ERACISM MINUTE
September 13, 2020
Lauralee Carbone
As I sit here, the Air Quality Index hovers around 200 here in Bellingham. Last week it was over 400 in California’s Central Valley where I grew up, and last night it was over 600 in Portland. We are all connected by our air and water.
I want to talk this morning about Environmental Racism, the intersection of racial discrimination in environmental policy making, the enforcement (or lack) of regulations and laws, the deliberate targeting of communities of color for toxic waste facilities, the official sanctioning of the life-threatening presence of poisons and pollutants, and the history of excluding people of color from leadership of the ecology movements. It stems from the legacy and the history of residential segregation which includes practices of redlining, zoning, and colorblind adaptation planning, hence causing disproportionate effects on BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color).
African-Americans are 75 percent more likely than other Americans to live in so-called fence-line communities, defined as areas situated near facilities that produce hazardous waste, like oil and gas refineries, incinerators, smelters, sewage-treatment plants, landfills and petrochemical plants.
A study found that Black Americans are subjected to higher levels of air pollution than white Americans. While socioeconomic status was an important correlation, race was the most significant factor. Black Americans are exposed to 1.5 times as much of the sooty pollution that comes from burning fossil fuels as the population at large. This dirty air is associated with lung disease, asthma, heart disease, cancer, and now Covid-19. The urgency of this environmental crisis has been hastened by climate change and has now gathered speed and attention as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and the current racial-justice movement.
From the American colonists’ earliest encounters with the indigenous people of this land—what they call Turtle Island—Native wisdom has warned against the unsustainable practices of exploitation and extraction. We need to think of climate change as a series of ecological catastrophes caused by colonialism and an accumulation society. Our First Nation sisters and brothers help us see that we cannot save the planet without first reconstructing the systems that have overlooked and marginalized non-white people from their inception. There is no Green New Deal without a Third Reconstruction, as Rev. William Barber calls the organized change that needs to happen.
To further quote his article, “We cannot separate the question of whether we can survive together on a warming planet from the question of whether we can redeem the promise of liberty and justice for all in this nation. We are, in the powerful image from the biblical story of Noah’s ark, all in the same boat. A future free from the polluting economy of extraction is inextricably tied to a future free from the systemic exploitation of white supremacy, and this future requires reconstruction and transformation. When we are willing to look honestly at our history to understand the foundations of interlocking injustices, we can see in that same history examples of multiracial movements that have worked to reconstruct America from its very beginnings.
We are all connected in this interdependent web of existence, as our 7th principle reminds us. We need the 8th principle to remind us of our interconnectedness to each other in Beloved Community.
https://lithub.com/rev-william-j-barber-ii-on-the-scourge-of-environmental-racism/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/magazine/pollution-philadelphia-black-americans.html
https://www.diversegreen.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Green_2.0_Retention_Report.pdf
