Environmental Racism

Environmental racism refers to the disproportionate distribution of environmental risks and exclusion of people of color from environmental decision making, by both environmental organizations and regulatory agencies. The increase in environmental burdens borne by people of color can come either from regulations that result in higher risks in particular communities or from the inequitable enforcement of regulations.

The first known use of the term “environmental racism” was in 1987, when Benjamin Chavis, then executive director of the United Church of Christ's Commission on Racial Justice, announced at a press conference the release of the report Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States. The first national-scale study of the demographic characteristics of communities near waste sites concluded that people of color, especially in urban areas, are more likely to live near uncontrolled toxic-waste sites than are whites. The report became an authoritative voice on the issue; all subsequent research about equity in the distribution of environmental risk refined, substantiated, or rejected the UCC's methodology or conclusion. Starting in 1994, a series of studies challenged the idea that people of color were disproportionately affected by environmental risks. The methodological critiques included challenges in four areas: the definition of an affected community, measurements of race and class, criteria for comparison, and measurements of risk.

[Page 246]Communities of color experienced higher environmental risks prior to naming the phenomenon. Much of the discriminatory distribution of environmental risks was tied to exclusionary housing and land-use practices that forced people of color to live in locations with higher pollution levels from industrial contamination. The 1971 annual report of the Council on Environmental Quality indicated that racial discrimination in urban land use and housing practices contributed to lower environmental quality of the urban poor and people of color. Efforts to improve housing, reduce trash, and reclaim vacant lots in poor urban neighborhoods were a significant part of the overall endeavors to improve the quality of life of poor people of color. Prior to the 1980s, rarely were these activities labeled environmental action; they were more often described as community organizing or neighborhood development. Community organizing to stop environmental racism began in earnest after the UCC report.

The impetus to conduct a study of the demographic characteristics of communities near waste facilities emerged from the participation of the UCC Commission for Racial Justice in a series of protest events in 1982 against a chemical-waste landfill in Afton, Warren County, North Carolina. After an illegal dumping of liquid containing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) onto state road shoulders, the state of North Carolina decided to build the landfill to hold the 40,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil. The protests were part of the growing opposition to facility sitings under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and the Toxic Substances Control Act, but the Warren County protests stood out among the burgeoning anti-toxic movement because several prominent civil rights leaders were among those arrested, and the protesters argued that the government chose the Afton site because of environmental racism: The majority-black population in Warren County made it a place of least resistance to the politically charged decision of siting the chemical-waste landfill. The protests underscored the conviction that social and political issues, based in particular belief systems, would influence environmental decisions. Immediately following the protests, Representative Walter Fauntroy (D-DC) arranged for the General Accounting Office (GAO) of the U.S. Congress to investigate the demographic characteristics of commercial waste sites in the South. Although a very small-scale investigation, the GAO report indicated that environmental racism could be influencing the location of waste facilities. The UCC report was designed to follow up and expand on the initial investigation by the GAO.

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