Historical Context
Environmental Racism was something that many did not know about until the time of the Civil Rights Movement. The Civil Rights Movement was the key to the beginning of the Environmental Justice Movement. “The Afton protests energized a new faction within the civil rights movement that saw the environment as another front in the struggle for justice ("The Environmental Justice Movement").” Many civil right activists’ were aware of the inequalities that were present at the time and they became the first to realize the inequalities they faced on the environment they lived in. It is unaware of how long environmental racism had existed but it was first documented in 1982 “when a primarily African-American community in Warren County, North Carolina, rose against becoming the forced dumping site of toxic PCB-laced soil ("The Environmental Justice Movement").” The protest in Warren County against becoming the forced dumping site of toxic PCB sparked the overall movement against environmental racism that began in the 1980s.
After the incidence in Warren County, “environmental justice activists looked around the nation and saw a pattern: Pollution-producing facilities are often sited in poor communities of color ("The Environmental Justice Movement").” These communities were targeted for multiple reasons such as the fact that minorities did not have money to fight against the placement of polluting facilities, they had no ties to the government to get regulations on the facilities, and they lacked access to the knowledge of what the facilities could do to them. Minorities were vulnerable to the unjust pollution that was placed around them. More and more companies began to place their facilities in low-income communities because they knew that the people there were naïve to the harm the facilities could cause. Environmental racism grew to not only be an issue in the US but an issue all over the world like in cities in India. Since the issue was clearly growing and more people were being harmed environmental activists had to take stronger actions.
Reverend Benjamin Chavis and the United Church of Christ’s Commission for Racial Justice took initiative into the stronger actions as they contributed highly to the Environmental Justice Movement when they published Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States. “The report showed that race was the single most important factor in determining where toxic waste facilities were sited in the United States. It also found that due to the strong statistical correlation between race and the location of hazardous wastes sites, the siting of these facilities in communities of color was no accident, but rather the intentional result of local, state and federal land-use policies ("The Environmental Justice Movement").” After the report was published more people began to realize that they lived in such communities and the movement to put an end to environmental racism advanced as it had more evidence to back it up.
After the incidence in Warren County, “environmental justice activists looked around the nation and saw a pattern: Pollution-producing facilities are often sited in poor communities of color ("The Environmental Justice Movement").” These communities were targeted for multiple reasons such as the fact that minorities did not have money to fight against the placement of polluting facilities, they had no ties to the government to get regulations on the facilities, and they lacked access to the knowledge of what the facilities could do to them. Minorities were vulnerable to the unjust pollution that was placed around them. More and more companies began to place their facilities in low-income communities because they knew that the people there were naïve to the harm the facilities could cause. Environmental racism grew to not only be an issue in the US but an issue all over the world like in cities in India. Since the issue was clearly growing and more people were being harmed environmental activists had to take stronger actions.
Reverend Benjamin Chavis and the United Church of Christ’s Commission for Racial Justice took initiative into the stronger actions as they contributed highly to the Environmental Justice Movement when they published Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States. “The report showed that race was the single most important factor in determining where toxic waste facilities were sited in the United States. It also found that due to the strong statistical correlation between race and the location of hazardous wastes sites, the siting of these facilities in communities of color was no accident, but rather the intentional result of local, state and federal land-use policies ("The Environmental Justice Movement").” After the report was published more people began to realize that they lived in such communities and the movement to put an end to environmental racism advanced as it had more evidence to back it up.