Some folks don't believe systemic racism is a thing. Others say it might be but they don't really know what it is. Well, here is a perfect example:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/03/09/redlining-pollution-environmental-justice/?utm_campaign=wp_the7&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_the7&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3647cdd%2F6229e85b9d2fda34e7c77c90%2F5f8d147cae7e8a56e5b732a4%2F20%2F39%2F6229e85b9d2fda34e7c77c90Decades of federal housing discrimination did not only depress home values, lower job opportunities and spur poverty in communities deemed undesirable because of race. It’s why 45 million Americans are breathing dirtier air today, according to a landmark study released Wednesday.
The practice known as redlining was outlawed more than a half-century ago, but it continues to impact people who live in neighborhoods that government mortgage officers shunned for 30 years because people of color and immigrants lived in them.
The analysis, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology Letters, found that, compared with White people, Black and Latino Americans live with more smog and fine particulate matter from cars, trucks, buses, coal plants and other nearby industrial sources in areas that were redlined. Those pollutants inflame human airways, reduce lung function, trigger asthma attacks and can damage the heart and cause strokes.
The federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) marked areas across the United States as unworthy of loans because of an “infiltration of foreign-born, Negro, or lower grade population,” and shaded them in red starting in the 1930s. This made it harder for home buyers of color to get mortgages; the corporation awarded A grades for solidly White areas and D’s for largely non-White areas that lenders were advised to shun.
Throughout redlining’s history, local zoning officials worked with businesses to place polluting operations such as industrial plants, major roadways and shipping ports in and around neighborhoods that the federal government marginalized.Over the years, calls to clean up this mess in our cities has led to many saying there simply isn't money to do so, or saying the problem isn't really that bad, or saying that spending money to try to make changes amounts to just another "government giveaway."
So, decades later, minority kids and adults in these areas are still breathing garbage air and still drinking garbage water. Even if it's not codified in law, redlining is still claiming victims.
Systemic racism can be and often is a lot more subtle than this, but this particular example is a hard punch to the face of Blacks and Latinos. The uniquely American gift that keeps on giving.
