Tuesday, September 4, 2018

OpEd by Karina Delgado, Senior

DDE Literary Magazine
2018-2019

Our mission is to promote and share the creative endeavors of students at Dwight D. Eisenhower High School.

Welcome to Cardinal Voices 2018-19!  We are starting off the school year by featuring OpEd articles written in May by Mrs. McMillan's AP Language and Composition students.  In AP Lang, students learn how to write for a variety of purposes by mastering how to adjust their voice, tone, and strategy. This assignment highlights how these students combine research with their opinion.  All of the featured writers wrote these as juniors and are now seniors.



Environmental racism isn’t a myth.
By: Karina Delgado May 21, 2018
Why is it that when black and brown people voice their concerns on issues that directly pertain to them, officials turn a blind eye? Money. And why is it that minorities have a higher chance of living by a toxic waste dump than whites? Environmental racism.

These two answers go hand in hand.

Racism is as American as cherry pie. It has ran its course over centuries in America. So has capitalism. One cannot corner the market, but one can corner someone’s neighborhood until it is refined to nothing but factory smog and production lines.

Often defined as a toxic set of beliefs that one is superior to another based on race, racism has been systematically implemented through laws afforded by privileged whites. There are no more Jim Crow laws or segregated schools, but racism still persists with each factory placed in a minority-based neighborhood.

The term environmental racism was coined by Reverend Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. in a 1987 study conducted by the United Church of Christ that examined the location of hazardous waste dumps and found an “insidious form of racism." African-Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans were, and still are, disproportionately affected by hazardous fumes, environmental policies and dumpsites. They are targeted because companies know they lack resources and knowledge to fight back. This unnecessary intolerance of minorities makes minorities vulnerable in their own homes. In the 1950’s and 1960’s, minorities could feel a sense of safety knowing they would be surrounded by loved ones once in their homes even if the outside world hated them. Now, they have no one to turn to because their loved ones are dead from breathing in toxic fumes from the factory next door.
It is fact that minorities tend to be the ones to live in dangerous neighborhoodsnot because they want to, but because they do not have the means to move. The dispute over whether environmental racism is real or not is utterly ridiculous if you think about a rich white family’s decision to live next to a landfill that produces noxious smells.

Surprise, they wouldn’t.

So, what makes companies, who make up studies to take down claims of environmental discrimination, think that their placement of factories in poor neighborhoods is coincidental. Blacks, Native Americans and Hispanics want to leave their toxic environments, but they were there first (sounds familiar). And companies know their dilemma which is why they prey on their economic status and inability to fight back.

Flint, Michigan.

A city name anyone in America is all too familiar with. Flint, Michigan first came to the nation’s attention not when its citizens started to become suspicious, but when a revelation over the high lead levels in water surfaced through a Virginia Tech study. City officials decided to switch over Flint’s source of water from Lake Huron to the local Flint River to cut costs. The hopes were to save money; however, instead, an impoverished neighborhood where over 50 percent of residents are African American and 41 percent are poor received toxic waste filtered through their water pipes.

When one citizen decided to see just how toxic her water was, test results revealed that water flowing into her home contained lead levels as high as 397 parts per billion. That level far exceeded the 15 parts per billion (ppb) level at which the EPA requires communities take action, such as replacing lead pipes, to control corrosion and prevent lead from leaching into the water.

How could this have happened? How could America, a revered nation known for leading the way in all kinds of reform, let its government, city and local officials get away with this? The answer lies in negligence. Flint’s mayor had his emails revealed and it showed that he knew there was a problem far before the Virginia Tech study that exposed the city’s lead levels in September of 2015 came out. If he knew then, he could have prevented the genetic link between Flint water and Legionnaires’ disease, a severe form of pneumonia caused by legionella bacteria. During the eighteen months that Flint residents received water from the Flint River, cases of Legionnaires’ disease increased and at least twelve deaths were confirmed in 2017.

America should be ashamed. In this day and age, everyone is entitled to clean water. Mere efforts have been made to fix cities like Flint, though none have made significant impact. Native American communities for years have endured waste dumps on their land. The Environmental Protection Agency has chosen not to do extensive research into why they are chosen or the effects on them later in life. This confirms how little they care about already impoverished neighborhoods once their money is secured. The EPA and Flint officials need to be held responsible for their inability to take action when needed.

Hopefully, now that environmental injustices like Flint have brought awareness to the exploitation of poor communities for financial gain, there can be more action taken to hold those in power accountable for both their actions and inactions.

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