‘People Are The Virus?’: The Truth About Environmental Racism

By Olga Guerrero

Elena Scotti/The Root/GMG; photos via Getty Images, iStock

Imagine you are back in fourth grade, sitting at a desk inside a classroom surrounded by other kids like you, with so many questions about the world. On this particular day, your teacher has agreed to let you all watch a nature documentary in place of the usual read-from-the-textbook routine. You’ve loved animals since you were a small child, so you’re especially excited for what you’re about to see. You turn your chair completely in the direction of the projector, placing your elbows on your desk and cupping your face between your small hands. You lift your eyes onto the screen, full of curiosity.

Suddenly, the documentary narrator interrupts your pleasant viewing with an alarming announcement: “Currently endangered, the majestic elephant is being driven towards extinction by humans”. 

Your eyes widen. Humans? You’re a human. And at just 10 years old, with nothing but love and admiration for the animal kingdom, what had you done to endanger elephants? Nothing, of course.

Still, you took this as fact. You’d read about humans destroying entire habitats, driving climate change, and killing animals for sport. You knew humans were capable of it, so with a heavy heart, you guess it must be true.

You grew up disillusioned, believing that humans were the villains in a world that belongs to animals too. That is, you thought humans were evil for causing the climate crisis—until you learned that the climate crisis is impacting and displacing millions of people worldwide too.

But even then, maybe you haven’t quite made sense of the situation. Could it be that we are all collectively destroying the planet and taking the entire human race down with it? For what purpose?

Yes, there exist humans in this world who care little for the planet and seek to destroy it for their own self interest, even if this is a death sentence for thousands of people. 

Except it’s not just any kind of people who are burdened with the consequences of this destruction.

Picture a factory. A landfill. Lead-infested houses. Streets constantly flooded. Picture the people who live here. What do they look like? What is their skin color, what do their clothes look like, what is their occupation?

You’d be right to guess that it’s low-income Black, Brown, and Indigenous populations who tend to live in these kinds of neighborhoods—neighborhoods that lack access to clean water and that are surrounded by factories that pump out tons of hazardous air pollution yearly.

It’s no coincidence that Flint, Michigan has now spent 6 years without access to clean water. It is also not by mistake that earlier this year, the mostly-Latino residents of Little Village in Chicago were not warned beforehand about a planned building demolition that would worsen their air quality in the middle of a global health crisis (involving a virus that makes it incredibly difficult to breathe no less!)

So marginalized people, too, are suffering in the absence of nationwide initiatives to stop climate change, curtail pollution, and ameliorate the harms of environmental racism.

Environmental racism: the systemic oppression of racial and ethnic minorities through which they are subjected to sources of highly toxic chemicals that are located near their homes, thereby drastically impacting their health and lowering their quality of life.

This is the very reason for which the fight for climate change cannot be separate from the fight for an anti-racist world.

In fact, Black people in the United States are 75% more likely to live next to hazardous waste sites filled with soot, oil, fumes, dust...all ridden with carcinogens. These carcinogens, in turn, contribute to the 16% increased risk of cancer among Black Americans compared to white Americans.

Further, the increase in high risk pregnancy cases for Black mothers all over the United States is directly related to their long term exposure to smoldering heat waves and air pollution. We can trace the cause of this back to redlining which, according to PBS, is the “practice of drawing red lines around Black neighborhoods on residential maps to discourage lenders from issuing mortgages in those areas”. Relegating Black people to neighborhoods and buildings with limited trees, which both purify the air and provide shade, and so many concrete buildings that trap heat, provided the conditions for the dangerous heat waves that affect Black people at disproportionate rates.

In addition to the harmful legacy of the redlining, and the racism that continues to persist in this country today, much of the climate change we see can be attributed to huge corporations hoping to make a profit.

In a capitalist system that prioritizes making big money over the health and wellbeing of people, it’s not surprising that the populations experiencing poverty are the same people who are most at risk succumbing to the impact of climate change.

The rich cause great destruction and get to go home to their luxury mansions, surrounded by crisp clean air and away from bustling streets and pollution from factories.

Meanwhile, Indigenous tribes have been spearheading the movement to protect the environment: currently, there is 50% less deforestation taking place in lands that are within the control and protection of Indigenous peoples in the Amazon. But the scope of this blogpost cannot even begin to cover all the wonderful work of Indigenous activists and organizers in their fight for liberation. I stand with them in solidarity.

So the next time someone suggests that ‘people are the true virus’ and that ‘the world would be better off if humans went extinct’, remind them that there are millions today who are disproportionately experiencing the impact of climate change because of racial capitalism. Remind your inner child that it’s capitalists who are to blame for the worst environmental disasters and that millions everyday are joining the fight for environmental justice.