Blog Post 4: My Thoughts On The EJ Movement
In more recent years, I haven’t been able to find a subject or something that really grabs at my attention and leaves me wanting to learn more than the topic of environmental justice. It’s something that I am frankly very passionate about, and it really keeps my attention and interest in environmental justice and helps me keep up with motivation in order to write about it. In the past couple of weeks, I have done tons of research based on the question, are minorities being unequally burned by environmental factors. I have researched arguments for both sides, with one saying yes it’s true while the other side is saying that all of this is a bunch of bologna, especially the idea of environmental justice. Environmental racism/injustice is very real and affecting our population. Here’s why.
When doing research for my last blog post, I found it very hard to find any articles or opinions of people disagreeing with the idea of environmental justice, and whether these minorities are really getting screwed with high levels of pollution. I was stoked when I was finally able to find a perspective that did not agree with my side on the issue. After reanalyzing my articles, I found a reason why these people disagreed with me on the issue. The two articles were written 20 and 15 years ago, which might not seem like a long time in hindsight, but a lot has changed in the past 2 decades. There have been multiple studies done, that show the disparity between whites versus blacks being affected by pollution. In the past twenty years, there have been lots of natural occurring events that have shown this racial inequity, events such as Flint-Michigan Water Crisis, Hurricane Katrina that took place in 2005, and the development of Cancer Alley.
Something I also saw in the authors’ writings that disagreed with my opinion on the argument was the fact of how they really did not have any substantial evidence to back up the idea they were trying to convey. The big idea that they were trying to say is that you shouldn’t believe in it because it is simply not true and not backed by enough evidence. The tone that I got from the articles kind of reminded me of another social problem we have in the United States with the gender wage gap. Even though they aren’t related at all, they seem to be going through the same thing, as people tend to choose to believe that there is no such thing as a wage gap because there is no evidence to back it up, when there has been multiple studies done that prove that it is in fact true.
With no evidence to really back up their claims, the non-believers really have nothing that validates their argument that environmental justice and racism does not exist. Instead, there is a substantial amount of studies and evidence that alludes to the fact that it is very real, and something in the community/society needs to be done. Due to an overwhelming amount of evidence, I am now a firm believer that it environmental racism is real and I am in support of the environmental justice movement.
