As a black person in America, I am twice as likely as a white person to live in an area where air pollution poses the greatest risk to my health. I am five times more likely to live within walking distance of a power plant or chemical facility — which I do.

Carter links environmental harm to racial inequality by grounding statistics in lived experience. The “twice as likely” and “five times more likely” claims frame pollution exposure as a patterned, structural outcome of where communities are located and what infrastructure is sited near them—not merely individual choice. The final clause (“which I do”) shifts the statement from abstract disparity to personal testimony, underscoring that environmental racism is not hypothetical but immediate and embodied. The quote functions as both evidence and moral appeal: it asks listeners to see clean air and safe surroundings as civil-rights issues, and to recognize that proximity to power plants and chemical facilities translates into unequal health risks and life chances.