19. More about Poor Old Camden

A few days ago the AP ran a story headlined  "More Blacks Live With Pollution", the first paragraphs of which read:

CHICAGO - An Associated Press analysis of a little-known government research project shows that black Americans are 79 percent more likely than whites to live in neighborhoods where industrial pollution is suspected of posing the greatest health danger.

Residents in neighborhoods with the highest pollution scores also tend to be poorer, less educated and more often unemployed than those elsewhere in the country, AP found.

This might seem like another example of proving the obvious: people with the means to get out of heavily-polluted areas do so.  But today the AP sent out a follow-up story that began:

CAMDEN, N.J. - Lula Williams doesn't take a whiff of fresh air for granted. Not after living for nearly a quarter-century in front of a sewage treatment plant, around the corner from a factory and down the street from three scrap metal recyclers.

Note the dateline.  Camden, you may recall, was recently named the most crime-ridden city in America for the second year in a row.  (See post 9.)  This isn't coincidence.  Those with the means to do so move away from crime-ridden areas, just as they do from polluted areas.  But more broadly, the American society accepts high levels of pollution in our inner cities for the same reason we accept high levels of criminal violence: because those burdens are borne by the poor.  (See post 1.)

In Flaubert's story The Legend of St. Julian Hospitator, the penitent rich boy/animal slaughterer Julian is visited by a leper, whose infirmities are described in appalling detail.  Everything he touches, including inanimate objects, turns leprous.  The leper demands Julian's food, and his drink, and then demands to lie in Julian's bed, and finally that Julian take off his clothes and lie beside him to share his warmth.  Julian does all that is demanded of him: "against his thigh he felt the Leper's skin, colder than a snake and as rough as a file."  Only when Julian surrenders utterly is the leper revealed as Christ, who carries the saint into heaven.

Federal judges are overwhelmingly white (84%) and male (82%) and without exception well to do (salary $162,000).  They work in buildings with tighter security than airports.   The perks are nearly unbelievable.  They don't live in places with high rates of violent crime that are choking on industrial pollution.  When they order the release of dangerous people, they are releasing them into places like Camden.  They are inviting the leper into someone else's bed.