Environmental Racism Is Killing Us All: We must fight against a form of systemic and institutional racism that is killing us all--environmental racism.

• Author: Brown, Darrell

AS A BLACK MAN WHO GREW UP IN THIS COUNTRY, I KNOW THAT RACISM IS REAL. I know it can be individual. I know it can be institutional and structural, supported by laws, institutions, and culture.

I have experienced the hurtful and harmful sting of racism in most of its modern-day forms. I know that my father, my mother, my brother, my grandparents, my aunts, my uncles, cousins, and friends share those experiences. I know that racism is still all around us. But why?

People of color have been left out of the conversation deliberately.

I have spent my entire professional life in the service of others. I have been a dedicated public servant. I have worked to satisfy not just my own needs and ambitions but to help others to do the same, regardless of their race or color or whatever their background.

Some 25 years ago, I fell into the field of economic development. At that time, people of color were few and far between in the field. I wondered why. Over time, I became aware that, contrary to the assumptions of many in my profession, the dearth of people of color did not result from a lack of interest or an unwillingness to participate on their part. My primarily white colleagues did not want people of color involved. They did not want people of color engaged. They did not want people of color to learn how they could improve their lives, communities, and families.

It was just that simple, and I felt it. But, as I later learned, there was more.

Racist policies have been pervasive in transportation, housing, banking, and more. Indeed, people of color tried for decades to engage and build their communities through economic development practices, only to have those efforts blocked, time and again. The most prominent example is the 1921 Tulsa, Oklahoma, race massacre, in which a white mob literally burned down a vibrant and economically accomplished Black town.

Injustice was not always perpetuated through violence, however. When serving as director of economic development in Charles County, Maryland, I watched in real time as gentrification forced Black people out of Anacostia in southeast Washington, D.C., entirely.

These are hardly isolated occurrences. Florida, California, Georgia, Maryland, Louisiana, and other parts of Washington, D.C., are just some of the places that experienced this systematic racism. Despite the best efforts of Black communities, discriminatory policies and practices endemic to transportation, housing, and banking to name just a...