NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #26/NN_1992_26.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/8243

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From: [e-mail] (Rich Winkel)
Subject: CENSORED: ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM
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THE SPECTER OF ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM

No one segment of society should have a monopoly on clean air, clean
water, or a clean workplace; nor should any one segment be targeted for
society' s wastes.  Nevertheless, some individuals, neighborhoods, and
communities are forced to bear the brunt of the nation's pollution
problem.  People of color are disproportionately affected by
industrial toxins, dirty air and drinking water, and the location of
municipal landfills, incinerators, and hazardous waste treatment,
storage, and disposal facilities.

This form of "environmental racism" is due primarily to exclusionary
zoning laws, discriminatory land-use practices, industrial facility
siting that targets racial and ethnic minority communities, and the
unequal enforcement of environmental regulations.

According to The Workbook (Fall 1991):

* 60 percent of the total black population and 60 percent of the total
Hispanic population live in communities with one or more uncontrolled
toxic waste sites.

* About half of all Asian/Pacific Islanders and Native Americans live in
communities with uncontrolled toxic waste sites.

* Three of the five largest commercial hazardous waste landfills,
which account for 40 percent of the nation's total estimated landfill
capacity, are located in predominantly black or Hispanic communi-
ties.

* Lead poisoning endangers the health of nearly 8 million inner-city
children, mostly black and Hispanics.

* Reproductive cancer among Navajo teenagers is 17 times the national
average.

* In 1988, of the 1 I major national environmental organizations, only
six minority persons were found serving on the boards, and only 222
(16.8%) minorities were employed of a total of 1,317 staff members; only
24 percent of those were professionals.

The waste management and hazardous chemical industries have targeted
minorities as the least likely to resist their efforts to locate facili-
ties nobody else wants.  And their callous, self-serving program is
succeeding.

(SSU CENSORED RESEARCHER:  MARIA BROSNAN)

SOURCE:THE WORKBOOK P.O.  BOX 4524, Albuquerque, NM 87106

DATE:Fall 1991

TITLE:  "Beyond Ankle-biting:  Fighting Environmental Discrimination
Locally Nationally, and Globally"'

AUTHORS:Kathy Cone Newton with Frances Ortega

COMMENTS:  Author Kathy Cone said she doesn't "think 'average'
Americans think much about the effects of water and air pollution on
minorities or have thought about the fact that the distribution of
polluting industries and hazardous wastes can be a racial question at
all.  Of course, the people who are directly affected, who live with it
every day and suffer the health effects or just plain grimness of
living with it, as evidenced by so many articles in the grass-roots
press, know they are victims of prejudice, whether racial or economic.
As a group, surely they would benefit from more attention in the mass
media because their plight would be recognized and a 'face' would be put
on their dilemma.  And with greater media exposure, Americans who
aren't suffering from environmental pollution because they're able to
live as far from the sources as possible would gradually become unable
to deny that to live with clean air and clean water, in a healthy
environment, is fast becoming a privilege and not a right.  A lot of
people think that those who live near the chemical plants or dumps or
toxic waste storage tanks do it either by choice or indifference -- and
they are simply unaware that industry actually deliberately targets
groups of people who are the least likely to resist facilities in their
neighborhoods or to insist on stringent regulations.  Without public
awareness of the practice it will surely continue without broad public
resistance."

Further, Cone suggests that the polluters "won't have to reduce their
production of hazardous materials and wastes as long as the only people
making the fuss are those without political power or economic indepen-
dence and the rest of us can go on believing it really isn't that bad. l
think it's tremendously important for the issue to be given steady
attention by the alternative press, but as long as it stays there, there
won't be enough public pressure to insist on everyone's right to clean
air and water."

Cone's hope is that "more articles and news coverage will focus on the
health risks and reduction in quality of life for people who live in
polluted surroundings and to expose the predominance of polluted
environments in places where America's poor and minority people live.
What exists now in the public mind is that we have to live with the
pollution -- or somebody does -- in order to keep jobs and provide
economic growth.  Industry, as long as it escapes scrutiny by the mass
media, will be able to keep on promoting this either-or notion of jobs
vs. clean environment."