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Sharmaine N. Fisher

Dr. Regina Oost

ENG 396

6 November, 2018

Nature Adores a Vacuum: My Artist Statement on the Prevalence of Environmental Racism

The first time I read Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, it was for Dr. Doherty’s

course Narratives of Race and Gender. It was an entertaining and heart-tugging read by one of

the world’s greatest science-fiction writers. I even did a facilitation group discussion on it.

However, a topic that never came to mind until I perused the Internet over a year later was a

theme that was relevant to both Parable of the Sower and current events--environmental racism.

Environmental racism, I initially assumed, was an interdisciplinary study focusing on the

physical and economic effects people of color suffered due to some negative event on natural

resources, e.g. water or food sources. This paper, which expands my understanding of this topic,

is a result of my interest in the topic and my desire of storytelling, to see how I can combine

academic research with my creative writing pursuits.

Of course, “environmental racism” and “environmental injustice” were terms coined long

before I realized their existences. The environmental justice movement began with two men: Dr.

Benjamin Chavis and Jesse Jackson. Chavis, as executive director of the United Church of Christ

Commission of Racial Justice, introduced the concept in 1982 while protesting a North Carolina

waste site for PCB (a type of toxic chemical). He has a much more comprehensive definition

than what I originally had:

“ [It is] racial discrimination in environmental policy making and the unequal

enforcement of environmental laws and regulations. It is the deliberate targeting

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of people of color communities for toxic waste facilities and the official

sanctioning of a life threatening presence of poisons and pollutants in people of

color communities. It is also manifested in the history of excluding people of

color from the leadership of the environmental movement. (qtd. in Jeffries 98)

According to University of California professor Robert Bullard, such policy-making can have

intended and unintended consequences (Jeffries 98). Moreover, Chavis and the United Church

published a report, titled Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States, outlining several important

statistics. For example, three out of five black people lived in or near old toxic waste sites, and

such urban sites were disproportionately occupied by black people. Forty percent of hazardous

waste was dumped in communities of color. POC were two times likelier to live within a

commercial hazardous waste facility and three times likelier to live near a large landfill and other

waste sites.

Jesse Jackson, during his 1984 presidential bid, also brought attention to both racial and

socioeconomic environmental injustice. His platform cited toxic waste in minority and working-

class neighborhoods, violence and reduced quality of life, and even acid rain in New Hampshire.

No longer were events such as Earth Day and trash-collecting something “abstract--and at worst,

irrelevant--to the practical conditions of [African-American] lives” (Marable 239).

Environmental injustice had a very specific target--and the bullseye was square on the backs of

black and Latinx citizens.

Los Angeles was ground zero for air pollution caused by benzene, chromium,

formaldehyde, and smog-causing hydrocarbons. According to the South Coast Air Quality

Management District, almost nine and half billion dollars went into treating patients who fell ill

from air pollution. The most recurring conditions were asthma and HIV/AIDS contracted by
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ruined immune systems. In Chicago, black youth suffered from asthma (the males dying three

times more often than asthmatic white males), permanent brain damage, and childhood cancer

that occurred at four times the national average (Marable 243). Despite the debilitating

consequences of air pollution, corporation, as Dr. Chavis noted, were not open to changing the

production or dumping practices. When AQMD held public hearings on the issue, the

businesses’ lawyers argued that tighter restrictions would eventuate into high costs, reduced

profits, and lost jobs; self-regulation was instead the way to go. They also minimized general

health concerns by deeming the afflictions themselves as too minor, as well as rationaling that

emissions from tall smokestacks spread the wastes to “hundreds of thousands of people in small

amounts”, thus posing no real risk (Marable 242).

Unfortunately, there was not much black and Latinx people could do to convince these

businesses otherwise; their voices would often be heard too little, too late. Marable mentions that

during the AQMD hearing, “many board members casually stood up and walked out...when

black, Latino, and working-class people were testifying. But when the corporate lawyers in

thousand-dollar suits walked to the podium, all AQMD board members scrambled back to their

seats” (242). It figures, considering that POC affected by the pollution had limited involvement

in the decisions for where these corporations could move (which the federal law currently does

not place a limit on) (Fields 97). Residents could only express their contention after the fact, such

as with the AQMD hearings and the construction of a waste disposal facility in McDowell

County, Virginia, one of America’s poorest counties. The McDowell facility, which offered to

pay for sewage, taxes, and 300 new jobs, virtually gave residents only two choices--work a job

that contributed to heavy pollution, or struggle with unemployment (Field 97).

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Black and Latinx people bore the brunt of these conundrums such companies put

residents in. In 1998 Los Angeles, seventy-one percent of blacks of half of the Latinxs--

compared to only about a third of white people--lived in the most polluted communities (Faber

5). On top of that, inadequate housing and healthcare led to exposure to extreme temperatures,

which exacerbated pollution-related health problems. However, since these two races were

disproportionately represented the working- and lower-classes, they had to fall back on jobs that

often involved handling toxic chemicals, including janitorial duties, dry cleaning, textiles, and

furniture-making (Marable 244). For the sake of profit, these waste disposal facilities and

businesses using dangerous chemicals forced a troublesome decision on the local people of

color: to indirectly work themselves to death, or, without jobs, to starve to death.

Works Cited
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Almeida, Paul. “The Network for Environmental and Economic Justice in the Southwest:

An Interview with Richard Moore.” The Struggle of Ecological Democracy:

Environmental Justice Movements in the United States, edited by Daniel Faber, The

Guilford Press, 1998, pp. 159-187.

Adeola, Francis O. and J. Steven Picou. “Hurricane Katrina-linked environmental

injustice: race, class, and place differentials in attitudes.” Disasters, vol. 41, no. 2, Apr.

2017, pp. 228-257. EBSCOhost. doi:10.1111/disa.12204.

Faber, Daniel. “Introduction.” The Struggle of Ecological Democracy: Environmental

Justice Movements in the United States, edited by Daniel Faber, The Guilford Press,

1998, pp. 1-25.

Field, Rodger C. “Risk and Justice: Capitalist Production and the Environment.” The

Struggle of Ecological Democracy: Environmental Justice Movements in the United

States, edited by Daniel Faber, The Guilford Press, 1998, pp. 81-103.

Food Empowerment Project. “The Food Industry is Complicit with Environmental

Racism.” Environmental Racism and Classism, edited by Anne C. Cunningham,

Greenhaven Publishing, 2016, pp. 45-51.

Jeffries, Kent. “Environmental Racism Should Be Put in Perspective.” Environmental

Racism and Classism, edited by Anne C. Cunningham, Greenhaven Publishing, 2016, pp.

97-113.

Marable, Manning. Black Liberation in Conservative America. Boston, South End Press,

1997.

Melosi, Martin V, et al., editors. The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. Vol. 8,

University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

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Pezzullo, Phaedra C. “Touring ‘Cancer Alley,’ Louisiana: Performances of Community

and Memory for Environmental Justice.” Text & Performance Quarterly, vol. 23, no. 3.,

Jul. 2003, pp. 226-252. EBSCOhost,

http://web.a.ebscohost.com.wesleyancollege.idm.oclc.org/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid

=2&sid=760e24f3-7309-4e61-8937-0d3f6edd4d0f%40sessionmgr4007.

Ross, Jean. “Flint’s Water Crisis Fits a Pattern of Environmental Injustice.”

Environmental Racism and Classism, edited by Anne C. Cunningham, Greenhaven

Publishing, 2016, pp. 36-39.

Wakes, Nakiya. “The Flint Water Crisis.” Anglican Theological Review, vol. 100, no. 1,

Winter 2018, pp. 143-145. EBSCOhost, proxygsu-

wes1.galileo.usg.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a

qh&AN=127770226&site=ehost-live.