Housing Discrimination: The Forefront of Climate Racism Toward Black Americans

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What once was air is now smog. The foundation of your house penetrates a gas field. The water you drink is spoiled by chemicals from the abandoned factory outside your window.

The constant threat of extreme weather has you and your neighbors living in fear; one day, your house will be swept away by a flood or burnt to a crisp by the hand of a raging fire.

The ongoing danger that climate change poses afflicts many marginalized groups. Some are dealing with being uprooted from their homes or facing illness as a consequence of where they live.

Climate racism and housing discrimination are inextricably linked, enforcing a cycle of injustices that leaves non-white communities bearing the brunt of the harshest impacts of climate change.

This is a problem that has become exponentially more relevant due to the current climate crisis. The United States, in particular, has decades of cases in which climate change is disproportionately affecting many marginalized racial groups. This has largely been due to the housing discrimination tactics the US used to restrain mobility.

This lack of opportunity and relief ultimately has aggravated the climate change effects felt by many minority communities.

Global Climate Racism

The term climate racism addresses a fundamental question: How is climate change inherently targeting people of color, especially Black communities?

Climate racism falls under structural racism, a type of discrimination that is systemically embedded in the fabric of our society and leaves many more disadvantaged than before. The way it operates in the modern day has roots in a complex and expansive history that enforced brutalization through colonialism. This manifested itself as the political removal, killing, and enslavement of peoples, which penetrated the cultural practices of European colonies and, subsequently, US ones.

Colonialism largely entailed the economic exploitation and destruction of local industries. The lack of valuable resources left by colonies weakened native populations’ abilities to develop, causing a dependence on the Global North. As a result, most of the Global South has been undershooting carbon emissions since 1850.

“There is a ‘perverse paradox’ in that resources were expropriated from colonized countries and territories in Latin America, Africa, and Asia to fuel industrialization, which would later contribute to the rise in GHG emissions, and trigger climate change impacts that would critically affect formerly colonized countries and territories,” writes global policy researcher Erin Roberts. 17 out of the 20 countries most threatened by climate change are in Africa, specifically North and West African countries. They are facing rising temperatures and decreased rainfall, coastal erosion, extreme natural disasters, food insecurity due to crop yield reduction, the rise of vector-borne diseases, and more.  Despite taking the brunt of the climate crisis, Africa has a limited contribution to global warming.

American climate racism and housing

America was one of the first countries in the Global North to industrialize, which is directly responsible for our excessive energy use and resource depletion. The European Union is responsible for about 29 percent of excess global CO2 emissions, while the United States leads with 40 percent, excluding minoritized communities like Indigenous peoples. This is largely due to the establishment of fossil fuel corporations in the United States. The industrialization process is tied to our legacy of slavery.

Slavery created immense economic inequalities that carry over into the 21st century. Increasingly oppressive hierarchies were established: separating men from women, whites from BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color), and capitalism from the environment. The growth of capitalism and white wealth occurred largely as ramifications of Black labor and the active condemnation of Blackness.

Post-slavery discriminatory practices that included housing and education segregation often forced African Americans into undesirable neighborhoods with insufficient infrastructure. Jim Crow laws were devised to systematically diminish the mobility of Black communities in the United States. Redlining was a popular tactic in the 1930s to segregate Black communities from white communities by assigning certain neighborhoods based on appeal. As of now, the values of homes don’t rise at the same rate, although taxes stay the same, disrupting wealth accumulation. This comes with the concentration of predatory loans where minorities live.

Although redlining is now an illegal practice, there are a large number of racially restrictive patterns that penetrate every aspect of a sustainable life. Black people were not able to afford many of the amenities that whites did. The food quality was poor, health care was ineffective, education was inaccessible or not fully developed, etc.; there was a deficiency in resources that allow mobility in mitigating climate change impacts. Housing discrimination and racism have constrained Black communities to underdeveloped areas, curtailing their access to resources that will alleviate climate change. Now, there’s overcrowding and overuse of services, contributing to the worsening of their quality of life. African American and Black communities were found to be 40 percent more likely to live in areas that have deaths related to the top estimated increases in extreme temperatures.

Based on certain residential areas, Black communities are also unreasonably affected by environmental hazards. Namely, the costliest natural disaster to strike the United States, Hurricane Katrina. The Gulf Coast of the United States felt the power of a hurricane exacerbated by global warming.

Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, causing hundreds of fatalities and billions of dollars of destruction. New Orleans, a city rich with Black history, was struck by flooding due to levee breaches. In 2005, Black people made up about 67.3 percent of the population in New Orleans; that percentage later plummeted to 58.8 percent after the storm. Comparatively, all other races, including Hispanic, Asian, and Native American, amongst others, saw a steady increase from 2006 on. There was also a far higher mortality rate within African American and low-income communities.

Since 1960, Black residents have lost control of their mobility. Due to raging unemployment and police corruption, there was a plummet in their ability to improve their social and economic capital. Whoever grew up in an impoverished neighborhood was then confined there. Those same neighborhoods later succumbed to the flooding, ending up well under sea level.

When it came down to the rebuilding of New Orleans, city and government officials prioritized giving aid to white families. Rebuilding grants favored wealthy homeowners, who were mainly white, based on the worth of pre-Katrina houses. When your house gets wiped out, the only choice you have is to escape and later rebuild, but this wasn’t the case for those who didn’t have the financial means to support themselves.

Hurricane Katrina revealed the pathetic lack of familiarity our government has with crisis management as shown through the refusal to waive the Stafford Act (Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act), delaying evacuation and restoration of power, inadequate FEMA response plans, neglecting long-standing warnings about the catastrophe, federal shortfall of mass care, and so much more.

President Bush and his administration’s slow reaction allowed us to see how little concern for the underprivileged they had. It’s demonstrable that Bush never cared for his Black voters (as seen by the poverty rates that increased during the two terms). Authorities failed to administer rescue or relief procedures, specifically for poor and Black communities, causing a grossly offensive politicization of a disaster.

The roots of housing inequality and wealth

Professor Bruce D. Haynes is an American sociologist and faculty member of the University of California, Davis. With a research focus on the “Racialization of People and Places,” Dr. Haynes has published a large amount of work including Down the Up Staircase: Three Generations of a Harlem Family (2017) and The Ghetto: Contemporary Global Issues and Controversies (2012), all of which are interdisciplinary books on the community and urban life, race, and history.

In an interview with Dr. Haynes, he revealed to me the forces that influence housing discrimination.

Davis Political Review: How does race affect a person’s ability to move between classes and be housed?

Dr. Bruce D. Haynes: Race limits your movement between classes in two fundamental ways: you’re discriminated against and underpaid, or you cannot get a job. Subtly, being unemployed affects your income and therefore your housing. More directly, the transfer of wealth across generations is important in how a family accumulates wealth. The process of housing has been the most important piece in wealth transfer. The inability of Black people to inherit wealth comes from segregated housing and employment abilities.

DPR: Ergo bidirectionality and an endless, mindless cycle of restrictions. How much does income affect housing opportunities for a Black family?

Dr. Haynes: Income is important, the ability to accumulate wealth is important, and so is access to credit. Housing opportunities are affected by who will give you credit for things. Looking at redlining, there’s an encouraged production mechanism that ties racial inequality to space. Without segregation, there wouldn’t be colored concentrations of poverty. There is no equivalent of a white ghetto in America.

DPR: As a society, have we moved away from discriminatory housing practices?

Dr. Haynes: Yes and no. Have we improved? Yes, in significant ways over a long period of time. My grandfather was born in 1880, and there was racial violence at the turn of the century that I haven’t experienced. Back then, they had white-capping, as seen through Hodges v. United States (1906), lynching, and the Springfield and Tulsa riots, which had all been manifested as “rumors.” It was so normal to exile things out of our memory or sanitize history. It was only because states had such different policies that we didn’t turn into Nazi Germany. My book, Red Lines, Black Spaces, explores the first emergence of a Black middle class in the 1910s. 60 years after the establishment of railroad stations, suburbs grew around it, creating prime suburban real estate with its own natural lines. But it was usually next to a dump, factory, or toxic spill. There’s a lot of continuity in where Black families lived next to industry. In the 1990s, there were still places around that hadn’t been bought out by the wealthy of the world, but over the past 20 years, the wealthy and upper middle class have been buying multiple houses, investment houses, and international houses. Lots of land that was once private is less private with fewer public spaces that aren’t controlled by the wealthy; just look at Coney Island. There’s a privatization of public space. And now, we’re seeing a stagnation of working-class wages, and they’re struggling more than they did, affording less than they could. Most of which affect Black people through the reasons mentioned previously.

DPR: What policies should be set in place to address climate injustices?

Dr. Haynes: De-segregation is an important part of climate. The fewer Americans isolated, the better it is. It’s aggravated by the internet, which forces us to be siloed, sticking us in an echo chamber. There’s not a lot of tolerance for struggling differences in conversation. So, in return, we have a moral debate over fairness, equity, supporting the underdog, and helping the less unfortunate, things that were once “American values.” If someone comes to your house thirsty, will you give them water? We have to reevaluate what world we want our children to live in. We are creating a violently intimidating society. How do you work without giving in to the same tactics? Not hating your enemy while convincing them to be rational? We have to deal with climate change and race at a societal level. It will force us to deal with where they intersect. This isn’t an either-or situation. “Fix this or that”… no, fix both.

It’s time to talk about it

Bad economic capital is interlinked with climate racism, and it’s inescapable for many. It is time that Americans decided whether or not to address this growing, relentless issue. As the climate worsens, its effects will only be exacerbated further, especially for Black communities.

Before the LA fires, not many knew of the historic Black community of Altadena. As a sanctuary for those escaping Southern segregation or the racialization of house ownership, generations of Black families there have built a network of wealth, success, and safety. However, Black households in Altadena were still found to be at a higher risk of fire damage or destruction due to the meticulous placement of these houses right by the Eaton fire perimeter. According to the HOLC’s 1939 Residential Security Maps, the only houses available for Black folks to buy were the cheaper, “less desirable” ones that were closer to fire zones.

Across the U.S., Black homeowners are more likely to be overwhelmingly cost-burdened and have inadequate services in mental health, schools, investments in neighborhoods, economic opportunities, and so much more. All of which fundamentally affect communities’ abilities to rebound, heal, and grow.

And when there’s this absence of resources that are meant to address physical and mental needs, just as a result of where you live, how are you meant to deal with the ongoing threat climate change poses?

To quote Malcolm X in good faith, “If not now, then when? If not me, then who?”