Survey finds that most people think poverty is why pollution disproportionately affects Black people, despite evidence that racism is the major cause.
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But Bugden found that respondents to the survey were more than twice as likely to identify poverty as the main cause of environmental inequalities, instead of blaming structural racism. This is despite scientific evidence clearly demonstrating that “race, rather than poverty, is the primary factor behind environmental inequality,” notes Bugden in his study published in the journal.
The first set of questions explored whether Americans understand the causes of environmental inequality, whether they think it is fair and whether they support policies that address it. The results showed that only one-third of people felt that Black people are more likely to experience pollution and that this inequality is unfair. By contrast, another third of the respondents acknowledged that Black and Hispanic people and the poor experience environmental inequalities but felt that it is fair.
The lack of understanding that racism is causing environmental inequality undermines efforts to fix those disparities, even when the data show that race is theof exposure to environmental hazards, says Sacoby Wilson, an environmental health scientist at the University of Maryland in College Park.