Black Lives Matter
1 2017-12-06T10:17:33-08:00 Klara Beinhorn c060574480f918c78093f5a48ae976084fc06ec2 27049 1 Image created by Black Lives Matter organization. Created 1 September 2015. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic. Available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Lives_Matter#/media/File:Black_Lives_Matter_logo.svg. plain 2017-12-06T10:17:33-08:00 Klara Beinhorn c060574480f918c78093f5a48ae976084fc06ec2This page is referenced by:
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2017-12-05T09:46:38-08:00
Environmental Racism
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By Klara Beinhorn
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2017-12-06T18:53:35-08:00
The term “environmental racism” has been used to describe the environmental inequality epidemic around the U.S. Black Lives Matter has coined the phrase “I can’t breathe,” due to the murder of Eric Garner when he was put in an illegal choke hold after selling loose cigarettes, a “quality-of-life” offense. A sufferer of asthma, Garner told the police officer, “I can’t breathe” eleven times (Dillon and Sze 6). Lindsey Dillon of University of California, Santa Cruz and Julie Sze of University of California, Davis argue, “Thinking about racism as an embodied and situated experience opens up connections with the environmental justice movement.” The phrase, “We can’t breathe,” directly reflects the inequality of who is affected by asthma (1). Garner was among an African American population who is 20 percent more likely to have asthma than white people. Communities who face elevated amounts of air pollution have a higher risk of having asthma. According to Dillon and Sze, “Asthma remains a central concern of contemporary environmental justice activism” (6). In fact, in some communities of color, child asthma reaches a rate of 25 percent, a rate four times the average (6). Rita Turner, currently a lecturer at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, describes environmental racism as an “invisible violence.” In making this comment, Turner urges us to see how environmental racism is comparable to the physical violence of police brutality (Turner 190). I don’t think many people from the Midwest have heard the phrase “environmental racism” used frequently. The magnitude of the issue needs to be recognized by society in order to change the conversation of what the overall impact of the petroleum industry is. There needs to be a shift away from environmental racism causing industries such as the refining industry. Environmental injustice has been recognized throughout recent history leading to an environmental justice movement.
Works Cited- Dillon, Lindsey and Julie Sze. “Police Power and Particulate Matters: Environmental Justice and the Spatialities of In/securities in U.S. Cities.” English Language Notes. Special Issue (2016): 1-11. 18 Nov. 2017.
- Turner, Rita. “The Slow Poisoning of Black Bodies: A Lesson in Environmental Racism and Hidden Violence.” Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 15.1 (2017): 189-204. Academic Search Premier. Web. 7 Nov. 2017.
