A Situation Analogous with Environmental Racism - by Beth Blair

In her article “Bioethics: The Need for a Dialogue with African Americans,” Annette Dula looks at the need to incorporate the perspectives of every sector of society into the field of bioethics and healthcare. She focuses primarily on the historical experiences of African Americans, but acknowledges the fact that the resulting institutional racism can be extended to other racial and ethnic groups. I found her discussion concerning institutional racism to be very interesting, particularly in light of my knowledge about environmental racism. Institutional racism is apparent in the disparities between the healthcare experiences of most blacks as compared to the white population, as well as the differences in the prevalence of diseases. What I liked about Dula’s argument was that she acknowledged that this problem has less to do with race, per se, than it does with poverty. A disproportionate number of poor people are black, which results in lower-paying jobs with fewer benefits, often substandard housing, and limited access to healthcare as a result of issues with things like childcare or transportation. These problems are problems of poverty, not of race. Like institutional racism, environmental racism is less about race than it is about poverty. Because property values decrease dramatically when a potentially hazardous industrial plant is opened in the vicinity, it is logical that those who can afford to will move away, while those with a lower income will move in. Racism results because those in poverty disproportionately belong to minority groups. It seems that, in both environmental racism and the institutional racism in the healthcare system, the real problem is not race discrimination; rather it is the disparity between rich and poor. Perhaps the only real way to effectively tackle racism in society is to find an economic system that more equally distributes wealth among the members of society.