Environmental Racism. This blatant form of racism is built into real estate markets across the country. The people who buy and sell land discriminate behind closed doors. It’s not even debatable at this point if banksters and real estate agents collude to put people of color into dangerous situations—there are literal mountains of evidence, including lawsuits demonstrating modern day “red lining.”
Whether it’s denying loans to people of color for properties in generally safe areas, or placing environmentally dangerous projects in low income neighborhoods, the use of environmental racism is causing sickness and death across our country, because wealth and privilege are given to a select group of Americans: white Americans.
Talking about white privilege is difficult at best, and impossible at worst. Sadly, the proof is in the pudding. There have been decades of discrimination, both federally approved and in violation of federal law. It’s so common that people are more or less accustomed to racism in real estate and banking.
When it comes to discrimination in real estate, the abuse by banks and regulators is widespread. People of color are often not in a position to fight back against powerful banksters and their lawyers, which makes them susceptible to the placement of dangerous infrastructure inside of their communities. This happened in the instance of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which was originally slated to pass through the city of Bismarck, endangering the lives of a majority-white community. Their pushback resulted in the pipeline being forced onto the people of tribal reservations to the south, despite the fact that it wasn’t properly permitted and was in violation of treaty rights.
Another example of environmental racism in modern time is the case of the Flint water system where people still face eviction and loss of their homes as a result of not wanting to pay for water which isn’t safe for any use.
Despite the fact that environmental racism is glaringly obvious, there are very few politicians addressing this issue. They’d rather gerrymander their districts than address racial inequity, putting people of color into voting blocks with majority-white neighborhoods, diluting the voting power of people of color and insuring that the priorities of the entitled class continue to dominate the legislation and political makeup of state and federal political districts.
Environmental racism in essense says, we are more concerned with white people’s lives than the lives of any other people. We don’t want to be poisoned, but we are okay with poisoning you.
This seems immoral and unethical, but the monied elite in this country, the USA, are so comfortable with this tactic that talking about it, or asking them to stop is virtually unimaginable.
Now I ask, are there solutions?
Can you see environmental racism in your neighborhood?
Are you willing to act in the interest of marginalized people?
The issue of environmental racism has so many layers that I haven’t begun to touch on in this blog. I will definitely create another post talking about other areas where race is the determining factor in sighting dangerous infrastructure.
Proof reading credit to @lenadr
Thanks for reading this far!
Here is another post about inequity in the USA, also, I am still celebrating reaching the 1,000 followers mark with a give away if you are interested in a chance at receiving a handmade pair of earrings check out my give away post.