Environmental racism
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Consider this – There is a correlation between a lack of wealth and the locations of energy production sources (and by extension, pollution sources). This correlation is based upon the availability of cheap land located in the proximity of production sources.
As the immediate areas around pollutant sources is considered to be undesirable, the low cost of entry and the urbanization of the US throughout the 20th century led to a significant number of disadvantaged people (whether minorities or just poor) to settle in these areas.
Utilities and factories, for the most part, were built away from residential and commerce areas as cities began to grow. But through urbanization, sprawl, and density growth, the cost of living in the *old town* areas of a city became more expensive. For the poor, the cost of living in the city, or city adjacent, was paid for through the decisions to accept the environmental conditions associated with the cheaper land near the industrial centers. (Though this statement isn’t completely fair to put out there, as many people did not realize the inherent risk associated with living downwind of things like a factory or a smelter at the time.)
Business practices through regulation has changed drastically in the past hundred years, but the encroachment upon industrial areas have created neighborhoods next door to industry.
When the word *racism* is used, it makes a lot of people uncomfortable. And many average homeowners would scoff at the idea, as the individual homeowner doesn’t feel responsible for the value of land next to a refinery. It would be easy to write the whole term off as *disproportional levels of exposure to pollutant sources based upon wealth*, but there have been cases where skin color did make a difference. Consider the term, **Red Lining**. This was the practice that banks in some locations used to determine where a mortgage could be sold to a minority. And often times, the areas below the red line was adjacent to those industrial areas. So if you were a person of color and wanted to benefit from living in an urban center, you’d be driven to purchase in the less desirable locations.
While the process of red lining is illegal and (knock on wood) no longer practiced, the effects it had have been long term. It has created low value housing in areas where the lower working class are more likely to live. While industry has made great leaps and bounds to clean up their operations, the environmental damage has already been done. The damage is often long term, and not easily fixed, especially once you have people living in the areas of contamination.
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