This page is referenced by:

• 1 2022-11-22T15:40:44-08:00 Introduction 34 plain 2022-12-12T08:19:11-08:00 One of the ways that housing inequality impacts one’s quality of life is through greater exposure to environmental pollutants and lack of access to quality environmental good such as clean air and water. The term environmental racism is used to describe how communities of color, particularly those with predominantly poor and working-class residents, often deal with a disproportionate number of environmental hazards in their communities and the consequences this has on their health and overall well-being. The following graphic from The Nation provides data showing how communities of color are disproportionally exposed to environmental hazards.
  
  
  Environmental activists and researchers who study environmental inequality argue there are multiple aspects to environmental racism, including: 1) the siting of landfills and toxic waste producing facilities near communities predominantly comprised of people of color, 2) weak and/or racially discriminatory regulation and enforcement of environmental policies, 3) the concentration of people of color in substandard housing, and 4) the exclusion of communities of color in the decision-making ofenvironmental policies which impact their own communities.
  
  Environmental racism has a lasting impact on the health of members of these communities as the presence of toxins and pollutants can deteriorate one’s health, such as through lead poisoning or developing asthma, and/or by developing underlying conditions that make one more vulnerable to other diseases. Henderson and Wells (2021) poignantly term the consequences that environmental racism has on Black communities as the “contamination of Black lives.” 
  
  The water crisis in Flint, Michigan is often cited as a contemporary example of environmental racism that received national attention. To cut city costs, in 2014 Flint officials changed the city’s water supply from Detroit to the Flint River, which resulted in lead leeching from the pipes and exposing the predominantly Black residents of Flint, Michigan to water with elevated lead levels. It was only after months of organizing by Flint residents that city officials declared a lead advisory and the crisis received national attention. Flint is just one example of many communities across the country that face heightened health risks as a consequence of environmental racism.
  
  The following pages explore the history of the concept of environmental racism and the different ways that scholars and activists have explained why communities of color are more prone to dealing with environmental hazards. I then turn to a recent event, the Jackson, Mississippi water crisis, and consider how an environmental racism framework can provide us with a way to understand the history that informs the present-day crisis.