Environmental racism is the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards, pollution, and ecological degradation on marginalized communities and on people of color. Environmental racism is embedded in policy making, both domestically and internationally, and is an example of structural racism which produces health hierarchies. Environmental racism often intersects with sexism, when health inequities faced by women and gender minority groups are exacerbated by the consequences of environmental racism. In the United States, some communities are continuously polluted while the government pays little to no attention. According to Robert D. Bullard, father of the environmental justice movement, environmental regulations do not equally benefit all of society; people of color (African Americans, Latinos, Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans) are disproportionately harmed by industrial toxins in their jobs and their neighborhoods.
Environmental racism may disadvantage minority groups or numerical majorities, as in South Africa where apartheid had debilitating environmental impacts on Black people. Internationally, trade in global waste disadvantages global majorities in poorer countries largely inhabited by people of color. It also applies to the particular vulnerability of indigenous groups to environmental pollution. The response to environmental racism has contributed to the environmental justice movement, which developed in the United States and globally throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
History
The term "environmental racism" was coined in 1982 by Benjamin Chavis, previous executive director of the United Church of Christ (UCC) Commission for Racial Justice. In a speech opposing the placement of hazardous polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) waste in the Warren County, North Carolina landfill, Chavis defined the term as:Racial discrimination in environmental policy making, the enforcement of regulations and laws, the deliberate targeting of communities of color for toxic waste facilities, the official sanctioning of the life-threatening presence of poisons and pollutants in our communities, and the history of excluding people of color from leadership of the ecology movements.Recognition of environmental racism catalyzed the environmental justice movement that began in the 1970s and 1980s with influence from the earlier civil rights movement. Grassroots organizations and campaigns brought attention to environmental racism in policy making and emphasized the importance of minority input. While environmental racism has been historically tied to the environmental justice movement, throughout the years the term has been increasingly disassociated.
Following the events in Warren County, the UCC and US General Accounting Office released reports showing that hazardous waste sites were disproportionately located in poor minority neighborhoods. Chavis and Dr. Robert D. Bullard pointed out institutionalized racism stemming from government and corporate policies that led to environmental racism. These racist practices included redlining, zoning, and colorblind adaptation planning. Residents experienced environmental racism due to their low socioeconomic status, and lack of political representation and mobility. Expanding the definition in "The Legacy of American Apartheid and Environmental Racism", Dr. Bullard said that environmental racism:Refers to any policy, practice, or directive that differentially affects or disadvantages (whether intended or unintended) individuals, groups, or communities based on race or color.
Institutional racism operates on a large scale within societal norms, policies, and procedures extending to environmental planning and decision-making, reinforcing environmental racism through government, legal, economic, and political institutions. Racism significantly increases exposure to environmental and health risks as well as access to health care.
Government agencies, including the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), have often failed to protect people of color from pollution and industrial infiltrations. This failure is evident in the disproportionate pollution burden borne by communities of color, with African American and Latino neighborhoods experiencing higher levels of pollution compared to predominantly white areas. Many reactionary lawsuits against the EPA have been filed including ones filed by community-based groups in California, Michigan, Texas, Alabama, and New Mexico between 1992 and 2003. When met with neglect, the communities filed suit again in 2015 and were met with rudimentary investigations that failed to culminate in change.
For instance, in Los Angeles, over 71% of African Americans and 50% of Latinos live in areas with the most polluted air, while only 34% of the white population does. Nationally, a significant portion of whites, African Americans, and Hispanics reside in counties with substandard air quality, with people of color disproportionately affected by pollution-related health issues.
Although the term was coined in the US, environmental racism also occurs on the international level. Studies have shown that since environmental laws have become prominent in developed countries, companies have moved their waste towards the Global South. Less developed countries frequently have fewer environmental regulations and become pollution havens.
Causes Several factors lead to environmental racism: competition for affordable land, racist or dismissive attitudes towards the consequences of projects with negative environmental impacts, and the marginalized communities' lack of political power, lack of mobility, and poverty. Communities cannot effectively resist corporations' and governments' decisions which impact them, because they cannot access political power are unable to negotiate just costs. Communities with minimized socio-economic mobility cannot relocate. Lack of financial contributions also reduces the communities' ability to act both physically and politically. Chavis defined environmental racism in five categories: racial discrimination in defining environmental policies, discriminatory enforcement of regulations and laws, deliberate targeting of minority communities as hazardous waste dumping sites, official sanctioning of dangerous pollutants in minority communities, and the exclusion of people of color from environmental leadership positions.
Minority communities often do not have the financial means, resources, and political representation to oppose hazardous waste sites. Known as locally unwanted land uses (LULUs), these facilities that benefit the whole community often reduce the quality of life of minority communities. These neighborhoods also may depend on the economic opportunities the site brings and are reluctant to oppose its location at the risk of their health. Additionally, controversial projects are less likely to be sited in non-minority areas that are expected to pursue collective action and succeed in opposing the siting of the projects in their area.
In cities in the Global North, suburbanization and gentrification lead to patterns of environmental racism. For example, white flight from industrial zones for safer, cleaner, suburban locales leaves minority communities in the inner cities and in close proximity to polluted industrial zones. In these areas, unemployment is high and businesses are less likely to invest in area improvement, creating poor economic conditions for residents and reinforcing a social formation that reproduces racial inequality. Furthermore, the poverty of property owners and residents in a municipality may be taken into consideration by hazardous waste facility developers, since areas with depressed real estate values will save developers' money.
Socioeconomic aspects Cost–benefit analysis (CBA) is a process that places a monetary value on costs and benefits to evaluate issues."Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA)", World Bank Group. n.d. Accessed: November 20, 2011. Environmental CBA aims to provide policy solutions for intangible products such as clean air and water by measuring a consumer's willingness to pay for these goods. CBA can contribute to environmental racism through the valuing of environmental resources based on their utility to society. When someone is willing and able to pay more for clean water or air, their payment financially benefits society more than when people cannot pay for these goods, which can create a burden on poor communities. This can manifest through discriminatory or disproportionate siting, in which hazardous waste sites are disproportionately placed in communities with a higher percentage of low-income or minority households.
This form of economic valuation can contribute to these siting practices and further entrench environmental racism through the devaluation of property values in these communities. Economic property valuation can also contribute to environmental racism through environmental gentrification, which describes the process that can occur when the removal of decontamination or creation of green spaces in low-income and communities of color leads to higher-income, often White, populations moving to these areas. The improvement of the environmental quality of these communities, while often intended to reduce health disparities and advance environmental justice, can lead to an increase in property values that can displace previous residents.
Fossil fuel racism The impacts of fossil fuel processing are not distributed equally with communities of color and lower-income communities as opposed to white, or wealthy communities. These communities experience health hazards from air and water pollution as well as the risks from climate change. Sacrifice zones are the concept associated with these communities where systemic racism intersects with a fossil fuel-based economy. From a perspective by Energy Research & Social Science, the "fossil fuel racism" phenomenon is framed through the argument that systemic racism effectively subsidizes the fossil fuel industry by allowing it to externalize the costs of pollution onto communities of color.
Looking at pollution through the lens of fossil fuel racism allows for a shift in focus to the systems and structures that perpetuate these injustices. Alysha Khambay, a researcher with Amnesty International, notes, "Regulations are often unenforced, and many of the companies involved appear to treat any fines from regulators, if they are imposed at all, as just another cost of doing business. The current system is stacked in favor of the companies and against the people they harm. This must and can change."
Impacts on health Environmental racism impacts the health of the communities affected by poor environments. Various factors that can cause health problems include exposure to hazardous chemical toxins in landfills and rivers. Exposure to these toxins can also weaken or slow brain development.
The animal protection organization In Defense of Animals claims intensive animal agriculture negatively affects the health of nearby communities. They believe that associated manure lagoons produce hydrogen sulfide and contaminate local water supplies, leading to higher levels of miscarriages, birth defects, and disease outbreaks. These farms are disproportionately placed in low-income areas and communities of color. Other risks include exposure to pesticides, chemical run-off and particulate matter in the air. Poor cleanliness in facilities and chemical exposure may also affect agricultural workers, who are frequently people of color.
Pollution