Environmental Racism

As Doidge et al. illustrate, the historical background of Flint City’s drinking water supply emanated from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department. This was through a contractual basis for over three decades, and its main source of water was Lake Huron. The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department is an extensive system encompassing almost 1,080 square-miles, and provides to more than two fifths of the Michigan State population. In the year 2000 alone, the system covered 11,000 miles of water channels with a storage volume of about 360 million gallons. It supplied water to nearly four million people in Detroit and its metropolitan locale.

Environmental Racism can be described as, the intentional or unintentional placement of hazardous waste sites, landfills, or industries that are polluting communities mainly those inhabited by African-Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders and Asians, as well as the working poor. In the broadest sense, Environmental Racism, is a process where environmental decisions, actions, and policies results in racial discrimination. Environmental racism is important to know about because it effects almost every low-income or impoverished area across the world. Some notable areas that are dealing with environmental racism are: Flint Michigan-where thousands of residents have

The city of Flint is 70 miles away from the costs of the Great Lakes which hold the greatest sources of fresh water, yet there residents still can't get clean tap water. 15% of homes in Flint Michigan are boarded up ,40% of the people are in poverty , high unemployment rate, and consistently on a list for most dangerous places to live in the nation .In an attempt to cut budget cost in 2014 Flint stop getting pre treated water from the city of Detroit . Problems began when the city started using water from the Flint river .Flint River is 19 times more corrosive than Lake Huron (Detroit water source) . City and state officials denied for months that there was a serious problem by that time, supply pipes had sustained major corrosion and lead

The Flint water crisis has left no one from the damage, even the pets are getting sick of the poisoned water. That was what residents Lee and Ernie of Flint Michigan saw with their cat. Flint is a city in Michigan with a total population of approximately one hundred thousand residents. The issue with the water for Flints and its residents stated in 2014 when the city decided to switch from their water resource from the city of Detroit to a local river. Immediately after the switch residents filed complaints about the water’s smell and color. In Ryan Felton’s “Flint’s Water Crisis: What went wrong,” it is apparent that the crisis should not have happened, and that flint was neglected just because it was an impoverished city.

For Flint, it all began with debt. But you cannot blame a debt that has been developing over the years even though it led to major health concerns, hurt the already poor economy and left thousands with nothing but fear. Flint Michigan was an up incoming town back in the eighties. General Motors had its largest plant (at the time) in Flint and this plant brought much of the population while helping the economy grow. GM created many employment opportunities for Flint residents until they began to downsize in the late eighties. This is when the debt began to grow. GM held much of the economy at this time so the downsizing impacted everyone in Flint. As GM downsized the poverty rates increased, Flint’s government began looking for ways to make up the lost money. In 2011, Flint was 25 million dollars in debt and desperately looking for ways to reduce it (Dixon). The city of Flint was now under a state of emergency and people began asking questions. Governor Rick Snyder made the decision with his appointed members to switch Flint’s water supply from the Detroit Water System to Flint’s own river that ran through town. This switch was supposed to save the city of Flint nearly a hundred million dollars however, it did much more than that.

The Barrio Logan characterized as an old community which includes total of 6,000 residential population which most of them are unskilled worker Latino and the average economic Income is between low to medium as a whole. Bascially, the community is composed of over 90% of minority residents. Moreover, when most of the residences in there belong to the low-income Latino, it also draws the attention on the spatial relationship between racism and environment hazards. It illustrated as the concept of “environmental racism”. The community simply reveals how the racism shapes places. As the article of “Rethinking Environment Racism: White Privileged urban Development n Southern Califorina” acknowledges that, “The concept of environmential racism- the idea that non-whites are disproperionaltely exposed to population” Even the San Diego experienced tremendous development in the past years, the Barrio Logan seems become a forgotten Latino neghtbouhood where the city panner fails to do the residential planning and create zoning regulations between the industries area and residential area. Finally, the residential areas are integrated with the industrial zones, and the residents breaths in with the mixtures of toxic fumigants and toxic emotion every single day. Since the low-income Latino communities has a lack of influence,

The problem of water in flint arose when the city changed the source of the water from Detroit to the Flint River in order to save money. This issue had several negative consequences on Flint citizens. The majority of these consequences is serious health problems especially for the infants and old people. In order to figure out the causes of this water issue and who made the decisions that lead eventually to those dreadful unpleasant outcomes.

The problem has become too big to ignore, and it is only going to get worse. This is evident with the recent events encompassed in the Flint Michigan water crisis. Flint’s water infrastructure has reached a crisis point, as residents cope with high levels of lead pollution and questions mount over contamination and negligent oversight. Aiming to cut costs in a state of financial emergency almost two years ago, the city began drawing water from the local Flint River rather than continuing to depend on traditional sources linked to Detroit, almost immediately leading to a variety of health and environmental concerns (Brookings). A combination of factors, of course, have contributed to Flint’s crisis—including lapses in state monitoring—but the aging and deteriorating condition of the city’s water infrastructure plays an enormous role. As Flint emerges from its current water crisis, it offers a cautionary tale to several other aging cities nationally. While extreme and unique in some ways, Flint reveals broader infrastructure concerns that demand

Flint is the largest city and county seat of Genesee County, Michigan. Located along the Flint River, 66 miles northwest of Detroit. Flint has a population of 102,434 according to the 2010 census, from a high point in the mid-1950s of nearly 200,000 people. Flint’s primary economic resource was dependent on automobile manufacturing, through GM’s Buick and Chevrolet divisions, both of which were founded in Flint. However, by the late 1980s the city sank into a deep economic depression and GM closed and demolished several factories in the area (Flint Michigan, 2016). Flint has been plagued by high unemployment and has had complete dependency on the auto manufacturing industry as its main employment opportunity for its citizens. The cause of the

As sad as it is, environmental racism is an institutionalized practice, which immoral governments use to keep the poor poorer and living in highly polluted communities, while keeping the best areas for the White, powerful, and rich. It also has to do with immoral companies that knowing that they are hurting local citizens, they keep ignoring the damage they causing to others. For example, just recently in Porter Ranch and other vicinity, the gas company let them live in the middle of the largest methane gas leak. I am sure that they will be paying more in punitive damages and fines, than they could have spent to stop the leak and clean the area, before the public opinion denounced their crime. Sadly, right after this incident SOCAL had another

To further expand our comprehension of the topic, we will look at various articles and their stance on the issue of environmental racism. To begin, we will have a look at an article written by Thomas Davies, “Clean and White: A History of Environmental racism in the United States” which argues the importance of acknowledging climate change and pollution in the USA. He states that the USA is attempting to “sober up these practices” by acknowledging that there is a huge issue at hand. Climate change is a global issue that requires for sidelined issues of environmental racism to be acknowledged as well for the entire issue to be fixed as a whole. There are thousands of texts online that touch on this specific topic, and today, we will have a look at a few more.

(Bullard & Smith, 2005, p.73). She joined a group of protestors because she wanted to make a change for her community that is suffering from industrial facilities.

In the United States and internationally, there is a multitude of indicators that the racial environment is changing. Environmental pollution and racism are connected in more ways than one. The world is unconsciously aware of environmental intolerances, yet continues to expose the poor and minorities to physical hazards. Furthermore, sociologist continue to study “whether racial disparities are largely a function of socioeconomic disparities or whether other factors associated with race are also related to the distribution of environmental hazards” (Mohai and Saha 2007: 345). Many of these factors include economic positions, health disparities, social and political affairs, as well as racial inequalities.

As stated in the thesis, environmental injustice mostly affects minority communities. In a map presented by the Los Angeles Times, in Southeast LA there are 26 communities- which 83.9% of the inhabitants are of minority groups (Southeast, n.d.). Similarly, another map released by EPA from the 1990 U.S. Census illustrates that in places where there is 80 to 100% of people of color there is at least 2

Pellow argues that environmental racism is often instituted systematically in communities by those in power, and even other ecological groups, and proves to be deadly and threatening to those oppressed by this system. In developing this argument, Pellow draws on interviews with the people currently suffering from this system and exemplifies “ecological” groups who are supported by big brand name companies that produce a majority of these toxins causing illness and problems, as well as recounting the history of companies and people taking the path of least resistance to take care of their waste and toxins, said path being right through communities of poverty and/or poverty. Pellow developed this to show how power has been used over history to