Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty: why race still matters after all of these years.

• Author: Bullard, Robert D.
• Position: 'Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States' report

1. INTRODUCTION II. ROOTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE SINCE 1987 III. TOXIC NEIGHBORHOODS IV. GOVERNMENT RESPONSE TO ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE V. ASSESSING DISPARITIES IN ENVIRONMENTAL BURDENS VI. ASSESSMENT OF CURRENT DISPARITIES A. National Findings B. State Disparities C. Metropolitan Area Disparities D. The Matter of Race VII. CONCLUSIONS AND POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS I. INTRODUCTION

   The environmental justice movement has come a long way since its humble beginning in Warren County, North Carolina, where a PCB (polychlorinated biphenyl) landfill ignited protests and more than 500 arrests. (1) Although the demonstrators were unsuccessful in stopping the siting of the PCB landfill, they put "environmental racism" on the map and launched the national environmental justice movement. The Warren County protests also led the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice in 1987 to produce Toxic Wastes and Race, the first national study to correlate waste facility sites and demographic characteristics. (2)

   The 1987 report was significant because it found race to be the most potent variable in predicting where these facilities were located--more powerful than household income, the value of homes, and the estimated amount of hazardous waste generated by industry. (3) The Toxic Wastes and Race study was revisited in 1994 using 1990 census data. (4) The 1994 study found that people of color are 47% more likely to live near a hazardous waste facility than white Americans. (5)

   It has now been two decades since Toxic Wastes and Race was first published. Over the past twenty years, environmental justice and environmental racism have become household words. Out of the small and seemingly isolated environmental struggles emerged a potent grassroots community-driven movement. Many of the on-the-ground environmental struggles in the 1980s, 1990s, and through the early years of the new millennium have seen the quest for environmental and economic justice become a unifying theme across race, class, gender, age, and geographic lines.

   The "chicken or egg" wastes facility siting debate has nearly been put to rest since recent evidence shows that the disproportionately high percentages of minorities and low-income populations were present at the time the commercial hazardous waste facilities were sited. A 2001 study confirms this phenomenon in Los Angeles County. (6) Likewise in a 2005 study our authors Robin Saha and Paul Mohai report that in Michigan during the last thirty years commercial hazardous waste facilities were sited in neighborhoods that were disproportionately poor and disproportionately non-white at the time of siting. (7)

   In 2007, Mohai and Saha provided compelling evidence of the demographic composition at or near the time of siting for the neighborhoods of the 413 facilities examined in the Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty report. (8) Again, their research found that nationally commercial hazardous waste facilities sited since 1965 have been sited in neighborhoods that were disproportionately minority at the time of siting.

   After two decades of intense study, targeted research, public hearings, grassroots organizing, networking, and movement building, environmental justice struggles have taken center stage. (9) Yet, all communities are still not created equal. Some neighborhoods, communities, and regions are still the dumping grounds for all kinds of toxins. Low-income and people of color populations are still left behind before and after natural and man-made disasters strike--as graphically demonstrated on August 29, 2005 when Hurricane Katrina made landfall and the levee breach flooded New Orleans, creating the "worst environmental disaster" in U.S. history. (10)

2. ROOTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE SINCE 1987

   While communities across the nation celebrated the twentieth anniversary of Toxic Wastes and Race, they knew all too well that there was still much work to be done before we achieve the goal of environmental justice for all. Much progress has been made in mainstreaming environmental protection as a civil rights and social justice issue. The key is getting government to enforce the laws and regulations equally across the board--without regard to race, color, or national origin.

   The last two decades have seen some positive change in the way groups relate to each other. We now see an increasing number of community based groups, environmental justice networks, environmental and conservation groups, legal groups, faith-based groups, labor, academic institutions, and youth organizations teaming up on environmental and health issues that differentially impact poor people and people of color. Environmental racism and environmental justice panels have become "hot" topics at national conferences and forums sponsored by law schools, bar associations, public health groups, scientific societies, professional meetings, and university lecture series.

   In 2007, the United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries released a new report as part of the twentieth anniversary of the release of the 1987 report. The 2007 Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty report uses 2000 census data. (11) The report also chronicles important environmental justice milestones since 1987 and a collection of "impact" essays from environmental justice leaders on a range of topics. This new report examines the environmental justice implications in post-Katrina New Orleans and uses the Dickson County (Tennessee) Landfill case--the "poster child" for environmental racism--to illustrate the deadly mix of waste and race. (12) Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty is designed to facilitate renewed grassroots organizing and provide a catalyst for local, regional, and national environmental justice public forums, discussion groups, and policy changes in 2007 and beyond.

   The research was guided by the following questions:

   (1) What are the core or fundamental environmental justice issues surrounding waste and race? (2) What role has government played over the past two decades to address waste facility siting and related environmental disparities? (3) What progress has been made and what challenges exist? (4) What resources exist or need to be brought to bear to address the environmental justice issues? and (5) What policy and legislative changes are needed to address adverse and disproportionate impacts of environmental and health threats to low-income and people of color populations and to ensure equal environmental protection for all? (13)

   A new movement has taken root in the United States, and spread around the world, that defines environment as "everything"--where we live, work, play, worship, and go to school, as well as the physical and natural world. This relatively new national movement is called the environmental and economic justice movement. Two decades ago, the concept of environmental justice had not registered on the radar screens of environmental, civil fights, human rights, or social justice groups. Nevertheless, one should not forget that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. went to Memphis in 1968 on an environmental and economic justice mission for the striking black garbage workers. (14) The strikers were demanding equal pay and better work conditions. Of course, Dr. King was assassinated before he could complete his mission.

   In 1998, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defined 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, regulations, and policies. Fair treatment means that no group of people, including racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic group should bear a disproportionate share of the negative environmental consequences resulting from industrial, municipal, and commercial operations or the execution of federal, state, local, and tribal programs and policies. (15) Simply put, environmental justice demands that everyone--not just the people who can "vote with their feet" and move away from threats or individuals who can afford lawyers, experts, and lobbyists to fight on their behalf--is entitled to equal protection and equal enforcement of our environmental, health, housing, land use, transportation, energy, and civil rights laws and regulations.

   Clearly, the world is much different since the Toxic Wastes and Race report was first published in 1987. The UCC report propelled an entire generation of social science researchers investigating the interplay between race, class, and the environment. The landmark study also spawned a series of academic books, including Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality in 1990, the first to chronicle the convergence of two movements--the social justice movement and environmental movement--into the environmental justice movement. (16) It also highlighted African Americans' environmental activism in the South, the same region that gave birth to the modern civil rights movement. What started out as local and often isolated community-based struggles against toxics and facility siting blossomed into a multi-issue, multi-ethnic, and multi-regional movement.

   Two years later, in 1992, Race and the Incidence of Environmental Hazards: A Time for Discourse brought together papers from scholars, activists, and policy analysts who had attended an historic environmental justice conference sponsored by Professors Bunyan Bryant and Paul Mohai at the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment. (17) A half-dozen presenters from this historic gathering--which later became known as the "Michigan Coalition"--pressured the EPA to begin addressing environmental justice concerns voiced by low-income and people of color communities from around the country. In July 1992, after much prodding from environmental justice advocates, the EPA published Environmental Equity: Reducing Risks for All Communities, one of...