OPINION: Representative Bobby Rush calls out the administration for not enforcing pollution and clean air regulations that disproportionately harm African Americans
In 2017, Eric Garner cried three words 11 times before being choked to death by a New York City police officer: “I can’t breathe.”
Slow and seemingly invisible, toxic air pollution is wreaking havoc on communities of color at an alarming rate relative to white communities.
A quick visit to the EPA’s own website outlines the poisonous penalties:
Despite the EPA’s own findings on air pollution’s disproportionate health effect on communities of color, the Trump-led agency charged with protecting human and environmental health has recently used the excuse of the COVID-19 pandemic to impose a freeze on enforcing pollution and clean air regulations.
This apparent indifference to the health of Black Americans becomes even more alarming considering the recent correlation discovered between air pollution and COVID-19 mortality rates.
However, when faced with the slow suffocation of the Black community at large, brought on by disproportionate air quality standards and worsened by an administration that isn’t doing anything about it, we are largely silent.
