THE NATIONAL BLACK ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE NETWORK’S

COVID-19 STATEMENT 

The National Environmental Justice Network (NBEJN) organizations, networks, consortia and leaders representing community organizers, educators, scientists, researchers, policy experts and faith institutions are dedicated to addressing systemic racism that harms and denies Black people equal access to environmental, climate and economic justice, health equity, political power, and civil and human rights.  

The NBEJN was founded in 1999 to address the toxic emergency faced by Black communities in the United States. The network was revitalized in June 2020 to address the special emergency created by COVID-19 and the underlying conditions that make Black residents including workers more vulnerable.

We have entered a pandemic era and if there was ever a time for our Black communities to have a national voice it is now given the disproportionate share of Black hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 and the lackluster U.S. response to address these realities. 

The NBEJN stands strong on The Principles of Environmental Justice , that strengthen coalitions, alliances and collaborations and commitment to fight on multiple fronts to eradicate underlying conditions that create and perpetuate disparities and vulnerability. Our platform and action plans are built around data-driven solutions using an equity lens to inform policies that address health, environmental, social, and economic justice challenges facing Blacks during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

HEALTH AND RACIAL JUSTICE

The findings are clear—the government response to natural and human-made disasters and pandemics has not treated all impacted communities the same—contributing to glaring racial disparities. This slow response is not new.  It fits a pattern documented in The Wrong Complexion for Protection: How the Government Response to Disaster Endangers African American Communities (NYU Press 2012). 

COVID-19 exposes the racial divide in our nation’s nursing homes and prisons which have a high proportion of Blacks. It also shines a national spotlight on longstanding health care shortcomings, socioeconomic and racial disparities, including alarming health disparities (asthma, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, obesity, kidney disease) and social vulnerabilities (poverty, uninsured, lack of transportation, limited access to safe housing, located in food deserts and food swamps and pollution “hot spots”). 

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE AND ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM

Residents living near dirty coal plants are more likely to suffer from respiratory illnesses than those living farther away. More than 68 percent of Blacks live within 30 miles of a dirty coal-fired power plant, compared with 56 percent of whites and 39 percent of Latinos.  Two million Americans live within three miles of the top twelve “dirtiest” coal power plants (76 percent of these residents are people of color).  Each year between 7,500 to 52,000 Americans die prematurely from power plant emissions. This is comparable to the 40,000 Americans killed in vehicle accidents each year. 

America is segregated and so is pollution.  Black Americans in 19 states are 79 percent more likely than whites to live where industrial pollution poses the greatest health danger. The politics of pollution translates into more illnesses, suffering, and deaths. These findings were well documented before the coronavirus pandemic first hit our shores. COVID-19 maps closely with race, class, place, and environmental disparities.  

An April 2020 Harvard study found air pollution linked to higher COVID-19 deaths. Persons living in areas with high levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) are 15 percent more likely to die from the coronavirus than someone in a region with one unit less of PM2.5. Toxic living conditions and environmental racism helped inflate death rates among Blacks before COVID-19 struck.  

Black Americans need clean air, clean water, healthy food, safe housing,  high quality jobs, clean energy, green and affordable transportation, and access to safe natural environments and amenities. Climate change is already negatively impacting Black communities.  We seek real climate solutions that eliminate greenhouse gases and co-pollutants, create millions of high-wage American jobs, build green and accessible public transportation, reduce poverty and inequality, promote equal protection of workers, frontline and fenceline communities and vulnerable populations, and provide safeguards against climate-induced health threats. 

ECONOMIC JUSTICE AND FRONTLINE WORKERS

The coronavirus is also hitting Blacks and other people of color workers harder than whites. According to a report from McKinsey and Company, “African Americans are almost twice as likely to live in places where, if contagion hits, the pandemic will likely cause outsize disruption.” African Americans also have higher risk for contracting COVID-19 but have lower access to testing; they are “overrepresented in nine of the ten lowest-paid, high-contact essential services, which elevates their risk of contracting the virus.” 

Black Americans need clean air, clean water, healthy food, safe housing,  high quality jobs, clean energy, green and affordable transportation, and access to safe natural environments and amenities. Climate change is already negatively impacting Black communities.

Disaster recovery dollars generally follow a pattern of “money following money, money following power, and money following whites.”  A racial equity lens calls for “money following need.”  A Rice University and University of Pittsburgh study found counties that experienced $10 billion disasters, white communities gained an average of $126,000 in wealth following recovery efforts—while Black and other communities of color lost between $10,000 and $29,000. 

Preliminary findings show COVID-19 relief funds have followed this historical pattern.  Small businesses of color were excluded from the Small Business Administration (SBA) Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). Early reports found 90 percent of minority and women-owned businesses were frozen out of the COVID-19 relief loans passed by Congress—with SBA and big banks passing over the most vulnerable minority businesses in favor of bigger “small” businesses.

Black Americans are vulnerable to COVID-19 are paying a higher price with their health. African Americans and other workers of color form the backbone of essential workers in the nation. It is imperative that meaningful protection is provided for all members of the community and a COVID-19 response that addresses pervasive racial injustices at the federal, state, and local levels. 

Most Americans own or have access to a car.  Car ownership varies across racial, economic and geographic lines.  Only 6.5 percent  of white households, 12 percent of Hispanic households and 19.7 percent of black households do not have access to a car. The carless population is much higher in our cities: New York (54.4%), Washington, DC (37.3%), Boston (33.8%), Philadelphia (29.5%), Chicago (27.5%), and New Orleans (20.2%). One-in-ten Americans (11%) take public transportation on a daily or weekly basis.  Carless households tend to be concentrated in densely populated urban areas and high poverty neighborhoods where residents can’t afford to own a car.  

Black Americans and Hispanics are more likely than whites to rely on public transportation to get around.  Only 7 percent of white Americans compared to 15 percent of Hispanics and 23 percent of black Americans take public transportation. Public transportation use is much higher in urban areas with dense populations.  In urban areas 34 percent of blacks, 27 percent of Hispanics compared with only 14 percent of whites use public transit daily or weekly. More 38 percent of foreign-born urban residents use public transportation on a regular basis.

Thus, it is important that urban areas hit hardest by COVID-19 give priority to transportation planning using an equity lens since many of the essential workers of color use public transportation as their primary mode of travel.  Threats to public health must be reduced not only on the jobs but also on public transportation for workers who use it to get to their jobs.  

OUR CHARGE

As diverse Black organizations coming together to tackle the coronavirus pandemic and the underlying structural conditions that make our communities vulnerable, let us also use this opportunity to take bold steps together toward a more inclusive, open and just society that lives out the Principles of Environmental Justice for all.  We believe we are stronger together when people and communities who are most impacted lead and are part of the decision-making on how we move forward to heal our communities, our states, our nation, and our planet.