Ayad Alghaithi, Period 7, 9/15/2023

 Ayad Alghaithi, Period 7, Blog#1

Systemic Racism and Environmental Justice

Systemic Racism and Environmental justice are two issues that relate and intersect in society. These issues are mainly faced by people of color and other ethnicities. Systemic racism places a disadvantage on education, employment, housing, criminal justice, and healthcare and puts people of color into a system that they are not able to get out of because they are being fed into a poor quality education system that just feeds them into the criminal justice system. Likewise poor quality housing, healthcare, and jobs trap colored men and women in a system that gives them poor quality resources with no opportunities to grow. Environmental Justice plays a part in systemic racism because of the unequal distribution of benefits. Many of these people that are victims of systemic racism are residents of low income and poorly funded neighborhoods. These neighborhoods can have several issues with them ranging from poor placement near polluted areas to unsafe housing. Unhealthy neighborhoods face more disparities in health. 

Many efforts have been made to address and bring change to the issue of systemic racism and environmental justice. For example the murder of George Floyd acted as a spark for global protests and for the Black Lives Matter movement. Hundreds of protests happened, demanding an end to police brutality and states putting in police reforms as a result and starting to solve systemic racism. Environmental justice has also been addressed in many ways by activists advocating for safe houses, stricter regulations, and government investments in neglected communities. 

I personally see this happening everyday in communities that I live in, children in the communities are given a poor level education by the school systems and what happens is children end up on the streets. Even many adults don’t receive opportunities for employment and are often unemployed and end up turning to illegal substances or cope or to even make money, this is also due to the lack of education in the communities. I believe with better education systems and increased care to communities like these, there could be great change in the economy and in the people.