For years, people have known the harmful effects of policies developed supposedly to improve city planning or shift resources to underserved urban neighbourhoods. From expropriation to redlining, these have disproportionately detrimental impacts on racialized Black and Brown communities. Not only are areas with the best resources and medical aid often furthest away from the Black and Brown neighbourhoods they purport to help, but the long history of businesses refusing to serve Black customers imposes a modernized form of segregation onto “integrated” communities. The consistently lower resource accessibility and poor infrastructure in areas that are traditionally home to many Black people, immigrants, and other minority groups also makes them incredibly vulnerable to the current climate emergency.

The ways that these policies exploit racialized minority communities are complex. Not only do practices like redlining aim to withhold services from Black and Indigenous people, but they can also manifest more subtly: for example, city councils implementing climate-aware infrastructure in most areas except Black neighbourhoods or near Indigenous reserves. Despite causing the largest carbon emissions, wealthy and (mostly composed of) White communities largely evade culpability for the environmental issues they create. Black communities face reduced access to healthcare, clean water, and air free of pollutants. Polluted air, a major effect of climate change, has been demonstrated to have outsized health implications and constitutes a significant risk to the communities most vulnerable to it. Studies have shown that Black people in the United States are exposed to 1.5 times the pollution than their non-Black counterparts are, regardless of income level. Many Black communities suffer from respiratory diseases and lung cancer due to these issues, and Black neighbourhoods are exposed to climate disasters in greater numbers. In an environmental justice study between the University of Michigan and the University of Montana, researchers also found that there is a holding pattern of hazardous waste sites being built in or around neighbourhoods where poor people and people of colour live. This places them at enormous risk for the emissions from these sites and the potential spills. Furthermore, residents may not have the financial means to relocate to other areas, meaning they continue to live in these neighbourhoods even though they, their families, and others in the community are in high danger of contracting health problems as a result.

The issues don’t stop there. Government inaction on lack of resources across Indigenous reserves is widely recorded; not only do many reserves in the country suffer from unclean drinking water, but they also do not have access to transportation. The augmentation of these issues by several other intersections of resource accessibility like geolocation and income level has led to serious discussions in communities of colour about the climate emergency. A study conducted by Yale found that Hispanic/Latino and African-American communities are much more likely to be alarmed by climate change than their White counterparts. From the study: “Research suggests that people of colour may be more concerned than Whites about climate change because they are often more exposed and vulnerable to environmental hazards and extreme weather events.” They then go on to theorize about other findings in the survey, like Hispanic/Latino and African-American groups being more willing to engage in climate activism. The inequity of exposure to climate issues could be a major contributing factor in this willingness.

https://www.collegian.psu.edu/opinion/columnists/article_a7070ed0-c3cc-11e5-9c62-776bb571f964.html

The good thing is that once we understand how these problems compound to make the most underserved communities vulnerable, we can also start to take action against them. Research discriminatory practices and infrastructure plans in your area to find out who they target and where. You can write letters, send emails, or make phone calls to your local municipal council or Member of Parliament to inform them about the ways these issues manifest in your community and to urge them to stand up for the Black, Brown, and Indigenous people hurt by such policies. Above all, you can start to bring more nuanced and socially-aware ideas into your own discussions of climate change, and shape how you and those around you talk about the climate emergency for the better.

Works Cited

“Air Pollution Diseases,” Environmental Pollution Centers, environmentalpollutioncenters.org/air/diseases/.

Ballew, Matthew, et al. “Which racial/ethnic groups care most about climate change?” Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, Yale University, April 16, 2020, climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/race-and-climate-change/.

Colarossi, Jess. “The World’s Richest People Emit the Most Carbon,” Our World, December 15, 2015, ourworld.unu.edu/en/the-worlds-richest-people-also-emit-the-most-carbon.

Erickson, Jim. “Targeting minority, low-income neighborhoods for hazardous waste sites,” University of Michigan News, University of Michigan, January 19, 2016, news.umich.edu/targeting-minority-low-income-neighborhoods-for-hazardous-waste-sites/.

Fraser, Nancy. Expropriation and Exploitation in Racialized Capitalism: A Reply to Michael Dawson, Critical History Studies, University of Chicago, March 1, 2016, journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/685814.

Department of Justice. The Challenges of Youth Justice in Rural and Isolated Areas in Canada, Government of Canada, June 15, 2004, justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/cj-jp/yj-jj/rr03_yj5-rr03_jj5/p5.html#a53.

Grudin, Theodore. “How White Supremacy Caused the Climate Crisis,” Earth Island Journal, September 24, 2020, earthisland.org/journal/index.php/articles/entry/how-white-supremacy-caused-the-climate-crisis/.

Lockwood, Beatrix. “The US Government Used These Maps to Keep Neighborhoods Segregated,” ThoughtCo, June 16, 2020, thoughtco.com/redlining-definition-4157858.

Low-income, black neighborhoods still hit hard by air pollution, Science Daily, Ohio State University, August 10, 2019, sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190810094052.htm.

Parrish, Deidra D., and Charlotte K. Kent. Access to care issues for African American communities: implications for STD disparities, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, December 2008.

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