Conscious Clipper: The Silenced Story

The Silenced Story

Today, let’s begin with one of the most bewildering statistics of the American healthcare system: Black women have a maternal mortality rate 3.2 times higher than white women.

This statistic didn’t come from 100 years ago. It did not come from 50 years ago. This reality is now. A reality in which the color of one’s skin affects not only the daily realities of life, but life itself.

A large factor of this man-made inequality is the overburdening of the black population with the negative environmental impacts while simultaneously stripping the power of the black community to fight back.

For starters, black communities are often chosen as the sites of harmful chemical production plants. For example, 1959, the Dow Chemical Company set up a series of plants developing vinyl chloride in Plaquemine, Louisiana -- a chemical known to be linked to cancer.

The surrounding majority black towns soon discovered traces of the chemical in their water wells. In the coming decades, the area would be dubbed ‘Cancer Alley’ for the abundance of cancer cases linked to such pollution in that area.

This story is sadly not a one-off. Residents of Africatown, Alabama face daily exposure due to levels of cancer-causing pollutants in the air at levels above the EPA limits. Recently, in 2014, residents in the majority black town of Flint, Michigan, experienced devastating health impacts due to a lead-contaminated water supply.

Over and over again, stories like these have revealed the insidious effects of environmental racism, and yet action is still slow moving. Political apathy is not the symptom of a broken system -- it’s the cause.

In an age when the validity of climate change is questioned even in our government, many are reluctant to face the reality that links climate change to racism. But, when Black people are exposed to 1.5 times more particulate pollution than white people according to a recent study by the EPA, the connection is undeniable.

The question then becomes: why? Is the answer simply because Black communities tend to be poorer than white? Have black people simply had the misfortune to settle in highly polluted areas?

The answer to these questions is not simple. But it stems from the unequal distribution of power in America, in which the burdens of society are borne unequally by one group. Here in Norwell, we are insulated by our town’s affluence. In our wealthy, predominantly middle-upper class town, would a pollution-belching chemical manufacturing plant ever be constructed? The indignant watchdog of Norwell Social, among other factors, points to no.

Even if such an institution was constructed in Norwell, unhappy residents would not hesitate to move their families to greener pastures with plenty of open space and fresh air to breathe. But what happens if families in similar circumstances can’t afford the move? What happens when the only option to sustain your family is to go to work in such a factory?

For communities of color in such situations, these questions are unavoidable. While we in affluent cities and towns reap the benefits of products made in mega polluting factories, we are not forced to shoulder the environmental impacts. Instead, the burden gets pushed onto the shoulders of communities who often lack the resources necessary to fight against such changes.

Like climate change, racism is a force that will take everyone doing their part to chip away at. Some things that can ease such inequalities are expanding affordable housing in places with wide green spaces, increasing regulation of pollutants caused by factories, and preventing further plants from being constructed in communities that lack the resources to defend themselves.

To craft effective environmental legislation, we must focus on easing the immediate impacts of climate change that are threatening the lives of our fellow citizens. Instead of ignoring race, we must acknowledge it as a significant factor as we work to repair the deep scars etched by environmentally irresponsible practices.

During this Black History Month, I am led to reflect on whether our town is part of the solution or the problem to environmental racism. Just this summer, a move to reserve 8 acres of the 115-acre Carleton property in Norwell for affordable housing was defeated at the Town Meeting, which could have allowed families in Massachusetts to escape the effects of polluting factories. Likely, no one who voted against that bill was actively aiming to perpetuate environmental racism. They simply were not aware of the potential benefits of such affordable housing -- and therein lies the problem: no one was aware.

With awareness comes the understanding that we are not members of a town or a state, but citizens of one America. We who have the most power are blissfully missed by the worst of environmental impacts -- for now. Recognizing the injustice of treating an entire group of people as expendable, we must question the practices that maintain this deadly status quo.

I think back to the number of black women killed during pregnancy each year, and I wonder how many of those deaths could have been prevented by a cleaner environment. I think of the residents in Cancer Alley, where death is prevalent but change is not.

I think of the power we have to change the narrative about racism and climate change, and I wonder when we will refuse to let this be another silenced story.

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The Conscious Clipper is written by Rose Hansen