The Department of Energy announced last week that it would be promoting something called “energy justice.” Apparently, it isn’t enough for liberals to create racial strife and division in finances, education, entertainment, sports, criminal justice, government, and politics. So now they’re going for energy, too.
The premise is that minorities in the United States have suffered from discriminatory pollution.“For far too long, communities of color and low-income communities have borne the brunt of pollution to the air, water, and soil they rely on to live and raise their families,” the statement on the Department of Energy website says. “The clean energy revolution must lift up these communities that have been left behind, and make sure those who have suffered the most are the first to benefit.”
Has all pollution really been pushed into nonwhite neighborhoods? Have pollution sources not changed over time, as migration patterns have caused neighborhoods across the country to change from white to black and, in some cases, back again?
As usual, such claims rely mostly on oversimplification. Yes, you can just throw up your hands and blame racism for the famously endemic pollution in Detroit’s zip code 48217, for example. But a far more plausible explanation is that lower rents and home values in a high-pollution area (for example, an area in Detroit wedged between a freeway and a sewage treatment plant) are going to attract people with lower incomes, whereas the pollution and its smells tend to repel the affluent. Some poorer neighborhoods were always black. Others became so with the historical trend of suburbanization, which occurred both in polluted areas and elsewhere.
Another example of this would be the city of Philadelphia. In the past 30 years, migration patterns show that the city’s white population has decreased 31.9% with black and Asian populations relocating to former white neighborhoods. The predominant black zip codes today were previously predominantly white zip codes. Pollution did not magically appear in these areas with the emergence of black and Asian residents. This is especially true given the environmental initiatives to be cleaner that have been implemented over the same time period.
Meanwhile, there are still more whites in poverty in this country than there are people of any other race — has anyone checked to see if they are also affected?
Today, with everyone much more sensitive to the problems pollution creates, perhaps we can finally clean up such areas and improve the lives of people of all races. But let’s not embrace the logical fallacy that race or racism caused the pollution or that “systemic racism” brought about something that had many complex economic causes.
“Energy justice,” as an attempt to racialize the environment, is just the latest toxic and divisive propaganda deployed by the Biden administration and spread by numerous publications, politicians, former vice presidents, and other activists. The goal is to convince marginalized groups that they can never succeed in this country because all of its institutions are racist and must therefore be overthrown.
Not only does this concept serve the Democrats’ intention of stoking racial division, but it also attempts to make these voting groups care about the environment as an election issue. Climate change is more exciting if it’s racist, too. Not only can the Left racialize just about any issue, but it is already out there doing so if you know where to look.
