What is environmental racism?
Environmental racism refers to the unequal impact of environmental issues on people of color. Communities of color are exposed to a higher amount of toxic and hazardous waste than white communities. This is caused by corporations, institutions, and policies targeting these communities when it comes to property usage and environmental regulation. Greenaction, an environmental justice organization, specifically lists several reasons behind environmental racism including, "...intentional neglect, the alleged need for a receptacle for pollutants in urban areas, and a lack of institutional power and low land values of people of color." Environmental racism leads to health issues and overall worsens the systemic injustice people of color face daily.
Biological Race and Human Variation
Human variation occurs in both genotypic and phenotypic forms. However, genotypic variation in humans is actually quite low. Our species is homogenous, with modern humans being 85% identical. Human phenotypic variation, on the other hand, is extremely diverse. Phenotypic traits don’t necessarily represent purely genetic results and are often influenced by environments, allowing for a wider range of traits. If biological race did exist, it should reflect shared genetic material from a common ancestor. Nonetheless, rather than genetics, phenotypes such as skin color have been used to determine race for centuries. This racial classification explains very little variation. Society continues to use human variation to justify biological race when, in reality, biological race can not exist in humans. For one, humans are mobile Additionally, human phenotypes follow a clinal distribution. Thirdly, we can’t assign race based on a series of traits because traits are not inherited together, and therefore certain sets of traits can not be specific to separate groups. Therefore biological race does not, and can not, explain human variation
What is the difference between biological race and social race?
In biological terms, races are subdivisions of a species that are geographically isolated. As they are the same species, races are able to interbreed but don’t because of isolation. This does not exist in humans. Biologically, humans are one race: Homo sapiens. Social races are races that society has constructed. These categorizations of race are based off of ethnicity, culture, geography, history, and societies. The races that human society has made and enforced have had detrimental effects on people of color as they are treated unfairly and are systemically marginalized.