DOJ Finally Decides To Tackle Environmental Racism In Alabama

The US Department of Justice announced recently that they would be investigating potential environmental racism taking place in an Alabama community where wastewater is being pumped and allowed to overflow in predominantly black communities. This has led to an increase in health problems and parasitic infections among the community. Environmental racism is happening all over the country, and non-white people are far more likely to be exposed to higher levels of pollution than their white counterparts. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Recently the US Department of Justice announced that they would be conducting what is essentially a review of potential environmental racism taking place in a predominantly African-American county in the state of Alabama. The county is Lowndes county, 26% of the people in that county live in poverty and what's been happening for years is they've had a massive wastewater problem. They've had sewage problems coming up out of the ground. They've had sewage dump. They've had other wastewater essentially dumped in that area. And so the Department of Justice, after noticing a disturbing trend of people in the area getting sick, and of course having ridiculously high amounts of parasitic infections, especially hookworms, they finally decided they needed to look into what was happening to the people in this county. And of course they're doing it via the civil rights division, which does lead us to believe that the DOJ believes this is another case of environmental racism.

And in case you're not familiar with that term, environmental racism basically means when a company, a city, any kind of entity really chooses to release their poisons on minority communities, on non-white communities. And yes, this is a thing that happens regularly here in the United States. It is well-documented, well-documented to the point where minorities in this country are one and a half times more likely than their white counterparts to live in heavily polluted areas and it's not because they're choosing to go live in heavily polluted areas. It's because that's where the pollution tends to be dumped. And I have to say something about this, because this always reminds me of a video I did many years ago where I talked about environmental racism, because the statistics back it up, it is a proven thing here in the United States. I had an angry person reach out to me and say, how dare you, how dare you downplay the fact that white people get poisoned by these corporations too. Which one, was weird to me because I didn't downplay that at all.

I just pointed out that people of color are far more likely to be the recipients of the pollution. The numbers don't lie. The numbers back that up, as I said, one and a half times more likely. That doesn't mean that white people don't have to deal with pollution. And honestly, that, that comment sticks out with me just for how ridiculous it was, how stupid it was really. And I'm sorry if the person who sent me that I don't know your name, but if you're still watching videos today, God bless you. But at the same time, that was a stupid comment because the numbers are there. The facts are there. The DOJ has a division that actually looks into these kinds of things, because it is so common here in the United States. We cannot have racial equality here in the United States. We can't even get to a path of racial justice if we do not address environmental issues as well, because that is a major factor in systemic racism here in the United States and the numbers back it up. And the DOJ is finally, it looks like, starting to take this issue a little more seriously.