Post 5: Power with the People-Reflecting on the BLM Movement
This series isn't just acknowledgement, it's commitment: to recognition of our privilege, and to questioning the very institutions we are a part of when our core values are at stake. As public servants, our focus on ethics, equity, and empathy must continue until the fight for racial justice finally concludes.
Originating in the 1930’s, Redlining refers to the prohibition of the desegregation of American neighborhoods using federal government policy, extending the systemic disenfranchisement of Black Americans. Various policies enabled banks to deny or provide loans of lower quality to prospective Black homeowners. Crippling the right to home ownership, America’s metropolitan areas became segregated between lines of race, culture, and class.
Inequity in Urban Planning is rooted in eminent domain and condemnation laws that displaced POC/low-income communities beginning in the 1940s and 50s. Today, a lack of adequate investment in these neighborhoods inhibits economic mobility and quality of life.
Environmental racism describes the way in which minority populated neighborhoods (often populated by POC and members of low socioeconomic groups) are burdened with a disproportionate number of hazards, including exposure to sources of pollution and increased barriers to essential resources. An EPA study has confirmed the systemic and endemic existence of environmental racism.