Environmental racism

Environmental racism refers to the enactment or enforcement of any policy, practice, or regulation that negatively affects the environment of low-income and/or racially-homogeneous communities at a disparate rate than affluent communities ^[1]. Environmental racism is either intentional or unintentional racial discrimination and can explain specific incidents in which minority communities are targeted for the siting of polluting industries and factors^[2]. The terms also describes the effects of structural and institutionalized racism that segregate minority communities into regions where they are exposed to health hazards because of the cheaper land in polluted, industrial areas^[3]. Environmental racism also accounts for the exclusion of minority groups from decision-making or regulatory bodies in their communities.
The first report to draw a relationship between race and income and the higher risk of exposure to pollutants was the Council of Environmental Quality’s “Annual Report to the President” in 1971^[4]. Later, the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice explored the idea of environmental racism in the 1987 report, "Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States: A National Report on the Racial and Socioeconomic Characteristics of Communities with Hazardous Waste Sites"^[5]. Following that report, groups were formed and legislation was enacted to address environmental racism. This reaction is referred to as environmental justice. Oftentimes the term environmental justice is inaccurately interchanged with environmental racism when in fact it is the name for attempts to reverse this type of racism by achieving equal protection for environmental hazards regardless of race or class^[6].

Background

In the United States

Since the term "environmental racism" was coined, researchers have investigated why minorities are more likely than whites to reside in areas where there is worse environmental conditions.^[7] Some social scientists suggest that the historical processes of suburbanization and decentralization are examples of white privilege that have contributed to contemporary patterns of environmental racism.^[3] In the United States, the wealth of a community is not nearly as good a predictor of hazardous waste locations as the ethnic background of the residents, suggesting that the selection of sites for hazardous waste disposal involves racism.^[8] These minority communities may be easier targets for environmental racism because they are less likely to organize and protest than their middle or upper class white counterparts. This lack of protest could be due to fear of losing their jobs, thereby jeopardizing their economic survival.^[9]
Since whites are more likely to be homeowners, they have more power and influence in their communities and are able to be strong advocates against unwanted land uses such as hazardous waste sites, sewage treatment facilities, incinerators, and freeway construction^[10]. The higher incidence of home ownership is related to the incidence of employment and housing discrimination in the United States^[11]. While social scientists see the intentional siting of unwanted land uses in minority communities as one demonstration of environmental racism, other social scientists look into the structural and institutionalized bases for the disproportionate exposure of minorities to polluted environments. These social scientists suggest that the historical processes of suburbanization, gentrification, and decentralization are examples of white privilege that have contributed to contemporary patterns of environmental racism^[12]. White privilege is a term that refers to the perception of the current social system as one that works for the benefit of whites. With suburbanization, a federally encouraged phenomenon, whites were able to flee industrial zones and follow the jobs as they shifted from manufacturing centers to safe, clean, inexpensive suburban locales^[13]. Minority communities were largely left in the inner cities residentially segregated along racial lines and in close proximity to polluted industrial zones where unemployment is high and businesses are less likely to invest creating poor economic conditions for inhabitants and reinforcing a social formation that reproduces racial inequality. Some social scientists ask whether locally unwanted land use (LULUs) are intentionally placed in minority communities or do communities with LULUs gradually become populated by minorities, as whites are able to relocate from these areas. Most respond that it is a combination of both and that both are related to the idea of environmental racism. Siting of polluting factors with discriminatory intent is blatant racism whereas the shifts in population that account for the over representation of minorities in the inner cities are less detectable forms of institutionalized racism.

Studies and Reports

The recognition of discrimination based on race and how it prevented economically disadvantaged minority communities to improve the quality of their environment came in 1971 in the “Annual Report to the President” from the Council of Environmental Quality^[14]. This was a landmark finding, but environmental justice did not become a national issue until the case of Bean vs. Southwestern Waste Management in 1982. Warren County, North Carolina, a predominantly African American county, was selected as a disposal site for large amounts of toxic soil ^[15]. Protests and resistance to this decision brought national attention to the idea of environmental racism and prompted a congressional investigation into claims that minority communities were targeted for sites of pollution^[16]. The investigation, conducted by the US General Accounting Office, found that of the waste sites in the southeastern US, three-fourths were located in predominantly African American communities^[17].
In 1987 the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice (CRJ) furthered the discussion of environmental racism with their 1987 report, "Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States: A National Report on the Racial and Socioeconomic Characteristics of Communities with Hazardous Waste Sites"^[18]. The report drew a correlation between the predominance of minorities and the presence of these waste facilities. Although some question the unbiased nature and methodology of this report, the commission found that when analyzing the factors of race, household income, home value, and "the estimated amount of hazardous waste generated by industry," the most significant factor in determining the location of commercial hazardous waste facilities in the US was race^[19].
After publishing its first report entitled "Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States"^[20] in 1987, the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice (CRJ) conducted a follow-up study that was published in 2007. The 1987 report focused on the environmental hazards that minority communities face as a result of the placement of landfills, toxic waste sites, etc. near their communities. This report found that when analyzing the factors of race, household income, home value, and "the estimated amount of hazardous waste generated by industry," the most significant factor in determining the location of commercial hazardous waste facilities in the US was race. The report released in 2007, entitled "Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty," concludes that many of these same poor minority communities are still facing the same problems that they did 20 years ago. In 2007, these communities even faced new problems "because of government cutbacks in enforcement, weakening health protection, and dismantling the environmental justice regulatory apparatus."
Some of the 2007 Report Findings:

• National Disparities - Host neighborhoods of commercial hazardous waste facilities are made up of 56% people of color (including African Americans, Hispanics/Latinos, and Asians/Pacific Islanders). However, non-host neighborhoods are only made up of 30% people of color.
• Neighborhoods with Clustered Facilities - Neighborhoods with hazardous waste facilities clustered close together have populations with 69% people of color, while neighborhoods without clustered facilities have populations with 51% people of color.
• State Disparities - This problem of environmental racism is not only found in a few states. Rather, out of the 44 states that have hazardous waste facilities, 40 of these states have disproportionately high percentages of people of color living within 3 kilometers of the facilities. The top-ten ranking states with disparities between the percentages of people of color living in host neighborhoods and those living in non-host neighborhoods are Michigan, Nevada, Kentucky, Illinois, Alabama, Tennessee, Washington, Kansas, Arkansas, and California.

Governmental Policies

The EPA - The United States government established the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 in response to rising concerns about environmental pollution. The mission of the EPA is to protect human health and the natural environment[33]. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), "Environmental Justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people...with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. EPA has this goal for all communities and persons across this Nation. It will be achieved when everyone enjoys the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards and equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work."[34].

Office of Environmental Justice - In 1992, under the presidency of George H.W. Bush, the Office of Environmental Equity, an office within the broader EPA was established to work towards environmental justice. The EPA defines environmental justice as “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws”[35]. In 1992, this office produced a report “Environmental Equity: Reducing Risks for all Communities,” one of the first comprehensive government reports on environmental justice[36]. This office was renamed the Office of Environmental Justice by President Clinton.

The Executive Order - On 11 February 1994 President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 12898[37], which directed federal agencies to develop strategies to help them identify and address disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of their programs, policies, and activities on minority and low-income populations. Clinton also intended the Order to provide minority and low-income communities with access to public information and opportunities for public participation in matters relating to human health or the environment[38].

In the South

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New Orleans is a great example for potential and past environmental racism. New Orleans often hit by hurricanes ^[21] has set evacuation plans to evacuate during a hurricane. Transportation considered a necessity in evacuation, however 24% of African American families have cars versus a mere 7% of white families, ^[22]. In the south where 54% of the United States African American's live it seems an unfair standard to create an evacuation plan that requires a car. This is environmental because the evacuation plan assumes everyone has a car, but not everyone does and majority of those people are African American, Latino American, or Asian American ^[23]. In 1997, there was a strong effort to relieve this policy of it's unfairness towards minorities. The Federal Emergency Management Agency created Project Impact, which provided funding for communities to satisfy their need for better evacuation plans ^[24]. This policy was ended by the Bush administration in 2001, and this problem reemerged.

In 2005, when these evacuation plans were needed in New Orleans during Katrina the car-less and special needs suffered the most. One-third of African American New Orleans residents did not have cars to evacuate. New Orleans didn't have enough buses or bus drivers to supply the population that needed them ^[25]. This exposed major weaknesses in evacuation and especially shined a spotlight on environmental racism in the south.

Interview on Environmental Racism

A broadcast interview on NPR called “A Closer at a Toxic Dumping Case” Cheryl Corley asks Sheila Holt-Orsted of Dixon, Tennessee about her class action lawsuit against a local landfill, and local water treatment agencies ^[26]. Sheila Holt-Orsted and her family have suffered long term health affects due to the toxic waste from the local landfill that leached into the community’s water well. Sheila’s house in Dixon is about 57ft from the landfill, and has suffered greatly from the water contamination. Her father died of cancer as a result of chemicals such as Trichloroethylene among others that have been dumped in their backyard for over 20 years ^[27]. She believes she has also been diagnosed with breast cancer due to these circumstances. Trichloroethylene is the most dangerous of the chemicals that leached into the community well ^[28]. However, when water treatment agencies found out about the presence of these chemicals the Holt-Orstead family was not notified. They received letters 1991 and 1998 that drinking the well water would result in no “adverse health affects ^[29].” It took until 2000 for the family to be notified about the well contamination. By then it was too late and the Holt-Orstead family had already suffered enough. They filed a class action suit along with eleven other people, but as they looked deeper into the evidence of polluting they found that there was environmental injustice as well in this situation ^[30]. This case was found to be environmental racism after the evidence was found that the Holt family, an African American family, was only notified of the contamination years after their white neighbors were informed. When the water treatment agencies discovered the toxic leeching in the community well, the Holt’s Caucasian neighbors were immediately notified; some within 48 hours after the discovery ^[31]. After all the white families were informed of the water quality, the Holt family was still told that their water was perfectly fine. Even though the property owners are responsible for testing their own water, the Holt family found this unnecessary due to the fact that the agencies were already testing their water. Nearly a decade later, the Holt family was finally informed of the water contamination that they had been drinking, showering in, and cooking with for 20 years. Sheila then decided to look into the possibility of the contamination was correlated with her breast cancer. This is an example of environmental racism because not only is the landfill extremely close to where they live, but because of their race the Holt-Orstead family didn’t get notification that their water was contaminated. Although everyone in the community was exposed to the toxic chemicals, Sheila and her family still feel like they deserve compensation for the years of discrimination that they experienced ^[32]. Their one hundred fifty-acre farm is now worthless due to the pollution, and nothing can bring back her father or her and her family’s health. Sheila wants the agencies to take responsibility, the landfill to be shut down, and for them to clean her property.

Effects on Native American Nations

Native American tribes in the United States resemble minority populations in that they are largely segregated and impoverished. In 1995, 51 percent of the indigenous people of the North American continent lived below the poverty line^[33]. The major difference between Native American tribes and other minority communities is that these tribes have sovereignty and exist as nations independent from the United States. This means they have the right to self-determination, the ability to make decisions for themselves, and the power to select their own form of government to govern their nations. This power includes control over their natural resources. Tribal sovereignty creates a governmental, political, and logistical dilemma when trying to negotiate environmental issues and protections. In 1984, The Environmental Protections Agency created a “Policy for the Administration of Environmental Programs on Indian Reservations.” This policy stated that the EPA was committed to work with tribal governments on a one-to-one basis about environmental issues^[34]. The International Tribunal of Indigenous People and Oppressed Nations, which convened in 1992, was established to examine the history of US criminal activity against indigenous groups^[35]. The Tribunal published a Significant Bill of Particulars outlining grievances indigenous peoples had with the US. The tenth item in the Significant Bill of Particulars stated that the US has “deliberately and systematically permitted, aided, and abetted, solicited and conspired to commit the dumping, transportation, and location of nuclear, toxic, medical, and otherwise hazardous waste materials on Native American territories in North America and has thus created a clear and present danger to the health, safety, and physical and mental well-being of Native American People”^[36]. There is a significant amount of interest on the behalf of multinational corporations in the resources of Indian lands. Many corporations have been using these lands as toxic waste disposal sites or they have been extracting resources from these lands for years and want to increase and expand their leases. Some argue that Indigenous tribes have been backed into agreements by a form of economic blackmail. Since reservation Indians are often living in poverty, companies will approach indigenous governments and offer lucrative contracts that give companies a right to establish landfills, incinerators, and treatment facilities^[37].

International

Environmental racism also exists at an international scale. First world corporations often produce dangerous chemicals banned in the United States and export them to developing countries, or send waste materials to countries with relaxed environmental laws.

In one instance, the French aircraft carrier Clemenceau was prohibited from entering Alang, an Indian ship-breaking yard due to a lack of clear documentation about its toxic contents. French President Jacques Chirac ultimately ordered the carrier, which contained tons of hazardous materials including asbestos and PCBs, to return to France.^[38]

E-waste disposal sites, such as one in Giuyu, China, are also subject of controversy. In Giuyu, laborers with no protective clothing regularly burn plastics and circuit boards from old computers. They pour acid on electronic parts to extract silver and gold, and crush cathode ray tubes from computer monitors to remove other valuable metals, such as lead. Nearly 80 percent of children in the E-waste hub of Giuyu, China, suffer from lead poisoning, according to recent reports.^[39]

Another example of foreign environmental racism is in 1984 both the Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhopal, India, and the PEMEX liquid propane gas plant in Mexico City where minorities reside blew up, killing thousands and injuring roughly a million nearby residents ^[40]. The images of the victims in India and Mexico spread knowledge of environmental racism around the globe.

Hazards

According to the United States EPA, the six most prominent examples of environmental hazards include:^[41]

• Lead - There is a particularly high concentration of lead problems in low-income and culturally diverse populations, who live in the inner city where the public housing units were built before 1970.
• Waste Sites - Low income, and quite often culturally diverse populations, are more likely than other groups to live near landfills, incinerators, and hazardous waste treatment facilities.
• Air Pollution - 57 percent of all European Americans, 65 percent of African Americans, and 80 percent of Hispanic Americans live in communities that have failed to meet at least one of EPA's ambient air quality standards.
• Pesticides - Approximately 90 percent of the 2 million hired farm workers in the United States are people of color, including Chicano, Puerto Ricans, Caribbean blacks and African Americans. Through direct exposure to pesticides, farm workers and their families may face serious health risks. It has been estimated that as many as 313,000 farm workers in the U.S. may suffer from pesticide-related illnesses each year.
• Wastewater (City Sewers) - Many inner cities still have sewer systems that are not designed to handle storm overflow. As a result, raw sewage may be carried into local rivers and streams during storms, creating a health hazard.
• Wastewater - (Agricultural Runoff) - It is suspected that the increased use of commercial fertilizers and concentrations of animal wastes contribute to the degradation of receiving streams and rivers in rural areas, with communities that are often low income and culturally diverse.

Gentrification

Although it is not always connected to race and can sometimes be generalized by class, gentrification or urban renewal can be connected to environmental racism and residential segregation. Gentrification has historically been defined as higher income newcomers displacing lower income residents from up-and-coming urban neighborhoods. The concept has been understood as reflecting the residential turnover of an area that was predominantly composed of residents of color, to one populated by higher income whites. Yet definitions of gentrification fail to mention this racial component. Critical race theory is used to examine race as an implicit assumption that merits investigation as demographic changes in the U.S. challenge these class-based definitions. ^[42]

References

See also

• Environmental Justice & Environmental Racism
• United States Environmental Protection Agency - Environmental Justice
• Cancer Alley
• Race and health
• Hawk's Nest incident