Environmental Racism: A Case Study in Chicago
- ywacc.ngo
- Jun 10, 2020
- 2 min read
Updated: Jun 10, 2020
Hello everyone! We hope you are all healthy and working to further educate yourselves about how you can extend your support to the BLM movement. This week's article will focus on a specific case study on the effects of environmental racism. While this issue is certainly prevalent in the relationships the United States has with other countries, it can also be easily observed in major metropolitan areas. Today, we will focus on the city of Chicago and how environmental racism permeates the lives of the many minorities that inhabit the city.
As mentioned in the last article, let’s first examine what the environmental justice movement revolves around. This grass roots movement argues that low-income and minority communities are exposed to much more environmental hazards than affluent, white communities. Factors that may contribute to increased hazards are housing units proximate to industrial factories, high levels of pollution, and poor safety measures regarding toxic chemicals and possible carcinogens. Governmental organizations and private sectors target these vulnerable communities mainly because of the lack of opposition; many of these neighborhoods do not even have the proper resources to combat and fight these large monopolies wishing to capitalize off of them. Sulaiman Mahdi, an environmental activist from Atlanta further explains, “Poor people and minorities are so occupied with their daily struggles to survive that they’re not going to resist a chemical dump or an incinerator…Waste companies know that there is less resistance in these communities, and that’s why they go there."
When discussing the issue of environmental racism, it is also important to understand the implications of redlining. The term itself comes from FDR’s New Deal, but the practice dates much further than the 1930s. The government’s efforts in alleviating economic strains caused by the Great Depression were mainly focussed on providing housing to white, middle-class Americans. African Americans and other marginalised groups were pushed out of the new suburban communities and were forced to move into urban housing projects. And with urban housing, comes environmental and health risks.
In Chicago, the Crawford and and Fisk coal plants are known to be the dirtiest industries in the city. Moreover, these factories emit noxious fumes into the surrounding neighborhoods. These communities are already vulnerable due lower socio-economic statuses resulting from the modern day effects of redlining. In fact, “asthma, obesity, teen birth, and poor mental-health rates in Little Village are among the highest compared to the rest of Chicago. Additionally, many adults lack access to health care coverage, with 34 percent of adults living without health care coverage.” Environmental racism continuously perpetuates the toxic relationship between health and poverty. Additionally, Kim Wasserman, executive director of the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, details, “Environmental racism looks like having a coal power plant that can run without worrying about who it’s impacting. Environmental racism looks like having the youngest Hispanic community in Chicago and not having any parks built in 75 years.”
Chicago must do better to honor and serve members of the black and brown communities that are victims of environmental racism. This issue is certainly not an isolated phenomenon in Illinois, we see it in many Asian countries, New York City, and even in our own backyard in Hartford. We must demand better, and we must do better.
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