Social Inequality and Sustainability
Social inequality has keenly weaved into the sustainable world for years that it has coined it’s own term: environmental racism. People of color face disproportionate risks of pollution, and polluting industries are centered in their communities. The racism and classism present has also created significant differences in land-use in community development and public policy in local and state governments. In the city of Houston, the majority of landfills were near communities of people of color, forming maps that showed “environmental discrimination.”
According to a 2018 EPA report, “... people in poverty are exposed to more fine particulate matter than people living above poverty.” According to the study’s authors, “... results at national, state, and county scales all indicate that non-Whites tend to be burdened disproportionately to Whites.” The study focused on a common group of solids and liquids in the air that are pollutants. The particles include car fumes, smog, soot, oil smoke, ash, construction dust, which have all been linked to health problems. The researches concluded that black people are exposed to about 1.5 times more particulate matter than white people, and that Hispanics had about 1.2 times the exposure of non-Hispanic whites. The study also found that people in poverty had about 1.3 times more exposure than people above poverty. The particulates, which stem from the wealth gap, also increase the health gap among the impoverished people of color who live in these dangerous areas, leading to more hospital visits and fatalities, compared to the wealthy Whites who demographically tend to live in more cleaner areas.
Even with all of the evidence, people still perceive the idea of environmental racism as controversial because it demonstrates the ever-present problem of racism in America. Even when climate change becomes more and more prevalent, many people still view the environment mostly as independent natural forces, which cannot favor one group over another. However, even recognizing that the most influential people, humans, in fact, shape where almost all other humans live, from the climate to the type of air they breathe, people still are not persuaded that racism is a factor. The environmental racism that is present today stays under the wraps to powerful government officials who willingly turn a blind eye to the injustices of the world. As Bullard, an award-winning author and distinguished professor of urban planning and environmental policy at Texas Southern University, stated, “All communities are not created equal. If a community happens to be poor, or located physically on the wrong side of the track, it receives less protection. It receives less of the good stuff and more of the bad stuff. But every community has the right to equal protection, the right to have children be able to go outside on the playground without fear of pollution or contamination.” Sustainable practices are not enough. We have to interweave justice into sustainability and address the unequal development of physical buildings and environments and surroundings, as well as the wealth gaps and health gaps between places that are sustainable and places that are not sustainable to even make a dent in decreasing what is now commonly known as environmental racism.
Want to learn more?
Insider's "10 Egregious Examples of Environmental Racism in the US"
The Atlantic's "Trump's EPA Concludes Environmental Racism Is Real"
Sustainability Efforts Must Address Social Inequalities First, Environmental Justice Scholar Says