Environmental racism is a form of systemic racism, rather than individual racism. That means it is the result of institutional policies and practices, rather than individual beliefs and actions.
Systemic racism is embedded in the laws, policies and institutions that govern our lives — and it has been since European settlers first colonized this land.
The 1885 Head Tax, the 1923 Exclusion Act, and the Indian Act are all examples of racist Canadian legislation. In B.C., UN special rapporteur on the environment and human rights David Boyd notes that the maximum penalties for dumping garbage or waste on Crown land range from $2,000 to $1,000,000. Meanwhile, the maximum penalty for dumping garbage or waste on “Indian Reserves” is only $100.
After visiting Canada in 2019, Baskut Tuncak, UN special rapporteur on human rights and hazardous substances and wastes wrote: “I observed a pervasive trend of inaction of the Canadian Government in the face of existing health threats from decades of historical and current environmental injustices and the cumulative impacts of toxic exposures by indigenous peoples.”
Environmental racism’s systemic nature means that everything that goes into a particular decision — lobbying, laws, who gets to have a say — might be legal. But the results can and do disproportionately hurt BIPOC communities. They destroy peoples’ health, wreck natural environments, and threaten cultures.