Environmental Racism: African American And Latino Community

Words: 1556
Pages: 7

Environmental Racism and Classism have many negative effects on certain groups of society in relation to the negative elements of the environment including landfills, hazardous chemicals, and many other burdens of the environment. Environmental Racism is the belief that African American and Latino communities are force to take the burden of landfills at a higher ratio in relation to Caucasian communities. Environmental Classism is the belief that poor communities are forced to take the same burden as African American and Latino communities. The reasoning behind this is very similar. Latinos, African Americans, and the Poor lack connections to their decision makers on zoning boards or city councils allowing for their interests to be protected. …show more content…
In order for environmental racism to occur, you need to form ghettos. Throughout Buffalo’s history, employment was dependent on access to the downtown area. Since there was not a mass transportation system, African Americans were forced to live immediately east of downtown. The economy in Buffalo was bypassed by a commercial enter causing the economy to become a industrial manufacturing base. They shifted from shipping products to producing them. This change in economy caused a change in the role of African Americans in Buffalo. African American males began to enter jobs in the manufacturing industry as the demand grew. The lower east side of Buffalo became a lower income African American neighborhood. This occurred because there was plenty of housing available in this area and many African Americans were coming to northern cities from the south. Throughout the history of Buffalo, many racist housing policies were used. They allowed the white people to move into the suburbs while leaving the African Americans downtown. First off, the lending agencies had a lot to gain by limiting residential integration. The federal housing authority had a lot of control over the real estate market. They controlled the market by giving credit ratings determined the demographic composition of your community. With these controlled credit ratings, banks were able to direct white homeowners into the suburbs. Since …show more content…
They include “Waste sites of various types, Disposal Facilities, Transfer stations, Industrial Emissions, Ambient air quality, Noise Pollution, Presence of Highways, A lack of access to parks and other environmental amenities, Indoor air quality, Lead contaminated soil, Drinking water quality, Quality of local diets”. There are many initiatives that can be or have been put into place in order to prevent environmental racism from occurring. One of those is broad based support for rights of citizens. We also need to increase the effectiveness of our regulation because third parties have too much freedom in what they can do with the waste. We also need to increase public participation. Many people in lower income communities tend to lose their voice in government and we need to make their voices heard. In order to prevent waste from occurring, we can promote the cleaner development that incorporates pollution control