Whose Backyard?
The Geography of Environmental Racism

Karen Butler
Loganville High School
Loganville, GA

Grade: Advanced Placement/College

Continent: North America/World

Key Words: race, racism, environmental racism

Time Needed: Three to five class periods

Overview: In the study of culture, the terms race and racism need to be defined. As a means of giving meaning to racism in modern society, this lesson adds the dimension of environmentalism, therefore, taking it into the area of political geography. The advancement of technology has brought with it the problem of toxic and hazardous wastes. Where do we put them? Why do we dispose of these wastes in the places we do? Who makes these decisions? This lesson proposes to answer these questions by using lecture, small group discussion, research, and GIS mapping.


Definition of Key Words:

Race - a group, a population characterized by some concentrations, relative as to frequency and distribution of genes or physical characters which appear, fluctuate, and often disappear in the course of time by reason of geographic and/or cultural isolation

Racialism - the expression of prejudice which may or may not be hostility directed against the group which serves as an ostensible target, or an affirmation of solidarity with the group to which the person belongs.

Environmental racism - the idea that environmental laws, regulations, and policies have not been applied fairly across segments of the population.

Objectives: Students will be able to:
1. Identify several toxic or hazardous waste sites in the United States.
2. Define race, racism, and environmental racism.
3. Analyze forces that make decisions for placement of environmental hazards.
4. Evaluate the underlying causes of environmental racism.
5. Create a map of hazardous site(s) and minority populations.
6. Understand the political, economic, and social aspects of the map site(s) they have created.

Materials:
1. Background Materials - Race, Racism, Environmental Racism (below)
2. Packet of documents and maps:

Bullard, Robert D. 1994. Map: People of Color Grassroots Environmental Groups, Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of Color. San Francisco: Sierra Club Press.

Cutter, Susan. 1993. Living With Risk: The Geography of Technological Hazards. London: Edward Arnold, 4-5, 27-28, 95, 114, 118, 120, 123-124, 127-128, 130, 137-138, 141, 143, 152-153, 174.

Meyer, Eugene L. 1992. "Environmental Racism", Audubon. (Jan. Feb.): 30-32.

Russell, Dick. 1989. "Environmental Racism", Amicus Journal. 11 (Spring): 22-32.

Satchell. Michael. 1993. "Trashing the Reservations?", U. S. News & World Report. Vol. 113. No. 1 P.24.

Suro, Roberto. 1993. "Pollution-Weary Minorities Try Civil Rights Tack", The New York Times. Sec. A, p. 1.

3. Document Questions from readings and maps (below)
4. GIS software and computer stations
5. Evaluation Assignments (below)

Preparation:
1. Teacher should research environmental racism using materials in this lesson and further bibliographic materials. From this research, teacher should prepare a lecture to introduce the topic.
2. Teacher should read and review the documents in the packet. The materials should be reproduced for the students.
3. Teacher should become familiar with the operation of the GIS software program and be prepared to instruct students in its operation.
4. Teacher should duplicate the questions and assignment sheet.


Background Materials - Race, Racism, Environmental Racism

Race is a relatively new idea. It emerged in the 19th century as the evidence for evolution began to accumulate. Prior to this time Europeans generally had believed that the book of Genesis furnished an historical account of man's creation and the peopling of the world. Scientists thought race offered a key to human history. It explained why the peoples of the world differed so much in their civilizations and in their technological achievements. They were wrong but it took years to make the mistake apparent. The idea became popular because it was convenient for those in power to feel superior to peoples of backward countries. Ideas about race had been built into a social myth which had been used to deny quality to peoples of another race.

There is also evidence accumulating which indicates that the expression of prejudice may not be hostility directed against the group which serves as an ostensible target, so much as an affirmation of solidarity with the group to which the speaker belongs.

The basic causes of racialism are economic and social. But those who show racial discrimination justify their attitude by ideas and illustrations taken from biology: that there are innate value differences between human groups but, in contrast, the representation of the hereditary characteristics of the members of these groups in the form of stereotypes. In the racialist's view not only is one group (their own) naturally superior to all other groups, but any member of their own group is superior to any member of the other. This belief goes hand in hand with hostility to the intrusion of 'inferior' blood into the genetic inheritance of the group with which they identify themselves. This may be race, caste, or social class.

Scientists have reached general agreement in recognizing that mankind is one: that all men belong to the same species, Homo sapiens. It is further generally agreed among scientists that all men are probably derived from the same common stock, and that such differences exist between different groups mankind due to the operation of evolutionary factors of differentiation such as isolation...

The term 'race' designates a group, a population characterized by some concentrations, relative as to frequency and distribution of genes or physical characters which appear, fluctuate, and often disappear in the course of time by reason of geographic and/or cultural isolation.

National, religious, geographic, linguistic and cultural groups do not necessarily coincide with racial groups. It would be better when speaking of human races to drop the term 'race' altogether and speak of ethnic groups.

The human problems arising from so-called 'race' relations are social in origin rather than biological. A basic problem is that in racism, namely, anti-social beliefs and acts, which are based on the fallacy that discriminatory intergroup relations, are justifiable on biological grounds. Racism falsely claims that there is a scientific basis for arranging groups hierarchically in terms of psychological and cultural characteristics that are unmutable and innate.

Racism has historical roots. It has not been a universal phenomenon. Many contemporary societies and cultures show little trace of it. It was not evident for long periods in world history. Many forms of racism have arisen out of the conductions of conquest, out of the justification of Negro slavery and its aftermath of racial inequality in the West, and out of the colonial relationship. Among other examples, is that of anti-Semitism, which has played a particular role in history, with Jews being the chosen scapegoat to take the blame for problems and crises met by many societies.

Social and economic causes of racial prejudice are particularly observed in settler societies wherein are found conditions of great disparity of power and property and in certain urban areas where there have emerged ghettos in which individuals are deprived of equal access to employment, housing, political participation, education, and the administration of justice, and in many societies where social and economic tasks which are deemed to be contrary to the ethics or beneath the dignity of its members are assigned to a group of different origins who are derided, blamed, and punished for taking on these tasks. (UNESCO)

In its current sense of a social classification based on physical distinctions of skin colour, hair type and biological descent, the word "race" seems to have come into the English language from French and Italian roots in the late-18th century. The word was present as early as the late-16th century in various senses relating to human descent and to the differentiation of plant and animal species. In the mid-19th century, the scientific study of human differentiation became radically confused with other ideas about social progress and human evolution. This confusion is commonly associated with Social Darwinism - ideas about competition for survival between the species were extended to social and political debates about conflict within species.

Among the most notable developments we would highlight a growing concern for the politics of "race"; an increasing sensitivity to questions of representation. Underlying these developments has been a growing insistence on problematizing the very idea of "race" rather than simply mapping the categories that are recorded as "fact" in population censuses and other official statistics. (Jackson & Penrose)

The nation's environmental laws, regulations, and policies have not been applied fairly across segments of the population. Some individuals, groups, and communities receive less protection than others do because of their geographic location, race, and economic status. Generally, environmental problems in suburban areas pose fewer public health threats than do those in urban or rural areas. Moreover, low-income communities and communities of color bear a disproportionate burden of the nation's pollution problems.

Over the years, disparities have been created, tolerated, and institutionalized by local, state, and federal action. Ex.: Houston, Texas has a long-standing history of locating its solid waste facilities in communities of color, especially in African American neighborhoods. From the early-1920s to the late-1970s, all five of the city-owned sanitary landfills and six of its eight municipal solid waste incinerators were located in mostly African American neighborhoods. Similarly, three of the four privately-owned solid waste landfills were located in mostly African communities during this period. African Americans, however, made up only 28% of the city's population.

A 1983 GAO (General Accounting Office) study found a strong relationship between the location of off-site hazardous waste landfills to the race and socioeconomic status of the surrounding communities. The states involved were Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee.

Patterns of Location - The disproportionate location of sources of toxic pollution in communities of color are the result of various development patterns. In some cases, the residential communities where people of color now live were originally the homes of whites that worked in the facilities that generate toxic emissions. The housing and the industry sprang up roughly simultaneously. Whites vacated the housing (but not necessarily the jobs) for better shelter as their socioeconomic status improved, and poorer black and brown folks, who enjoy much less residential mobility, took their place. In other cases, housing for African American and Latino Americans was built in the vicinity of existing industrial operations because the land was cheap and the people were poor. Ex.: Richmond, Calif. Was developed downwind from a Chevron oil refinery when African Americans migrated to the area to work in shipyards during WWII.

In yet a third pattern, sources of toxic pollution were placed in existing minority communities. The explanation for such placements is numerous; some reflect the impact of racial and ethnic discrimination. The impact, of course, may be attenuated and less than obvious. The most neutral basis for a site choice is probably the natural characteristics of the land, such as mineral content of soil. Low population density would appear to be a similar criterion. It has been argued, however, that in the South, a sparse concentration of inhabitants is correlated with poverty, which is, in turn, correlated with race. "It follows that criteria for siting hazardous waste facilities which include density of population will have the effect of targeting rural black communities that have high rates of poverty. (Bullard)

Bibliography:

Bullard, Robert D. (ed.). 1994. Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of Color . San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books.

Jackson, Peter and Jan Penrose (eds). 1994. Constructions of Race, Place and Nation . Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

UNESCO. 1969. Four Statements on the Race Question . Paris, France. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.




Document Questions

Read the documents and maps and answer the following questions:

1. What are the patterns found in environmental racism?

2. Why are so many toxic and hazardous sites located near minority housing?

3. What role(s) has the government played in this environmental problem?

4. Choose one example and explain how the culture of the group has affected their situation.

5. Where should these waste materials be placed? Why?


Evaluation Assignments:

Environmental Racism
Assignment

Your assignments from this lesson will be completed in two parts.

Part 1: Choose a topic from the document handouts and create a layered map (GIS) of two or more topics provided in the materials. Be sure your map has legend, title, and labels.

Part 2: Choose one toxic waste site or proposed waste site. Realize that toxic and hazardous wastes are a reality. Research the problem(s). Give the essential data. Analyze the causes and probable solutions. Give your opinion as to the most acceptable solution to the situation. The completed document should be typed double spaced two to three pages in length.


Activities:

1. Begin with a lecture/discussion on race, racism, and environmental racism.
2. Ask students for examples of environmental racism that they may know about.
3. Show overheads of waste sites.
4. Show overheads of population percentages at or near the waste sites.
5. Discuss why these populations live where they do.
6. Hand out documents and maps.
7. Have students work in small groups to interpret the materials handed out.
8. Have students answer questions on the materials.
9. Assign task of researching one or more toxic or hazardous waste sites.
10. Assign task of mapping the waste site(s) and the ethnicity of the populations living in the vicinity.
11. Assign a brief report (2-3 pages) stating the research completed and the conclusions derived from the analysis of the problem.

Evaluation:

1. Evaluate student's computer-generated maps of the waste site and population factors.
2. Evaluate the student's written conclusions for clarity of expression and critical analysis of the problem researched.



Assessment


Multiple Choice:

1. An example of a non-point source from the three main sources of water pollution would be:

A. a municipal sewage system
B. manufacture wastewater runoff
C. petroleum spills
D. leakage from underground tanks
E. fertilizer runoff from pasture land

2. Attitudes that develop into racial discrimination may:

A. not be hostility directed toward the target group but rather an affirmation of solidarity with the group to which the person belongs.
B. Reveal the belief that their own group is naturally superior to all other groups but a member of the other may be superior to some members of their own group.
C. Be that the basic causes of racialism are biological rather than economic and social.
D. Come from the beliefs based on the historical roots as a universal phenomenon.
E. Be derived in societies where conditions of less disparity of power than property and conditions lead to social and economic tasks which are beneath the dignity of the assigned group.

3. The nation's environmental laws, regulations, and policies have not been applied fairly across the population because:

I. Some individuals receive less protection than others do as a result of their geographic location, race, and economic status.
II. Generally, environmental problems in suburban areas pose fewer health threats than do those in urban or rural areas.
III. Low income communities and communities of color bear a disproportionate burden of the nation's pollution problems.
IV. Disparities have not been created, tolerated, and institutionalized by local and state action.
V. Studies did not find a strong relationship between location and socioeconomic status of the surrounding communities.

Which of the preceding statements are correct?
A. I, II, & IV
B. II, III, & V
C. I, III, & V
D. I, II, & III
E. I, II, III, & V

4. A development pattern of location of a hazardous waste site is that:

A. Sources of toxic pollution are placed in existing minority communities.
B. Minority communities have sought municipal contracts for dump sites to increase their income.
C. Housing and disposal sites were built simultaneously using the landfill to increase the availability of land.
D. African American and Latino Americans have been attracted to these locations because the housing was more upscale than their previous homes.
E. Landfills are located for reasons of convenience over reasons of economy.


Short Answer:

The following percentages of total U.S. white, black, and Hispanic populations are living in areas polluted by:

Dust, soot and other particles
White 15%
Black 17%
Hispanic 34%

Carbon Monoxide
White 34%
Black 46%
Hispanic 57%

Ozone
White 53%
Black 62%
Hispanic 71%

From: Suro, Roberto. "Pollution-Weary Minorities Try Civil Rights Tack", The New York Times. 1-11-1993.

1. Using the chart above explain the pattern of environmental racism and non-point diffusion.

2. Define environmental racism and give the origin of the term.

3. Give one instance where a minority has sought waste dumping in their space and explain their reasoning.


Extended Essay:

Answer the following questions to the best of your ability giving specific examples to explain your answer.

1. "It's our enlightened self-interest to be involved in seeking environmental justice, or we risk being irrelevant" is a statement made by Michael L. Fischer of the Sierra Club speaking at the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit. Evaluate the impact of this group in the diffusion of minority support on environmental issues.

2. Evaluate the strategy of concentration as a method of solid waste management. Include the geographical advantages and consequences of these method and possible alternative solutions.


Performance Event:

Using tables and/or charts from the handouts or from researching this topic, create a computer-generated map (GIS) of a geographical feature of environmental racism.

Portfolio Item:

The written report created as a result from the research of a hazardous waste site(s) will be the portfolio item.

Rubric for the Essays:

Essays will be scored on a scale of 1 - 9 with 9 being the highest score.


7 - 9 A well-formed thesis statement which includes all elements of the question
Answers both parts of the questions with equal concentration
Essay is well-organized with only minor errors
Includes specific examples to explain their answers

4 - 6 The thesis statement is the question reworded
Answers one part of the question well or both parts generally
Essay is organized with some errors
May include mention of examples but are not well-defined

1 - 3 No thesis statement
Question is not completely addressed in either part
Little or no organization
May include major errors
Vague generalizations


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