Environmental Racism - A Wake-up Call - A take on Last Week Tonight with john Oliver

The latest Last Week Tonight episode began with John Oliver; after this initial segment, the episode moved on to its main topic: Environmental Racism.

It's a well-known fact that everyone suffers from pollution, there’s no avoiding it. However, Oliver is raising awareness of the fact that some people are more affected than others. Enter Environmental Racism, a kind of racism that we don’t often think about, but it is very much a reality that plagues countries like the US. As the British-American comedian explains, this systemic racism issue is pretty overt. In one example, 4 million tons of toxic waste were removed from a white residential area and dumped in a largely black residential area. However, these injustices are not always visible: sometimes the pollution provoked is undetectable to the naked eye, thus making it even more difficult to be fought against.

As this episode makes crystal clear, neighborhoods where minorities live are targeted over white neighborhoods. This environmental issue is far from a mere annoyance, it is actively harming people’s health, being a driving factor for diseases like asthma, heart conditions, and other ailments that can lead to death. Even within the same city, there can be startling disparities in the living conditions of different ethnic groups.

Racist zoning policies are motivated by the twisted belief that black and minority neighborhoods offer the “least resistance” to these abuses of power. This is a problem that has existed for decades, and even now there are few policies to protect people affected by these environmental hazards. Even environmental movements have left certain communities out of consideration, failing to provide the necessary support.