Michael K. Dorsey

Michael K. Dorsey, a member of the U.S. Delegation to UNCED, for Justice and Sustainability in Oxon Hill, Maryland.

The idea that pollution is equitably distributed pervades the rhetoric and policies of many institutions charged with protecting the global environment. Notions like “we are all in this together,” “the circle of poison,” and “Our Common Future” distract policymakers and scholars from realizing that there is a pattern of disproportionate exposure to environmental hazards and degradation among marginalized people. Globally, those on the margins tend to be racial and ethnic minorities, poor, less educated, politically powerless, or all of the above. The fact that marginalized people bear the brunt of environmental degradation should come as no surprise (1). Yet, the idea that those on the margins are intentionally targeted for pollution and purposely forgotten during mitigation efforts is a relatively new and, for some, a controversial notion. In the United States, scholars, policymakers, and activists have referred to this phenomenon as “environmental racism.” It is defined most succinctly by Benjamin Chavis as:

racial discrimination in environmental policymaking and the enforcement of regulations and laws, the deliberate targeting of people of color communities for toxic and hazardous waste facilities, the official sanctioning of the life-threatening presence of poisons and pollutants in [those] communities, and the history of excluding people of color from the leadership of the environmental movement (2).

Attempts to address environmental racism have come largely under the rubric of the U.S.-based movement for environmental justice. This movement has been principally led by researchers, scholars, activists, and policymakers, who have argued in countless studies, reports, congressional testimonies, theoretical and lay books and journals—as well as in print and broadcast media—that environmental racism is a real problem that must be addressed (3). Despite this legacy of painstaking scholarship, heartfelt campaigns, and the painful loss of health and life by survivors of environmental racism, countervailing studies—some funded by polluting industries deemed perpetrators—have attempted to discredit the existence of environmental racism (4). These studies, as well as those who quibble over the facts, miss the crucial point: that the movement to end environmental racism is the first broad-based effort by marginalized people to fundamentally redefine and reshape one of the largest social movements of modern time: the environmental movement. Accordingly, it seems appropriate to examine how responses to environmental racism took shape in the United States and what the international implications might be.

References and notes

1. For a good list of cases studies, see the "Suggested Reading" in K. Danaher, ed., 50 Years Is Enough: The Case Against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (South End Press, Boston, 1994), pp.188–89.

2. Benjamin Chavis, "The Historical Significance and Challenges of the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit," in Proceedings of the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit (United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice, Washington, D.C., 1991).

3. For detailed evidence of the existence of environmental racism beyond the U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) 1983 study Siting of Hazardous Waste Landfills and Their Correlation with Racial and Economic Status of Surrounding Communities (GAO/RCED-83-168) (U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1983) and the 1987 United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice study Toxic Waste and Race in the United States: A National Report on the Racial and Socioeconomic Characteristics of Communities with Hazardous Wastes Sites (Public Access, New York, 1987), see also: Bunyan Bryant and Paul Mohai, eds., Race and the Incidence of Environmental Hazards: A Time for Discourse (Westview, Boulder, Colorado, 1992); Michel Gelobter, The Distribution of Outdoor Air Pollution by Income and Race: 1970–1984, Master’s Thesis, Energy and Resources Group (University of California, Berkeley, Califonia, 1987). For a discussion on how and why environmental racism, not classicism, has worsened since initial studies in the late 1980s identifying the problem, see Benjamin Goldman and Laura J. Fitton, Toxic Waste and Race Revisited (Center for Policy Alternatives, Washington, D.C., 1993).

4. For criticisms, see Vicki Been, "Market Dynamics and the Siting of LULUs: Questions to Raise in the Classroom About Existing Research," West Virginia Law Review 96, No. 4 (1994), pp. 1069–78; Christopher Boerner and Thomas Lambert, "Environmental Injustice," The Public Interest,  No. 118 (Winter 1995), pp. 61–82; Douglas Anderson et al., "Hazardous Waste Facilities: ‘Environmental Equity’ Issues in Metropolitan Areas," Evaluation Review, Vol. 18, No. 2 (April 1994), pp. 123–40. Note also that Anderson et al. was funded by a grant from Waste Management Incorporated, the largest waste management corporation in the United States.

5. Donald Snow, ed., Voices From the Environmental Movement: Perspectives for a New Era (Island Press, Washington, D.C., 1992), p. 75.

6.  For more on this topic, see Dorceta Taylor, "Can the Environmental Movement Attract and Maintain the Support of Minorities," in Race and the Incidence of Environmental Hazards: A Time for Discourse, Bunyan Bryant, ed. (Westview, Boulder, Colorado, 1992), pp. 28–54.