The term, which was first articulated in studies of waste disposal, toxic dumping, and industrial uses, is now understood to encompass everything from the siting of industrial uses to proximity to power plants and factories to higher exposure to emissions from mobile sources of pollution, like cars, trucks, and ships to the disproportionate harm that disasters like Hurricane Katrina do to Black communities.Įnvironmental racism is inseparable from racial segregation. Environmental Racism, Segregation, and Racial InjusticeĮnvironmental racism refers to the many ways that communities of color-in the United States, Black communities in particular-face greater harms from environmental factors. The interlocking harms of environmental racism and residential segregation, the health effects of those systems, and the particular way that COVID-19 spreads and affects individuals are likely combining to contribute to racial disparities in COVID-19 cases and deaths. Recent findings about the effects of COVID-19 on the human body, and how it spreads, are highlighting another reason that Black Americans are disproportionately at risk: environmental racism. All of these factors exist in addition to preexisting, widespread racial disparities in health outcomes. Black Americans are overrepresented in frontline “essential” workforces, and therefore face increased risk of exposure longstanding disparities in wealth and income mean that Black Americans are more likely to need to continue working rather than distance at home those same disparities, in combination with a lower rate of health insurance coverage, mean Black Americans are less likely to seek care for a sickness that could be COVID-19 due to fear of the cost and even those who do seek coverage are more likely to face racism from the health care system, resulting in lack of treatment or misdiagnosis. The reasons for these disparities are myriad and interconnected. As a patchwork of demographic data on COVID-19 is released, it is becoming clear that Black communities across the country have been the hardest hit by the pandemic, both contracting and dying from the disease at rates far out of proportion. Racism suffuses nearly every system and institution in the United States, and the COVID-19 crisis has highlighted and magnified that racial inequality, as it has so many other injustices that existed before the pandemic.
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