Environmental Racism

Defining Environmental Racism

Environmental racism can be defined as a form of differential treatment affecting minorities (who are often also low-income groups) in ways that produce environmental disadvantages. These disadvantages include (a) differentials in exposure to a variety of environmental hazards, such as air, water, and soil pollution, hazardous waste facilities, and toxic waste sites; (b) the unequal placement or siting of hazardous waste or toxic waste facilities in minority communities; (c) unequal detrimental health impacts associated with exposure or proximity to pollution-producing or hazardous waste sites and facilities; (d) inequity in government responses toward the dangers, hazards, and conditions posed by pollution and hazardous waste sites in minority communities; (e) the distribution of, or access to, environmental advantages such as parks and recreational areas as well as aspects of the urban environment, including public transportation; and (f) inequities in the design and implementation of environmental laws, regulations, and responses. The goal of environmental racism research is to expose the relationship between race (and often ethnicity and social class) and environmental inequities that focus on the intersection of “race, space and place” (Bullard, 2007) in an effort to generate awareness of these discrepancies and public policies designed to alleviate these conditions.

Environmental Racism and the Environmental Justice Movement

The term environmental racism emerged from the environmental justice movement, which is linked to three key events that occurred during the 1980s. The first study of environmental justice, performed by Robert Bullard during the late 1970s, examined the relationship between the distribution of solid waste facilities in Houston and the spatial proximity of those sites to Black communities. Bullard, a leading scholar and activist in this area and often referred to as “the father” of the environmental justice movement, was also instrumental in writing Executive Order 12898 on environmental justice (“Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Population and Low-Income Populations”), issued in 1994 under the Clinton administration.

Another important development in the history of this term was the emergence of the first environmental justice protest in Warren County, North Carolina, in 1982. Local residents from a primarily African American, low-income community challenged the placement of a state PCB (polychlorinated biphenyl) landfill within its boundaries. This event, which included the arrest of 500 protestors, led to the first governmental study of environmental justice by the Government Accounting Office, which exposed a pattern of inequitable hazardous waste facility siting. This study was followed by a national report on these issues by the United Church of Christ, which established the basic elements for the definition of environmental racism.

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