env racism
Communities are not all created equal. Have you ever heard of or considered the concept of Environmental Racism and what role it plays in the lives of Afro-Americans? I presume your answer is "no." Well then, have you ever wondered why so many housing projects, which are majority Black occupied, are located near industrial parks? I presume you haven't even noticed. Well, I have. Growing up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York, I often visited my older cousin who resided in the Red Hook Housing Projects in Brooklyn. The aroma...garbage. It was like walking through a sanitation dump from the second you got off the G-train at Smith Street to the second you got back on. And how did you know you were almost there? From the sight of smoke floating from pipes on top of large square buildings. My only concern then was seeing my cousin and having fun for the weekend...not the effects of inhaling the fumes or why it smelled so awful. I figured that if my cousin lived there it must have been a good place or atleast affordable for the time. However, now that I have come of age and traveled throughout the U.S. I have realized that Red Hook is not the only housing project located smack-dab in the middle of an industrial park. Red Hook
- "The largest hazardous waste landfill in the United States is located in Emelle, Alabama, a poor, predominantly African-American community. It receives toxic materials from 45 states and several foreign countries. - Increase efforts to communicate with racial minority and low-income communities and involve them in environmental policy-making" (Weintraub 5-6). - The greatest numbers of commercial hazardous facilities were located in communities with the highest composition of racial and ethnic minorities" (Weintraub 1). The Environmental Protection Agency admits that certain communities suffer a disproportionate share of the burden, but there appears to be a general lack of data on the health effects of pollution in those communities. One reason for this is that environmental and health data are not routinely collected and analyzed by categories of income and race. The information is available but the EPA considers environmental racism a public relations issue, not a civil rights issue (Weintraub 2). Therefore, they do not take claims seriously enough to gather the necessary data by income and race. Environmental Racism has been defined as the intentional siting of hazardous waste sites, landfills, incinerators, and polluting industries in communities inhabited mainly by Arican-Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, Asians, migrant farm workers, and the working poor. Minorities are particularly vulenrables because they are perceived as weak and pasisve
Some common words found in the essay are:
Objectivism Objectivists, Asians Weintraub, Americans Asians, Native Americans, Protection Agency, Workgroup EPA, Church Christ, Michigan January, Environmental Racism, Smith Street, environmental racism, waste sites, hazardous waste, polluting industries, native americans, hazardous waste sites, red hook housing, housing projects, income race, predominantly african-american, toxic waste, industrial parks, polluting industries communities, communities inhabited mainly, near industrial parks,
Approximate Word count = 1579
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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