Air might go
everywhere, dispersing eventually around the globe — but
air pollution tends to cluster. And in the
U.S., air pollution is
most dense in Black and brown neighborhoods, because of
decades of racist housing policies. Federal policies
called "redlining" intentionally segregated Black,
Latinx, and immigrant communities into areas considered
"less desirable." That ushered in
generations of poverty... and also deadly
environmental racism.
Zoning officials
used areas around these same neighborhoods as
prime locations for major polluting industries,
including coal plants and major highways. The
legacy of those decisions lingers today. Recent research
shows that these historical policies have pushed
approximately 45 million Americans, primarily people of
color, into more densely polluted areas than their
predominantly whiter and wealthier counterparts.
This has huge contemporary health implications,
including causing increased rates of asthma, heart
attacks, and strokes — and also increased susceptibility
to COVID-19. This is true for both
adults and also small children.
Air
pollution isn't just unpleasant: it
kills. Robert D. Bullard, a
distinguished professor at Texas Southern University,
summarizes it perfectly: this research provides
additional "solid empirical evidence that
systemic racism is killing and making people of
color sick." Not just in the past, but also in
the present. It's up to the U.S. government to begin to
right this wrong that it created. Sign the petition
to demand that the U.S. government begin an immediate
and thorough project to clean up the pollution in
segregated, formerly redlined
neighborhoods!
