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Environmental Inequality and Racism are heavily intertwined with Race, Class, and Gender. BIPOC and Latinx people are systemically pushed to move into low-income neighborhoods with terrible environmental conditions.

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One evening more than a decade ago, I was 7 years old, lying on the floor, tossing my Nerf football up in the air, when I saw bright flames through our apartment window. The light came from a fiery plume, expanding from about a mile away from our home in Wilmington, California, painting the sky a burnt orange.

My mom bolted through our home, on edge and frightened. She thought the community college, where my older brother was sitting in an evening class, was on fire. We turned on the local news, finding nothing. In a panic, we left for his school. As my mom drove, I tried to calm myself down by rubbing at the stain of a melted crayon in the backseat of her old Honda.

As we got closer, we were relieved to see the flames weren't coming from his school's makeshift campus - modular trailers set up on old tennis courts. Days later, we learned that the local ConocoPhillips refinery had undertaken a major flaring event to dispose of excess gas. Though we lived less than a mile from the refinery, we were never warned about the flaring. Only later did we learn that dangerous amounts of dozens of chemicals were being released into our air.

I grew up in a community defined by bright neon signs and strings of palm trees stretching out toward smokestacks. Fifteen minutes south of my family home, multi-million dollar homes sprawled along the Pacific Ocean. My rich neighbors got private beaches; I got the toxic Port of Los Angeles, which has continuously failed to meet water-quality standards.

Young children and adults here die of lung and throat cancer at a rate up to three times higher than the surrounding areas.

Wilmington doesn't have a single five-star resort, but my city, with a population that is 97% people of color, has five local refineries, the largest concentration in all of California. These refineries - owned by BP, ConocoPhillips, Tesoro and Valero - have helped turn my home into " Cancer Alley." Young children and adults here die of lung and throat cancer at a rate up to three times higher than the surrounding areas, according to a report by Communities for a Better Environment. Wilmington is also home to the nation's third-largest oil field and hundreds of active oil wells - all wedged in by three freeways and the nation's largest trading hub.

For most of my life, I was embarrassed to say I lived here. All I knew about my home was poverty, so I concealed my connection to it. My mother enrolled me in school in Carson, about 5 miles from Wilmington, because she felt more comfortable with me there. In my sixth grade gym class, I remember hiding my paper as I filled in my address on a contact form. Throughout high school, I was reluctant to claim my home, because of the reaction I received. During October of my senior year, Amherst College in Massachusetts flew me out to entice me to attend, and only then was I finally able to understand the slow, often invisible, violence committed against my community - to see that it was more than just embarrassing; it was physically and intellectually damaging. During the four-day trip, some of my peers from across the country said they thought I was lying to fit the stereotypical traumatic narrative for people of color when I described my experiences: the mice crawling into teachers' bags during class, having a nurse on campus only once a week - how, one Halloween, the refinery above our campus painted its 3.3 million-gallon oil tank to resemble a jack-o'-lantern. By the time I left, I understood myself as a young adult navigating an academic world defined by wealth and privilege.

My hometown has helped me understand the state-sanctioned environmental racism directed at folks who look like me. And, in turn, its problems alienated me from my home, pushing me to hide my connection to it and eventually leave. I can't help but think that this was deliberate - that my community was chosen to be a chemical waste ground, partly so I'd feel ashamed to stay there. Wilmington, by design, expels opportunities. I was always encouraged to leave, because escape signified success.

Now, however, I wonder exactly who was defining these markers. Now that I have begun my career in Chicago, I feel guilty not being in Wilmington. My home still lacks the resources people need in order to live without the constant threat of a slow, painful death - where children can breathe easily and play sports without developing asthma, bronchitis, respiratory infections or lung damage - where people can live free of suffocating violence without healing.

I don't know when - or if - I'll go back to Wilmington. But I know that in my hometown, and too many places like it, environmental racism is never a thing of the past: It's happening now, every day, as I live and breathe.

Adam Mahoney is a journalist from Wilmington, California. He is currently based in Chicago, where he reports on prisons and policing for the Chicago Reporter and the Chicago Sun-Times. He tweets @AdamLMahoney. Email High Country News at [email protected] or submit a letter to the editor.

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One evening more than a decade ago, I was 7 years old, lying on the floor, tossing my Nerf football up in the air, when I saw bright flames through our apartment window. The light came from a fiery plume, expanding from about a mile away from our home in Wilmington, California, painting the sky a burnt orange.

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White Males have been the face of Conservation Movements 

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White Males have been the face of Conservation Movements 

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Typically BIPOC women have been the forefront of Environmental Justice Movements

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Typically BIPOC women have been the forefront of Environmental Justice Movements

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Welcome back to Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment. I'm Sammy Roth.

There were several topics I considered writing about this week, including the results of California's latest cap-and-trade auction and a bill in Sacramento dealing with the proposed Eagle Mountain hydropower project.

But after a week of protests following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police, I realized there was only one topic I could focus on in this newsletter: environmental injustice. It's a term that describes how people of color and poor communities have borne disproportionate harm from pollution, and the discriminatory systems that have perpetuated those inequities.

Toward a more sustainable California

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There are countless links between environmental degradation and inequality. Consider water contamination in predominantly black and brown communities, such as Flint, Mich., where experts say the drinking water crisis was rooted in systemic racism. Or research finding that, in the U.S., the best predictor of whether you live near a hazardous waste site is the color of your skin.

In Los Angeles, poisonous lead contamination at homes near the closed Exide battery recycling plant has yet to be fully cleaned up, hurting working-class Latino families, as my colleague Tony Barboza has reported. Black, Latino and low-income California residents are especially likely to live near unplugged oil and gas wells that can spew pollution, a Los Angeles Times investigation found. People of color are more likely than white people to live alongside power plants, oil refineries and landfills.

Rachel Ramirez discussed the roots of environmental injustice in a piece for Grist this week, noting that "some legacies of redlining - the government-sanctioned denial of home loans and insurance to communities of color - include housing stock that is disproportionately located near polluting industrial infrastructure."
The COVID-19 pandemic has only worsened existing inequities.
In a story for Outside magazine, Heather Hansman explains how a lack of access to clean drinking water in the Navajo Nation has helped fuel the country's worst known COVID-19 outbreak by infection rate. My colleague Kurtis Lee has also written several pieces about the Navajo Nation's unique vulnerability to the coronavirus, as well as its lack of running water and electricity.

There's already research linking polluted air - which, in America, blacks and Latinos are more likely to breathe - with a higher likelihood of dying from COVID-19.

Marshall Shepherd, a climate scientist and former president of the American Meteorological Society, wrote that "I can't breathe" - some of the last words spoken by George Floyd as a police officer pressed a knee into his neck - seems like a theme for 2020.
"The historic coronavirus pandemic has literally taken the breath of many people," Shepherd wrote in a piece for Forbes.
Then there's global warming.

The climate crisis often hits people of color hardest, in the U.S. and around the world. It's true in cities, where black, brown and low-income people experience hotter temperatures during deadly heat waves because their neighborhoods lack tree cover and parks, or because they're near freeways or industrial facilities. It's true in Puerto Rico, where Hurricane Maria caused thousands of deaths and gave birth to a climate movement. It's true in Central America, where climate-fueled drought is driving migration.

Writing for the Guardian a few years ago, Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors and fellow activist Nyeusi Nguvu argued that "the inequalities that turn an extreme weather event into a disaster or human catastrophe mirror the inequalities that cause the disproportionate loss of black and poor life globally - and the exact systems that Black Lives Matter fights against."
"Environmental injustice has always been an issue and a fight taken on by black and poor communities," they wrote. "We are the first to die, but we are also the first to fight on the frontlines."
Those ideas help explain why a growing number of activists support policy proposals, such as the Green New Deal, that tie climate change action to significant economic reforms meant to tackle inequality and racism.
Or as many folks have put it on Twitter: "Climate justice is racial justice."

A reminder that climate justice IS racial justice.

You cannot say you fight for climate justice without also fighting for racial justice. You cannot say you're a climate activist without understanding that the two struggles are inseparable.#BlackLivesMatter
- Jamie Margolin (@Jamie_Margolin) June 1, 2020

At the same time, racism can derail efforts to fight climate change, according to the marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson.
"How can we expect black Americans to focus on climate when we are so at risk on our streets, in our communities, and even within our own homes?" Johnson asks in an op-ed for the Washington Post."How can people of color effectively lead their communities on climate solutions when faced with pervasive and life-shortening racism?"
As a journalist, I don't pretend to have the answers. But I know it's incumbent on me to be part of the conversation, and to shine a light on environmental injustice. So consider this week's newsletter my commitment to doing more. Hold me accountable, please.

Here's what else is happening around California and the American West:

TOP STORIES

For the first time since 1885, the U.S. got more energy from renewables than from coal in 2019. This was going to happen sooner or later, as solar and wind power are increasingly beating coal on cost. But it's still a huge milestone; here's the story from Katherine Blunt at the Wall Street Journal. Coal's decline has continued in 2020, with 13 plant closures announced this year, per Benjamin Storrow at E&E News. (For a slightly out-of-date look at coal closures in the West, here's a story I wrote in February.)

In a landmark vote, a majority of Chevron shareholders demanded that the oil giant issue a report on its climate change lobbying. The shareholder resolution is nonbinding, as Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik explains in his piece. But it's the latest sign that investors want to know how oil and gas companies plan to keep making money in a climate-constrained world.

Probably my favorite read this week was "Cash Flows: How Investors Are Banking On the West's Water Scarcity." It's a collaboration between public radio stations and other nonprofit news outlets in Arizona, Colorado and Nevada, tracking how out-of-town private investors are buying up farmland in hopes of selling rural water supplies to cities, or otherwise transferring water from agriculture to other uses. The fear of water transfers is also pervasive in California's Imperial County, as I wrote in April.

POLITICAL CLIMATE

Can a new climate consensus unite the left and boost Joe Biden? In two pieces for Vox, David Roberts makes the case that after years of disagreement between various left-of-center factions on climate change, there's an emerging policy consensus focused on sector-specific standards, public investments and a commitment to justice. Roberts also argues that embracing this consensus would help Joe Biden build support among climate activists, environmental justice advocates, unions and other key groups.

The tracks do not appear to be greased for quick construction of high-speed rail in California. Twelve years after voters approved bonds to build a bullet train from Los Angeles to San Francisco, environmental impact statements are still trickling in. The latest one focuses on a 14-mile segment from downtown L.A. to Burbank, as Ralph Vartabedian writes for The Times. Ralph also reports that the bullet train may need operating subsidies, contrary to what voters were once promised.

Environmental activists are pushing back against Gavin Newsom's budget proposal. With California facing a projected $54-billion budget shortfall amid the coronavirus crisis (remember the coronavirus?), Gov. Newsom has taken a sledgehammer to all sorts of climate and environmental priorities, proposing less spending - relative to his earlier budget plan - on electric vehicle rebates, oil and gas regulation and preserving wildlife habitats, as Dustin Gardiner reports for the San Francisco Chronicle.

POWER STRUGGLES

The electric truck start-up Nikola is about to go public. Here's the story by Russ Mitchell for The Times. If you've never heard of Nikola, there are a few things to know: Like Tesla, the company is named for electric grid pioneer Nikola Tesla; and unlike Tesla, the company's founder has only nice things to say about his competitor, Elon Musk. (Also unlike Tesla, Nikola plans to use hydrogen fuel cell technology rather than lithium-ion batteries. I've written about hydrogen a few times recently; see here and here.)

Let's call it a tale of two San Diegos. A new report finds that L.A.'s neighbor to the south has the second-most solar power of any U.S. city, as the San Diego Union-Tribune's Rob Nikolewski reports. (Los Angeles came in first, although San Diego has more solar per capita.) But what about transportation, the largest source of climate pollution? David Garrick reports that some San Diegans are unhappy about a plan to spend suburban development fees building bike lines and bus routes in denser neighborhoods.

AROUND THE WEST

Federal judges are pushing back against President Trump's fossil fuel agenda. It's been a rough few months for the Trump administration's efforts to open up more of the West's public lands to oil and gas drilling: Federal judges have canceled fossil fuel leases across more than 300,000 acres in Montana and Wyoming, rejected plans for new natural gas wells in Colorado, and once again blocked construction of the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline, as Matthew Brown reports in an Associated Press roundup.

The Klamath Basin is facing a severe water shortage. It's worth remembering that in a state as big as California, drought can be a regional phenomenon. So even though Southern California has gotten a good amount of rain the last few months, the state's far northern region is still quite dry - which is why the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation told farmers along the Oregon border to plan for a lot less water than normal, then cut their estimates even further, as the San Francisco Chronicle's Kurtis Alexander reports.

Here's an absolutely wild story. As oil and gas drillers fight Colorado's growing push to regulate them, a University of Colorado scientist who has been monitoring emissions from fracking operations was abruptly fired by the university, as Daniel Glick reports for InsideClimate News. The school claimed he misused public funds, but Glick uncovered several holes in that explanation.

ONE MORE THING

It's been a heavy week, to say the least, so I'll end with something light and fun.

People have been telling me for years to watch "California's Gold," a public television program hosted by the late Huell Howser that explored "the state's rich history, cultural diversity, landmarks, natural wonders, amazing people and points of interest, especially lesser known and out-of-the-way places," per IMDb. I'd never seen an episode until this weekend, when I watched Huell's visit to one of my favorite places in the world, Mt. San Jacinto outside Palm Springs.

The episode focuses on two things: the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, an amazing contraption that carries visitors nearly 6,000 feet up the mountain in little more than 10 minutes; and the Colorado River Aqueduct, which bores a tunnel through the mountain on its path to deliver water from the California-Arizona border to the Los Angeles area. Huell actually gets a look inside the tunnel!

Anyway, the episode is an absolute treat. I'm looking forward to watching more "California's Gold" at the show's archives.
I'll be back in your inbox next week. If you enjoyed this newsletter, please consider forwarding it to your friends and colleagues.

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Why communities fighting for fair policing also demand environmental justice

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Welcome back to Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment. I'm Sammy Roth. There were several topics I considered writing about this week, including the results of California's latest cap-and-trade auction and a bill in Sacramento dealing with the proposed Eagle Mountain hydropower project.

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Ask any guide, teacher or life coach, and they'll tell you that the first step to breaking a pattern is identifying and recognizing exactly what it is.

When it comes to patterns of injustice, it appears COVID-19 and climate change are taking care of this first step for us.

The pandemic is exposing the vast inequalities in health and income across the globe. Racial and ethnic minorities are far more likely to die or be hospitalized after contracting the coronavirus. And in much of the Global South, lockdown measures have left children facing malnutrition and migrant workers stranded and out of work.

Similarly, 80 years from now, climate change could kill as many people as all infectious diseases, and these deaths will be concentrated in the world's poorest countries.

What matters more is realizing that these are not different patterns of injustice that resemble one another. Rather, climate justice, social justice and racial justice are all one and the same.

So too, then, is the fight against them.

"We have to tackle these crises collectively, or we cannot tackle them at all," says Varshini Prakash, co-founder of the Sunrise Movement in the U.S., who featured in a recent GLF Live.

"We need to address the inherent inequalities in our system that lead to some people breathing worse-quality air, experiencing the brunt of storms and being able to recover far slower than other people," Prakash says. "Those inequalities almost always fall along lines of race, class and gender."

The trails of legacies

In Jamaica, for example, the colonial plantation economy has left a legacy of dependence on intensive agriculture, with sugar, bananas, cocoa and coffee still among the country's major commodity exports. Slash-and-burn practices are widespread and, with their dangers amplified by climate change and global warming, are contributing to bushfires and deforestation. "A lot of these practices were inherited from colonialism - the idea of having to burn away vegetation to create space for added agricultural production," says Jhannel Tomlinson, a Jamaican climate adaptation researcher and activist.

"Habits are hard to break," Tomlinson adds, "and because these practices have been passed down through generations, it's very difficult to tell farmers that they're harming the environment, because this is all they know, and it's hard for them to transition to a more sustainable way of farming."

Intersectionality in environmentalism

Jumping back to the present, and into the climate space specifically, many activists are now calling for an intersectional approach to tackling injustices. The term 'intersectionality' refers to how different forms of social identity such as race, ethnicity, gender, class and sexuality overlap, particularly in the experiences of marginalized groups that often face multiple layers of oppression.

"It doesn't make sense to just focus on a binary view, [such as] that all women are vulnerable and all men are privileged," says Bimbika Sijapati Basnett, a researcher on gender and co-author of a CIFOR manual on intersectionality in forestry. "Issues of vulnerability that are faced by urban women, for instance, are much more linked to issues around pollution, waste and water management, whereas in rural areas, it's more about agriculture."

Rather than neatly dividing people into distinct categories, Sijapati Basnett believes it is important to recognize how overlapping identities can affect how they experience oppression. Much of her work focuses on Nepal, where caste, social class, gender and ethnicity all intersect to form complex identities that evolve over time.

"Sometimes development programs set quotas for low-caste women or ethnic-minority women without understanding that there are hierarchies within those groups," she says, noting that some ethnic minority groups are in fact quite affluent. "We need to understand broad parameters of social difference but also have the flexibility to adapt and change."

Diversifying the climate movement

Many climate activists of color have spoken out about the challenges of participating in a movement that, across much of the Global North, remains predominantly white and middle-class. "In a lot of places, I am usually the only person of color, which is a huge responsibility," said Danick Trouwloon, a Netherlands-based activist originally from the Caribbean island of Curaçao. "All the faces are on you, and you become like an ambassador for any experiences with color. I struggled a lot with that."

Yet communities on the frontline of the climate crisis have much to offer the climate movement, and Prakash believes it is crucial to ensure that they take an active role. "Many of the things that Greta Thunberg has been saying have been said by lots of Indigenous, black and brown leaders, particularly from island nations, for so long," she points out. "And yet they have not been uplifted in nearly the same way."

"Those closest to the pain can speak toward the solutions that we need with the greatest clarity," adds Prakash. "It is absolutely essential that those folks have a place in our movements, otherwise we're going to have major blind spots."

This year's mass demonstrations for racial justice are prompting many in the climate movement to engage more deeply with issues of race and ethnicity. "Something that I find really positive over the past month is how easy these discussions are to have now," says Trouwloon. "In the past, you could often feel the tension in the room when racism was mentioned, but I think now people are really listening to each other."

"That conversation is being had much more often now, and there's a lot more space for me to say things that may be uncomfortable - but I speak to my experience."

Building climate solidarity

One of the more uncomfortable realities of the climate crisis is the need for the world's affluent citizens to cut their excess consumption and carbon footprints.

Tomlinson believes the first step toward reducing consumption is at the individual level. "As individuals in the Global North, you need to recognize how you are contributing to these challenges and to see how you can live greener and cleaner," she says.

And with funding at a premium for many grassroots climate-change projects, Tomlinson believes donations and volunteering can also make a crucial difference. "Where possible, individuals can contribute in cash, or in expertise to assist local communities in implementing these projects," she suggests.

Equally important is the need to build solidarity across racial, ethnic, socioeconomic and intergenerational lines. "Our allies in the Global North increasingly have a role to play in amplifying our voices," Tomlinson continues. "They can utilize these platforms to highlight our plight in the Global South and to share some of the challenges we face."

"It is an all-hands-on-deck moment to stop the climate crisis," Prakash agrees. "Let's be clear about that: young people cannot do it by ourselves - we definitely need other generations to team up with."

Strengthening ties with the Global South could also bring valuable lessons for the climate movement in the Global North - such as learning from island communities on how to deal with scarce resources. "You have to make do with what you have," Trouwloon says. "If you lose a fishery, you've lost that fishery. You can't move up along the coast and find another area to exploit.

"That could be a metaphor for the entire planet - how we're also an island in the universe. If we make a mess out of it, we don't really have a Planet B."

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How intersectionality is forming the climate movement

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Overlaps between environmental, racial and social justice movements are seeing intersectionality get etched into their missions.

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"Missing White Woman Syndrome" & Gabby Petito

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"Missing White Woman Syndrome" & Gabby Petito

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Our society clearly values white individuals over BIPOC. In the case of Gabby Petito, a blooming vlogger, her disappearance was also followed by the disappearance of Sterling Prinze Redstar, Markie Shea Williams, and Cloelle Buck Elk all indigenous peoples who were neglected.

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Sonoma State Star - The university's student-run newspaper

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As the search for Gabby Petito's boyfriend continues, one thing that this case starkly illustrates is the difference between people of color who disappear and white people who disappear.

The search for Petito blew up in the media. Within two weeks of her story going viral, her remains were found. In contrast, people of color who go missing rarely get the amount of media coverage a white person does.

Gabrielle Venora Petito was a 22 year old Florida resident who was reported missing after her fiance, Brian Laundry, returned by himself from their cross country trip in their van. The search for the missing woman took off immediately. Soon after, her remains were found in Wyoming. Now, Laundrie is considered a suspect in her homicide and is currently missing.

According to an article from the Great Falls Tribune, in the eight days that Petito was missing, "Three Indigenous people - Sterling Prinze Redstar, Markie Shea Williams and Cloelle Buck Elk - were reported missing in Montana. But most people don't know their names." In Wyoming, "710 Indigenous people were reported missing between 2011 and 2020."

On Instagram, there's even a page dedicated to missing and murdered indigenous people.

This is not to say Petito's case isn't important. Any missing person's case is important to somebody; whether it's the family, friends, or law enforcement. It shouldn't mean that one case is more important than the other because of who they are, what they look like, or where they come from.

Natalie Wilson, co-founder of Black and Missing Inc, told ABC News, "Minority adults who go missing are often stereotyped as being involved in crime or violence, poverty and addiction, which takes attention away from their cases too."

A big reason why the Petito case is so captivating is the role social media played in the investigation. In an article for the New York Times, Kyle and Jen Bethune, who had been traveling at the same time as Petito in the Bridger-Teton National Forest, reviewed the footage they had recorded. They found that they indeed had captured the van that Petito and Laundrie had been traveling in. The surrounding area where the van had been filmed was where Petito was found.

Social media helped capture the public's interest for a number of reasons, one of which being that Gabby Petito herself was a vlogger. Anyone could watch her most recent video to see where they were in almost real time. The host of the Affirmative Murder podcast, Alvin Williams said "We can play the game of, 'Oh it's because she was a vlogger' and all those things, but we can also see that she is a Gen Z, blonde, petite girl, and that is what gets the clicks."

Social media helped find a white woman's remains, yet it hardly helps to find a missing person of color. If people want to use social media to help find a missing person, that should include spreading awareness of people regardless of their backgrounds.

Podcasts like "Up and Vanished" that investigates missing person cases' most recent season is focusing on that of Ashley Loring Heavyrunner, an indigenous woman who disappeared in 2017. Another podcast, "Affirmative Murder," "Focuses on true crimes with Black and brown victims."

This case has helped missing people of color get some of the media attention they deserve, but there's still a long way to go. Focusing on missing and murdered indigenous people's story is a step in the right direction to ensure that the cases surrounding people of color are taken just as seriously as any white persons.

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Gabby Petito case sparks conversation about missing POC - Sonoma State Star - The university's student-run newspaper

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As the search for Gabby Petito's boyfriend continues, one thing that this case starkly illustrates is the difference between people of color who disappear and white people who disappear. The search for Petito blew up in the media. Within two weeks of her story going viral, her remains were found.

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Despite the "accommodations" the Federal Government have made for Indigenous people, they face an immense amount of violence in their communities. Each of the women shown in the video have personally been affected by the violence in their communities.

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Women have always faced differing levels of violence in society. When considering the intersections of race and class it's clear that BIPOC and lower income individuals face higher rates of injustice than their white and upper class counterparts.

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it's estimated that 1 in 3 sexual assault victims go to the police. In contrast, 1 in 15 African-American sexual assault victims go to the police. This ties in heavily with the troubled relationship the BIPOC & Latinx community has with the Police. The Law AT BEST has been utterly incompetent with sexual assault cases, why would the communities harassed by law enforcement do better.

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Disparity in Epidural Use between BIPOC and Whites

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Disparity in Epidural Use between BIPOC and Whites

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This society values the emotions and feelings of those who are white rather than POCs. Even in the immense pain of Childbirth, there is a hesitancy from the Medical Community to ease the suffering of POCs.

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Though most individuals in medical circles have their best intentions. There are many times where racist systems have permeated into the medical system and cause BIPOC great harm. These systems also intersect with class and the effects of medical bias are magnified.

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The medical community has had a troubled past with BIPOC. There are many instances in which the Medical community had unethically tested medical findings on BIPOC and exploited the financial hardships these people faced in a predatory manner. The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments, the Eugenics Movement, and so many other prominent medical studies deliberately harmed POC. As COVID-19 grew rampant in the United States, many POC were rightfully distrustful of the US medical community and refused the vaccine only to be hurt even more.

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America has a history of medically abusing Black people. No wonder many are wary of COVID-19 vaccines

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It’s not just the Tuskegee syphilis study. Since slavery, America has had a troubling pattern of using Black bodies for medical experimentation.

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Through Medical Bias, the Opioid Epidemic affected white communities at a higher rate than POC communities.  The medical system inherently valued the pain of white patients more than the pain of POC patients. While this problem predominantly hurt white communities, it distinguished that drug addiction for whites was different for POC's. Drug addiction is a disease for whites, and Drug addiction is a crime for BIPOC.

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More opioid prescriptions, overdoses among whites than other ethnicities

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Whites were more likely to receive prescriptions for opioids and were more likely to die of an overdose, according to two new studies published in JAMA Internal Medicine. A third study indicated that overall opioid prescribing was decreasing in the majority of counties in the United States.
These fi…

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A lingering mistrust of the medical system makes some Black Americans more hesitant to sign up for COVID-19 vaccines. It has played out in early data that show a stark disparity in whom is getting shots in this country - more than 60% going to white people, and less than 6% to African Americans. The mistrust is rooted in history, including the infamous U.S. study of syphilis that left Black men in Tuskegee, Ala., to suffer from the disease.

In Tuskegee today, that 20 th century tragedy is still very relevant, according to nurse Cheryl Owens, who grew up in the town. She's been talking with friends and elderly relatives who say they're afraid to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

"So, I asked why?" she says. "And it was like, 'Well, you remember that Tuskegee syphilis study. That's why.' "

Officially named the Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male, the U.S. Public Health Service, working with the Tuskegee Institute, recruited hundreds of rural Black men in 1932. The study offered free meals and checkups, but never explained that participants would be human subjects in a study designed to withhold medical treatment.

"They had local leaders, church leaders, medical people to convince them to become involved with the study," says Owens, a nurse at the Central Alabama Veterans Health Care System.

Tuskegee, now a city of about 8,000 people, has a storied African American history as home to the Tuskegee Airmen. Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver were educators here.

But the syphilis study also looms large in Tuskegee's collective memory. Owens, who is 59, says she remembers hearing about it in elementary school, so she understands why people in this nearly all-Black community are skeptical when the government says to take a shot.

"They felt that the government really wanted to inject something in their bodies and they were going to eventually die from that," Owens explains.

To help dispel that notion, Owens penned an op-ed, published in the local newspaper The Tuskegee News, including a photo of her getting a shot of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Ramping up vaccine rollout
Heath officials are up against a powerful sentiment as they try to ramp up vaccinations.

"I think a part of the challenge is that there's still a lot of anxiety about the vaccine," says Amir Farooqi, director of the Central Alabama VA. "It's unfortunate because it's a really great tool to help people protect their personal health as well as the public health."

The VA's Tuskegee campus has repurposed a large auditorium into a vaccine clinic, to allow for social distancing. Shots are given at one of four stations, partitioned off with privacy curtains.

Vietnam veteran Douglas Terry, 78, is relieved to be in the queue.

"With this there is hope," he says.

Terry doesn't even feel the stick when nurse Pamela Bell gives him his first jab.

"That's what we want to hear," she says, warning him that his arm might be a little sore for a while.

Terry says he intends to spread the word that he and his wife got the shot.

"To give them courage to do it also," he says.

That's what VA officials want to hear. They've set up a selfie station at the clinic and hand out stickers that proclaim, "I got vaccinated at the Central Alabama Veterans HCS to protect our Veterans and Community."
'Word of mouth will be key'
The VA's infectious disease physician, Dr. April Truett, says that kind of word of mouth will be key to overcoming reservations about the shot.

"The more people hear about the vaccine, the more they know someone else who's received the vaccine, the more they see how well they did, the more comfortable they become with the vaccine," she says.

In the broader community, elected officials in Tuskegee have also posted videos getting shots, and some residents say they've gotten letters from the presidents of historically Black universities encouraging inoculation.

"It's the biggest PR project to get Black people to take that vaccine," says Lucenia Williams Dunn, a former mayor of Tuskegee who now runs a local community development organization. She's 77 years old and has high blood pressure, but she's not convinced to get the vaccine.

Even though she's been watching the pandemic's devastating and disproportionate impact on African Americans, she still questions the rapid development of the vaccine. And then, there's the history.

"You cannot separate the experience of the past with what we believe in the present," Dunn says. "People say, 'well, you know, y'all ought not be worried about that syphilis study.' Yeah, we do, because it's part of our experience."
Descendants of men involved in Tuskegee study react
The vaccine rollout has sparked a conversation among descendants of the men involved in the syphilis study. Among them is Theilene Williams of Tuskegee. Her grandfather, Willie Fitzpatrick, died before knowing the truth about the study.

"We called him Papa," Williams says. "He was he was a good man, family man, a farmer."

Williams says there's a difference between what's happening now and what the government did to her grandfather and the other men.

"They didn't know what they were getting into," she says.

Williams, who is 72, says she was able to talk with her doctor about the vaccine.

"I went on and got it - the first shot," Williams says. "We know about it. We've been hearing, talking about it. It's not like 'come on, we're going to do this' without knowing anything about it like they did."

Her grandfather is among those now memorialized at the Tuskegee History Center on a large tile circle in the middle of the museum.

"Around here in alphabetical order, you have the names of all 623 men," says Tuskegee civil rights attorney Fred Gray, on a tour of an exhibit on the syphilis study.

Gray represented the men when the truth about the study came out in 1972. The men were not injected with syphilis, but those who already had it were left untreated, even once penicillin was available.

"Not only did they withhold treatment," Gray says. "But they sent these men's names to the various doctors in the area and told them if they came to their office, not to treat them for syphilis."

Gray won a $10 million settlement for the men and their families, and pressured Congress to prevent such unethical science.

"And the federal government passed laws which would prohibit now anyone, the government or anyone else from having a study like they did," he says.
Issue with people using syphilis study to refuse vaccine
Later, he got then-President Bill Clinton to apologize to the men and their descendants.

"What the United States government did was shameful," Clinton said in 1997. "And I am sorry."

Gray, now 90 years old, has had his first dose of COVID-19 vaccine. He takes issue with people citing the syphilis study as a reason not to get vaccinated. He says individuals must make their own decisions whether or not take the vaccine.

"But they shouldn't put it is because of what the government did to the men in the Tuskegee syphilis study, because they are altogether different situations," Gray says.

A January poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that more than half of Black adults surveyed said they did not have immediate plans to get vaccinated. Forty-three percent said they were going to wait and see how it's working.

The mistrust of the health care system among African Americans is two-fold, says Rueben Warren, director of the National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care at Tuskegee University - established and funded by the federal government as a result of the syphilis study.

"It's both historical and current," he says. "And not either/or but both/and."

Warren says the "use and abuse of Black bodies" dates to slavery, and continued for hundreds of years. He cites the eugenics movement, for example.

Now, he says, the coronavirus pandemic and its disparate impact on people of color have exposed the shortcomings of the U.S. health care delivery system. For instance, there's no hospital serving the general public in Tuskegee, and coronavirus testing was hard to come by early on.

So it's not just historical but it's current," he says. "The combination of that makes folks pause."

Warren says seeing the mayor or a community leader get a shot isn't the kind of assurance that people need. He says that's neglecting to consider that some people might not have health insurance that could help then manage any future complications.

"What about next year?" he asks. "Next year, if something comes up and I don't have health insurance, I'm out in the cold."

He advocates providing health coverage to the uninsured who get the vaccine.

That, Warren says, is a way of assuring people that the health care system will deliver for them in the future, despite the history.

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In Tuskegee, Painful History Shadows Efforts To Vaccinate African Americans

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A lingering mistrust of the medical system among many Black people is rooted in the infamous 20th century U.S. study of syphilis that left Black men in Tuskegee, Ala., to suffer from the disease.

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What are 3 main Take Aways from this Padlet?