Blog 3

In both articles, “Racial Capitalocene” by Francoise Verges and “New York’s Invisible Climate Migrants” by Sophie Kasakove share a common theme, in which race plays a huge role on environmental racism and it is mainly targeted on communities of color. As mentioned by the author in “Racial Capitolocene”, “A report was made in which showed that race was the single most important factor in determining where toxic waste facilities were sited in the United States and that the siting of these facilities in communities of color was the intentional result of local, state, and federal land-use policies.” Here this illustrates how unethical these facilities are placed across the U.S and most of these facilities primarily located near communities with more people of color. Another example would be a quote from the “New York’s Invisible Climate Migrants” article, which discusses about the effects of natural disasters, like hurricane Sandy, on middle-class families and specifically black families. These families weren’t able to afford to stay in their homes and with the lack of support from the government they were forced to leave their homes. In the text it says, “After Sandy, it became even harder; the government programs designed to help people with recovery costs have been notoriously inadequate. Many people dropped out of Build It Back, New York City’s largest post-Sandy assistance program, because of delays, paperwork issues, and shoddy construction work.” During this time the assistance program backfired on aiding the community in such a effective and efficient way. A lot of communities were affected by the results of Hurricane Sandy however the communities that were filled with people of color were being effected because they were not able to resolve their problems quicker.