This weeks reading left me thinking about another book I recently read called, The Four Agreements. In this book the author talks about how what we are told about ourselves or if a comment is made directed at us, it usually remains with us and we even start to view ourselves in that way.
Even though I had a tough time keeping my focus through this chapter about environmental racism, the one thing I did concluded is that people do allow others to tell them who they are or what they will become, especially when they are constantly hearing it again and again their entire life. For instance, most if not all waste sites or high industrial factories are located in large color populations from Latinos to African Americans. The one thing I kept thinking from the information that was given was that theses groups of people never started out with the chance to think that they were anything different or better than those who originally told them they did not amount to much. These communities with high color populations were told from the very beginning that they were not educated, or smart or deserved the chance to be something great.
So I guess my point to this is that if we as a society could just take the time to stop telling other people how better we are and how less of a person they are due to different color or class, and that that's where they should be because they are not as educated or have enough money to live anywhere better than next to a chemical dump. Maybe if we stop telling them what we think they are, they might stop believing what they have been told and start believing that they are just as good and deserve the same great quality of life and good health as the rest of society.
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