21. Environment

In addition to many potential black homeowners being shepherded into lower income and predominately minority neighborhoods, these neighborhoods are often side-by-side with or part of a hazardous environment.

Nearly 50% of black people live within 1 km (.62 mile) of at least one hazardous waste disposal facility. Three out of every five black and Hispanic Americans live in communities with uncontrolled waste sites.

People of color tend to live closer to sources of pollution, from coal plants to busy roads and highways which can cause asthma. Black kids struggle with asthma at rates higher than whites.

In an EPA report, “racial and ethnic minorities and poor children may be exposed to more pollution,” with “black children twice as likely to be hospitalized for asthma and four times as likely to die from asthma as white children.”

When things go wrong and people try to get recourse, the government is slow to respond to environmental disasters that affect minority communities. A 2011 report commissioned by the government found that only 6% of 267 official allegations of discrimination against communities affected by EPA rules had even been accepted or denied for investigation. It took on average 350 days to decide whether to investigate. The law requires a 20-day turn around.

There are recent examples of the environment largely affecting people of color, Flint Michigan’s water crisis and lead poisoning being the most recent.

I’m sure pretty much everyone by now knows who Freddie Gray is. Some probably know the sad background to his story. He was exposed to lead as a child, and his mother had won a structured settlement against the landlord of their slum tenement. I’m pretty sure, however, that most don’t know what happened after that to his family and to thousands of other almost exclusively black people in Baltimore.

Predatory settlement companies have preyed on the diminished mental capacity (as a result of their exposure to lead, not because they are black), poverty, and desperation to bilk people out of the millions of dollars they were due. Please take a few minutes to read this award-winning expose of the companies who traded future structured settlement awards for pennies on the dollar in immediate cash.

References:
Proximity to hazardous waste -
http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/unitedchurchofchrist/legacy_url/13613/chapter-3.pdf?1418440228

Asthma and Race -
http://www.cdc.gov/asthma/asthmadata.htm

Asthma and environment -
http://archive.epa.gov/sciencenotebook/web/pdf/hd_aa_asthma.pdf

EPA -
http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/08/03/17668/environmental-racism-persists-and-epa-one-reason-why

Bonus reading:
Flint’s water crisis -
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/16/flints-poisoned-water-was-the-most-expensive-in-the-country/

Race predicts if you live near pollution -
http://www.thenation.com/article/race-best-predicts-whether-you-live-near-pollution/