Race And The Incidence Of Environmental Hazards

A Time For Discourse

Bunyan Bryant, Paul Mohai

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367284916
• eBook ISBN: 9781000308853
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book discusses the poor and people of color and their struggle to take control of one of the most basic aspects of their lives: the quality of their environment. It exposes the fact of environmental inequity and its consequences in face of general neglect by policymakers and social scientists.

1
Introduction

Bunyan Bryant and Paul Mohai

For the last fifteen years or so, the civil rights movement has faltered as government and corporate America have reordered their priorities and as civil rights leaders have struggled in vain to bring currency to a movement that has lost its momentum. Both the death of prominent civil rights leaders and the benign neglect of policy makers have blunted the edge of the civil rights movement, even though the conditions that spawned this movement are, in many instances, worse now than they were three decades ago. Today we have more segregated schools, housing patterns, homeless people, and the economic gap between blacks and whites has increased significantly. However, a resurgence of that movement may be taking place as minority and oppressed communities across the nation begin to

Bunyan Bryant is an Associate Professor in the School of Natural Resources at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and did post-doctoral work at the University of Manchester in England on Town and Country Planning. His current research interests include developing case studies on corporate, agency, and community responses to hazardous waste sites. Professor Bryant has recently written a book called: Environmental Advocacy: Concepts, Issues and Dilemmas, and a manual called: Social and Environmental Change: A Manual for Advocacy and Organizing. In addition to teaching courses on social change and presenting papers at professional conferences, Professor Bryant is a consultant to a number of nonprofit environmental organizations across the country.

Paul Mohai is Assistant Professor in the School of Natural Resources at the University of Michigan. Professor Mohai has been studying environmental attitudes and the environmental movement in America for a number of years. He has also studied the factors influencing government decision making, including the role of public participation as well as the factors contributing to citizen involvement. His most recent research involves analyses of blacks' concerns about environmental quality issues and the incidence of environmental hazards in low income and minority communities. Dr. Mohai has published the findings of his work in a variety of journals, including Social Science Quarterly, Natural Resources Journal, Journal of Forestry, Society & Natural Resources, and Environmental Law. Both Drs. Bryant and Mohai were co-organizers of the University of Michigan Conference on Race and the Incidence of Environmental Hazards held January 1990 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. They were also co-principal investigators of the University of Michigan's 1990 Detroit Area Study, which investigated the extent of awareness and concerns of minorities about environmental hazards in their neighborhoods.

redefine their struggle in terms of a safe and clean environment being a basic right for all, regardless of race or color. Each day minorities are becoming more aware of the millions of inner city children who are being exposed to lead poisoning, causing irreversible mental retardation and impaired growth. Pregnant farm workers exposed to pesticide sprays are prone to birth deformity as they eke out a living from the land. Prenatal exposure to dangerous chemicals in the high tech industries contributes to numerous birth defects and premature births. Uranium contaminated Navajo land and water are believed to contribute to the high incidence of organ cancer in Navajo teenagers—seventeen times the national average.

We became involved with issues of environmental equity after becoming acutely aware that minority communities were disproportionately exposed to environmental hazards, more so than affluent white communities, and by the struggle that was being waged in minority and low-income communities across the country. One of the first highly visible struggles took place in Warren County, North Carolina, where both blacks and whites strategically placed their bodies in front of trucks to prevent them from carrying soil laced with PCBs to a landfill located in a predominantly black area. As a result of this struggle, Walter Fauntroy, participant in the struggle in Warren County and a congressional delegate from Washington, DC, requested that the General Accounting Office do a study. This study reported that three of the four largest commercial landfills in the South are located in communities of color. In 1987, while attending a meeting at the Federation of Southern Cooperatives in Sumter County, Alabama, Bryant had an opportunity to visit one of these landfills, the largest in the nation—not too far from the Federation. This facility receives hazardous waste from 48 states and 3 foreign countries. Sumter County is approximately 70 percent black and one of the poorest counties in the nation. The landfill has been the site of much controversy regarding its safety in both the black and the white communities. Even though both blacks and whites attempted to organize against the facility, it was difficult to do so because the landfill offered higher paying jobs compared to other places within the county, donated money to civic and church organizations, and paid about half the county's tax revenues. Those "hooked on toxics" fought any effort to destroy their jobs at the landfill; these were the best paying jobs they ever had, giving them a chance to improve their living condition. It was on this trip that Wendell Paris, a community activist, gave Bryant a copy of the newly issued 1987 United Church of Christ "Report on Race and Toxic Wastes in the United States." The report stated that among a variety of indicators race was the best predictor of the location of hazardous waste facilities in the U.S. We were deeply moved by both the United States General Accounting Office and the United Church of Christ Reports and by the scholarly writings of Robert Bullard and Beverly Wright.

For a number of years Mohai has been studying environmental attitudes and the factors prompting people to take political action on environmental issues. Although studies exist which have examined the relationship of socioeconomic status with environmental concern and activism, few have examined the environmental orientation and actions of people of color. In spite of the general lack of evidence, the conventional wisdom has been that people of color are not concerned about environmental quality issues. In the course of searching for background information which might lead to some hypotheses about the environmental concerns and actions of people of color Mohai was referred by Bryant to the U.S. General Accounting Office and the United Church of Christ reports. The evidence in these reports appeared stunning and compelling and suggested that people of color have a greater stake in the environment than their white counterparts. This evidence raised serious doubts about the conventional wisdom regarding the lack of concern of minorities about environmental quality issues (see Mohai, 1990) and also motivated an extensive search for other evidence of the relationship of toxics and race (see Mohai and Bryant, 1992, in this volume). Over a dozen such studies covering a two decade period were found. These studies overwhelmingly corroborated the evidence of the General Accounting Office and the United Church of Christ reports and intensified our concerns about the issues surrounding environmental equity. Our mutual interest and desire for a further exploration of these issues eventually led us to convene a retrieval/dissemination Conference on Race and the Incidence of Environmental Hazards held at the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources in Ann Arbor, where we asked scholars and activists working in this area to present their latest findings, discuss their ideas and, together, search for solutions.

Nine of twelve scholar-activists who presented papers at the Michigan Conference were people of color. Robert Bullard, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California at Riverside, Beverly Wright, Associate Professor of Sociology at Wake Forest University, and Charles Lee, Director of Special Projects on Toxic Justice of the Commission for Racial Justice of the United Church of Christ, were key in helping us identify conference participants. This was the first time that a retrieval/dissemination conference was held in the country where the majority of presenters of scholarly papers on race and the incidence of environmental hazards were people of color, a major step forward in getting such scholars to focus their attention, as a group, upon this issue. Before the Conference, race and the incidence of environmental hazards was seldom an issue—the disproportionate impact of environmental pollutants on minority communities was not recognized by policy makers or the white community. Today that is no longer true. Policy makers at high levels of the Environmental Protection Agency, for instance, are engaged in shaping and implementing policies related to environmental equity. The Conference helped to give national visibility to the debate on environmental equity, thus increasing the awareness of other government agencies and lay people alike. And while scholars had worked on various aspects of this issue, the Conference proved to be a vehicle where scholar-activists could come together to share their latest findings in an integrated whole, and to take steps to disseminate information about this important issue.

Two presentations were made concurrently, followed by two critiques from panel members before questions from the audience. The scholars and activists not only presented original papers, but several times throughout the Conference small core groups of participant observers (representatives from federal and state agencies such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, the Governor's Office of the State of Michigan, the Michigan Department of Minority Health, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, and others) along with presenters, met daily for an hour and a half each time to share information, and to focus on strategies for change and follow-up.

These small core group discussions proved to be intense and informative, and added much to the overall success of the Conference. During the final plenary session, each core group presented strategies for change and follow-up they had generated over the last several days; it was felt that we could ill afford not to follow-up on strategies that had been generated in the core groups. In fact some core groups called for an international conference on environmental equity for the following year, but most felt that a much larger national environmental conference, involving mainly community activists should be organized. The Michigan Conference led to four separate workshops on "Environmental Racism," which were a part of a large number of workshops, panels, movies and videos celebrating Martin Luther King Day activities at the University of Michigan in January of 1991. In October of 1991, under the leadership of the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice, the First People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit was organized. Dr. Benjamin Chavis, Executive Director of the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice, Ms. Gail Small, Esq., Executive Director of Native Action, the Honorable Toney Anaya, former Governor of the State of New Mexico, and Dr. Sygnman Rhee, President-Elect of the National Council of Churches were cochairs. More discussion about the Summit is given in the concluding chapter.

Another such follow-up strategy of the Michigan Conference was a meeting with key government officials, A subgroup of conferees stayed behind and drafted a memo requesting a meeting with Louis W. Sullivan, Secretary, United States Department of Health and Human Services, William K. Reilly, Administrator, United States Environmental Protection Agency, and Michael R. Deland, Chairman, Council on Environmental Quality, with carbon copies sent to all governors, various state legislators, and the Congressional Black Caucus. In this memo we proposed to discuss the agencies' involvement in:

1. Undertaking research geared towards understanding environmental risks faced by minority and low income communities;
2. Initiating projects to enhance risk communication targeted to minority and low-income population groups;
3. Requiring, on a demonstration basis, that racial and socioeconomic equity consideration be included in Regulatory Impact Assessments;
4. Ensuring that a racial and socioeconomic dimension is overlaid on present and future geographic studies of environmental risk;
5. Enhancing the ability of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and other minority institutions to participate in and contribute to the development of environmental equity;
6. Appointing special assistants for environmental equity at decision-making levels within these agencies; and
7. Developing a policy statement on environmental equity.

We met with William Reilly and an assistant of Michael Deland, on September 13, 1990. Because of scheduling problems we were unable to meet with Louis Sullivan. Of all the people we met with in Washington, including Congressman John Lewis, and staff members of Congressmen John Conyers and Ron Delums, the Council on Environmental Quality was least familiar with this issue. By the time we arrived in Washington, Administrator Reilly had already sent a memo to his 12,000 EPA employees recognizing Black History Month and stating more specifically the inherent value of having a multi-cultural workforce reflective of American society to help ensure an equitable environmental policy. He also put together an internal work group to work on issues raised at the Michigan Conference. And, on April 9, 1990, at the National Minority Environmental Career Conference at Howard University, he stated:

[P]articipants in the January 1990 University of Michigan Conference on Race and [the Incidence of] Environmental Hazards conducted an intensive review of environmental risk from a socio-economic perspective. This review pointed out significantly disproportionate health impacts on minorities due to higher rates of exposure to pollution.

To our knowledge, this was the first public recognition by the EPA that environmental hazards disproportionately impact people of color and the first time an Administrator of the EPA had agreed to meet with any group of primarily people of color to discuss environmental equity issues. It is also the first time that an EPA Administrator put together an internal workgroup to focus directly on these issues. This workgroup has now been working on a report on the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards upon communities of color for almost two years. While Administrator Reilly has made important strides in recognizing the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards on people of color, and has directed the agency to address this issue, the proof of the pudding will be not in the discourse or in the report itself but in tangible and productive outcomes.

It is abundantly clear that new political winds are beginning to blow across the country, altering the environmental movement, as people of color take up their struggle under the environmental banner as an alternative way of giving recognition to their unsung history of fighting for justice and clean, safe neighborhoods. Confronted with massive exposure to hazardous waste, threatened by freeways, urban decay, or by huge urban development—surrounded by concrete streets, buildings, parking lots, and playgrounds, cutting them off from wilderness areas—people of color have positioned their struggle for economic and social justice squarely in the front seat of the environmental movement People of color are beginning to realize that issues of environmental degradation, economics, power, politics, and racism are intricately interwoven and cannot be separated. Will people of color be able to redefine the traditional environmental movement to include issues of social justice? Is a decent paying and safe job a basic right or a privilege? With respect to the former question, environmentalists have long been remiss for not observing the urban environment as one that needs attention. As a consequence, they are viewed with suspicion by people of color, particularly as national environmental organizations try to fashion an urban agenda in the 1990s. To champion old growth forests or the protection of the snail darter or the habitat of spotted owls without championing clean safe urban environments or improved habitats of the homeless, does not bode well for future relations between environmentalists and people of color, and with the poor. It is not that forming positive relations with people of color and the indigent are impossible, but environmental organizations will have to earn their respect by being deeply committed to working with people of color to improve their biophysical environment, by responding to their quest for social justice. This relationship can never move off first base unless the urban agenda is dealt with in a fundamental way.

Is a clean safe environment a civil right? Communities of color across the land are beginning to feel they have the same right to clean, air, water, and an unpolluted land base as are more affluent suburbanites. They are questioning why their communities are used as receptacles for toxic and hazardous waste and polluting industries. They are in some cases downright angry that their communities are being poisoned so that others may live in affluence and in clean-safe biophysical environments. People of color also believe that decent and safe jobs are a civil right. Too often, mayors of cities are caught in the dilemma of having to choose between building commercial incinerators or landfills in order to woo industrial jobs for people who need them and environmentalists who claim pollutants from incinerators, landfills, and industries are not worth the price of long-term health effects. Although decent paying jobs in polluting industries may be an alternative to crime and delinquency, long-term health effects from polluted environs may mitigate against short-term economic gain. Even now the impoverished condition of communities of color and low-income people correlates with their health status.

An analysis of the statistical health chart may be interpreted to mean that the true meaning of the trickle down theory is not money or wealth but environmental stressors, giving rise to multiple health problems, and an abbreviated life expectancy. Those who are most vulnerable to environmental insults are among the millions in this country that are the least able to afford health insurance. Environmental health risks are inextricably linked to political economy of place, where "political and economic power are key factors which influence the spatial distribution of residential amenities and disamenities" (Bullard and Wright, 1987). Because of their impoverished condition, people of color can ill afford to move to the suburbs where cleaner air, water and neighborhoods abound.

People of color have grown distrustful of government agencies which try to find new and old ways of disposing environmental hazards in their communities; opposition to siting of hazardous waste facilities is now pervasive in communities across the country. Will compensation for mitigating public opposition to hazardous waste facility siting be enough? Even though it is appealing that multiple parties would benefit from negotiated facility siting, some will benefit more than others. Those that benefit the least are usually in close proximity to hazardous waste facilities and therefore are beginning to show the most public resistance; they are being asked to bear high personal costs (in the form of risk) while benefits of the facility accrue to often times more affluent and larger outside populations (Portney 1985). While O'Hare (1977) argues that economic incentives could be offered to local residents so that perceived benefits would eventually outweigh the perceived risks, the problem is that there is no way of calculating risks that are beyond the immediate perception. For example, although risks may not be a major problem now, fifteen years later, when local community groups begin to experience various health effects, negotiated economic benefits may not nearly be enough to compensate t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Toxic Waste and Race in the United States
• 3 Can the Environmental Movement Attract and Maintain the Support of Minorities?
• 4 The Environmental Voting Record of the Congressional Black Caucus
• 5 Toward a Model of "Environmental Discrimination"
• 6 Environmental Blackmail in Minority Communities
• 7 Invitation to Poison? Detroit Minorities and Toxic Fish Consumption from the Detroit River
• 8 Minority Anglers and Toxic Fish Consumption: Evidence from a Statewide Survey of Michigan
• 9 The Effects of Occupational Injury, Illness, and Disease on the Health Status of Black Americans: A Review
• 10 Hazardous Waste Incineration and Minority Communities
• 11 Environmentalism and Civil Rights in Sumter County, Alabama
• 12 Uranium Production and Its Effects on Navajo Communities Along the Rio Puerco in Western New Mexico
• 13 Environmental Racism: Reviewing the Evidence
• 14 Pesticide Exposure of Farm Workers and the International Connection
• 15 The Dumping of Toxic Waste in African Countries: A Case of Poverty and Racism
• 16 Summary
• References