Race and Garbage

History

Environmental racism, the foisting of a disproportionate amount of pollutants on minority and low-income communities, represents a great injustice: having to choose between health and claims of economic stability amid acceptance of hazardous pollutants. Exposure to pollution in the 20th century not only included placing waste sites in minority communities but also involved hiring members of those communities to handle wastes. The Memphis Public Works Department, for example, hired hundreds of African American men to pick up the city's garbage under dangerous conditions that prompted the workers to strike in 1968. By the 1980s, communities in several urban and rural areas actively resisted and began researching the racial dimensions [Page 722]of waste handling. In an effort to stem the tide of environmental discrimination, grassroots organizations sprang up across the nation, attempting to fight for the right to live healthily.

In an attempt to move from purely anecdotal case studies to empirical evidence, several studies have been conducted. In the first such attempt, Dr. Robert Bullard examined population data of Houston, Texas, among communities hosting landfills and incinerators, finding that while African Americans made up only 28 percent of the city's population, three-quarters of incinerators and over 88 percent of landfills were located in predominantly African American neighborhoods. Following this study, in 1991, the General Accounting Office (GAO) conducted a study of the racial demographics of hazardous waste sites, reporting that three-quarters of commercial hazardous landfills in the southeast United States were located in predominantly African American communities. In 1995, the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice found that within zip codes housing one waste plant, the minority population was double that of zip codes with no waste plant. Within zip codes housing more than one waste plant, the percentage of minority residents was three times greater than that of communities with no waste facilities.

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