Greta Thunburg has been making waves on social media, in national headlines and during policy debates. But why her? She is not the first youth leader to join the fight for climate justice — but she is white. As a privileged white person growing up in a wealthy Manhattan bubble, my voice is almost always heard too, and when it isn’t, I am capable of fighting back to take up that space without genuine repercussions. People of color (POC) often do not have this same privilege and guarantee of safety, and yet, time and time again they have led the majority of direct action social movements historically (think Gandhi, MLK, Mandela, Rosa Parks, and so forth).

In this article by The Years Project, two POC authors, Harriet Washington and Beth Gardiner, describe the devastating impacts of environmental racism on black and brown populations in America.

They believe environmental racism provides a definitive “explanation for the apparent gap in IQ test scores” between white and POC Americans (as well as testing biases and inadequate school funding, among other systematically racist policies in education). Due to the inherently racist and money-hungry systems at work within the fossil fuel industry,  air pollution disproportionally affects POC neighborhoods, and not just poor POC neighborhoods. This is more an issue of racism than classism, because impoverished white areas are less exposed overall to environmental toxins than are black people who make $50,000 to $60,000 a year. In turn, these areas have seen extremely high rates of asthma and hypoxia within recent years. When there is less oxygen in the brain, neuron death occurs, resulting in “loss of cognition” over time. Furthermore, asthma affects “processing speed, attention, learning and memory”.

My ex-boyfriend is an asthmatic who grew up in Brownsville, with a waste treatment plant within a three block radius from his childhood home. I wonder how much this had an impact on his wellbeing and his mother’s health while in-utero.

I cannot in good conscience report only on subjects that affect me, because I am one of the lucky ones. I am white, relatively wealthy, and despite growing up in an urban setting, I live miles and miles away from these highly polluted areas described above. I am at NYU, partially because my family can manage without financial aid, and because my grades and test scores were high enough to get me here. But who knows if I would be here otherwise? What if I had grown up right next to the waste treatment plant too? I wonder how my academic capabilities would be effected.

This is exactly the reason why environmental racism is not a “them” problem. Raising awareness and accepting partial responsibility is the first step towards change. It is our job to discuss these corporation’s criminal behaviors, especially if I am myself benefitting  due to it (unintentionally or not).