OPINION: Senator Elizabeth Warren Addressing Environmental Racism

By Khiyah Griffin

Presidential candidate Senator Elizabeth Warren released a $1 trillion plan that targets climate change and environmental racism on Wednesday.

According to an article by CNBC, The plan was made to help the communities of low income minorities affected by  pollution, extreme weather and contamination that has advanced because of climate change. 

Environmental racism is defined as “a type of discrimination where people of low-income or minority communities are forced to live in close proximity of environmentally hazardous or degraded environments, such as toxic waste, pollution and urban decay,” according to urbandictionary.com.

“The same communities that have borne the brunt of industrial pollution are now on the front lines of climate change, often getting hit first and worst,” Warren said, according to CNBC.

The plan expands a decade, and would bring back an appealed Obama-era water rule, which “was developed to limit pollution in roughly 60% of the country's bodies of water, according to CNBC. 

Warren said it would also provide job training and guaranteed wage and benefit for fossil fuel workers and improve equity mapping of communities prone to wildfires, droughts, storms, flooding and more.

According to a study done by Liam Downey and Brian Hawkins, “blacks experience such a high pollution burden that black households with incomes between $50,000 and $60,000 live in neighborhoods that are, on average, more polluted than the average neighborhood in which white households with incomes below $10,000 live.” 

The study also found that black, white, and Hispanic households with similar incomes do not live in neighborhoods of similar environmental quality.

I personally think Warren’s plan would be great if it does indeed happen in the future. I have never really seen politicians address environmental racism and attempt to do something about it. 

I think it  is a huge problem, and we can draw from issues such as the Flint water crisis, Hurricane Dorian’s impact on the Bahamas, Hurricane Katrina and major cities like Chicago to support it.

I am a black woman from Maywood, Illinois, which is not far from the city of Chicago. I have seen that predominantly black and latino communities are in bad conditions there from rundown houses and abandoned buildings to toxic water, high crime, littering and more. 

I know that my parents, grandparents and other family members and close friends have grown up in neighborhoods coined as “the projects” or “the ghetto,” so this is not new.

According to CNBC, Warren’s plan will face criticism from fossil fuel companies and scrutiny form politician because of the amount of money planned to go towards it.

I think that if our leaders can have so much passion to find ways into getting billions of dollars in funding for a wall that’s meant to supposedly protect Americans, then they should be doing just that, protecting people of color in America.

 I think a plan to address environmental racism should have happened a long time ago, and I think more leaders should be trying to do what Warren is.