Environmental Discrimination In The United States

Environmental Discrimination
Much as people might try to deny it, racism is seen in the area in which you reside, environmental racism is a very real feature of life. Often, areas where minorities live are chosen as sites for factories or industries that produce a lot of pollution or hazardous waste. Alternatively, once a polluting factory is in operation, the most likely inhabitants of the surrounding area will be the poor, since property is less expensive in polluted areas. I will examine the multi-faceted problem of environmental problem and propose ways to combat it.
Poverty happens in everywhere in the world nowadays. Most of the poverty is happening in the third world countries. These areas are often being discriminated by some well-developed

Government settle some hazardous facilities, such as incinerators, landfill, and some wastes sites in the areas where poor and minority located. “One of the landmark events in the development of the environmental justice movement in the U.S. was the 1982 battle over the siting of a hazardous waste landfill in Warren County, North Carolina.12 Warren County was one of the poorest counties in the state, and had the highest percentage of black residents; Afton, the community chosen for the landfill, was over 84 percent black. Despite low incomes, an exceptionally large percentage of residents in this area owned their own homes” (Massey, 5). According to this report, there was tens thousands of cubic yards of soil that was contaminated by PCBs. More importantly, the landfill was located above the water table only five to ten feet. That is an enormous threat for the residents that live around. What’s more, experts aruged that where the landfill sitting was not making any scientific sense. Even though the location of the landfill made no sense, the government still place the landfill in such unreasonable location. This is a kind of environmental discrimination based on the poverty because this area is one of the poorest areas in the whole country. The government would think that the people will just bear this situation and do nothing to resist. This kind of environmental discrimination will make the environment of the area where is bing polluted become worse and worse. The quailty of the residents who live there will reduce. People might move out of that area, the government will settle more hazardous facilities to that area. It will become a vicious cycle eventually. That area will have no people living in there