are failing communities in the United States, and environmental racism has accelerated in global communities.
Today, 80% of the world’s e-waste is exported to Asia. Guiyu, China, is known as the “e-waste capital” of the world, as water in the region is polluted with metals 190 times the limit set by the World Health Organization. Although the EU has sanctions against exporting harmful waste to developing countries, they are largely ignored. In 2019, 14,000 tonnes of waste was exported to China. Governments must enforce these policies to protect people all over the world from preventable exposure to hazardous material. The first step is to implement legislation, but governments and corporations may continue to capitalize on vulnerable, developing countries that have less economic leverage without enforcing these policies.
For instance, every day sixty 18-wheelers full of old batteries are sent to Mexico from the U.S. for lead extraction. Lead extraction is an illegal process in the United States because of its known and studied harmful health side effects. There have been higher rates of anencephaly near these used battery processing plants than in areas with lower pollution levels. Infants suffering from anencephaly are born without a portion of their brain and skull. They typically survive only a few hours after birth. The lead levels of the nearby school playground were found to be five times the limit for children’s play areas set by the Environmental Protection Agency. American corporations are escaping the health standards enforced in the U.S. by shipping these batteries across the border.
We are all part of the problem — shipping batteries to a different country does not diminish the detrimental effects to our shared environment. Instead of passing the blame, the U.S. needs to adopt eco-friendly disposal practices despite the potential added cost and resources. Environmental racism’s detrimental effects on our minority counterparts can be prevented. The Flint water crisis exemplifies the importance of speaking out about environmental disparities that may cause lifelong damage.
States taking advantage of low-income, minority communities and American corporations escaping environmental policies by disposing of waste abroad have become an unhealthy trend. The solution to both of these problems is external accountability. On the state level, there must be an department that holds all states and zip codes to the same standards, with repercussions for violating these standards. On the corporate level, there must be global regulations that prevent large companies from using less-developed countries to bypass U.S. environmental laws.
This year, to continue the celebration of Earth Week, we should all take the time to educate ourselves on the complexities of environmental racism and advocate for change for the better of all.
