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Cancer and Environmental Racism
Gian Mallqui
[Institutional Affiliation(s)]
Author Note
Environmental Racism relating to the African-Americans
Cancer and Environmental Racism
The problems of global warming and climate change are somehow in the process of showing their destructive effects on the world. The diverse implications of these problems are yet to be studied and understood. So, it is proving difficult to come up with strategies about the behavior of the individuals about what they can do to guard the environment and the living beings in it. However, it does not mean that the effects of the environment cannot be studied. There are some visible aspects of this problem too. The effects of Pollution and Environmental Degradation are visible as daylight. Also, these impacts are directly affecting the poor people of color in different communities, a concept termed recently as “Environmental Racism”.
One of the recent examples of environmental racism is the polluting of the water of Flint in the city of Michigan, a known community of poor and black people. True, the city authorities switched their main water source to the Flint river, but this is a cost-cutting measure instead of a problem solving one. But the question we might ask ourselves what if the area of Flint was the part of a central and thriving city like New York or Boston.
The effects of environmental racism are not just limited to water pollution. It has shown its presence in several ways. In the state of Louisiana, there exists an area which was dubbed recently by the environmentalists as "Cancer Alley" CITATION Oli19 \l 1033 (Oliver Laughland, 2019). It is an area that starts from New Orleans and ends at Baton Rouge. This area has more than a hundred and fifty plants. Here, the rate of cancer is much higher than the statistics declared as national average by the government. Also, this is no coincidence that the majority of the people affected in the area are the poor black people living in the area. This makes the situation much graver as the people in the region do not have the resources to move to other areas to avoid all the misery. Also, all their protests are either ignored by the relevant authorities, or the petrochemical companies in the area use their bulging economic muscles to make their efforts insignificant. The result is that there are cancer patients are almost every house in the area. This is somewhat alarming for a nation that had elected a black president for two terms in 2008 and 2012. Surely, the authorities should work on containing the rising number of cancer patients in the areas of "colored" people.
Thankfully, this issue has generated enough clout in Washington. This year, the US capital hosted its first-ever Congressional Convening on Environmental Justice, where people from diverse backgrounds such as advocates, policymakers and environmental justice practitioners shared their views about how legislation can play its role in containing this issue. Several of the Democrat leaders belonging to the US congress, including the leader of the house, Nancy Pelosi concluded that “Environmental justice is as fundamental as it can be”. But everyone fell short of suggesting any actual measures to contain the problem CITATION Der19 \l 1033 (Dermansky, 2019).
To conclude the argument, blacks are not children of a lesser god. For a country that holds the title of "Champion of Human Rights", this is a serious issue to deal with. The issues of the Environment cannot stay segregated to a single ethnicity or area. Keeping this in mind, the Americans, and to a greater extent all human beings, should rise with the protestors of the "Cancer Alley" and force the federal and state governments to come up with legislative and practical measures to solve this problem.
References
BIBLIOGRAPHY Dermansky, J. (2019, July 25). Louisiana’s Cancer Alley Residents Take the Fight for Environmental Justice on the Road. Resilience. Retrieved from https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-07-25/louisianas-cancer-alley-residents-take-the-fight-for-environmental-justice-on-the-road/
Oliver Laughland, J. L. (2019, May 06). Almost every household has someone that has died from cancer. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2019/may/06/cancertown-louisana-reserve-special-report
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