UNEQUAL JUSTICE
Environmental Justice and Communities of Color

Edited By Robert D. Bullard
Sierra Club Books (1994)

Once, in days long gone by, the term "racism" was one of the most morally potent words in American politics. We all knew what "racism" was. It was that system of Southern American apartheid wherein African Americans could not vote, and where we could not sit down on a bus or on a toilet seat next to white folks.

The danger of having such a wondrous sharp weapon--the calling of something "racist"--is in the temptation overuse it. Like Arthur's Excalibur, such a sword remains a deadly instrument only so long as one is very selective in choosing targets to strike. Beat about with it on all fronts--call everything "racist" that stands in opposition to the things you feel are important--and you will soon dull the blade so that it will not cut when you really need it.

This, I believe, explains partly the reaction both among the public, the press, and elected officials in 1987 when the Rev. Benjamin Chavis (now national director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) charged both the U.S. government and certain elements of U.S. industry with "environmental racism" in a report called "Toxic Wastes And Race In the United States." The term "racism" had suffered from overuse, allowing its practitioners a screen behind which to confuse and to hide. All across the country, you could see Congressmembers and television news directors rolling their eyes and saying, "Here they go again." The charge was either ridiculed or relegated to the back pages or the last spot on committee agendas, thanks also to a lot of prodding from U.S. industry itself.

But the environmental racism activists had a point. Race and ethnicity, they said in 1987, were the most significant factors (significantly, more important than income) in the placement of commercial hazardous waste facilities and uncontrolled toxic waste sites in this country. When the government forces action to clean up hazardous sites, white communities get quicker, and more effective, action. The environmental racism activists built a movement to bring this matter to the nation's attention, culminating in late 1991 in the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit held in Washington, D.C. and attended by Vice President Albert Gore. One result of this conference was the publication of "Unequal Protection," which appears to be intended as a call to arms against environmental racism, a manifesto for the new movement.

But if I were not already sympathetic to its main charge, "Unequal Protection" would leave me unconvinced.

The book consists primarily of case studies written by persons active in the environmental justice movement, bracketed by an overview by U.C. Riverside professor Robert D. Bullard (who edited the book) and recommendations for future action. California is well represented. Entire chapters are devoted to the fight against waste incinerators in Los Angeles and to the lead paint problem in Oakland. A smaller section was written about petrochemical pollution in Richmond.

Case studies by individual contributors are a quick and easy way to get research accomplished and are common in the academic world, but they also provide a notoriously scattershot approach to fact and focus. That's one of the problems here.

Another problem is that environmental racism activists appear to be a little out of control in expanding the injustices they wish to fit under their umbrella...a potentially fatal error. Environmental activism is defined in this book as, among other things, "neighborhood disinvestment, housing discrimination, residential segregation, urban mass transportation, pollution, and other environmental problems that threaten public safety." Among its recommendations are that "United States foreign policy must promote quality economic development [in developing countries] as an alternative to drug exports, which destroy the lives and minds of our citizenry." These may be important causes, but they have little or nothing to do with the book's main point.

A final problem is that "Unequal Protection," skirts what seems to me to be the main question: why should the nation do anything about this problem? No-one wants a toxic dump in their own neighborhood. The more than minority environmental activists point out the dangers of these hazards to the residents of minority communities, as they do quite eloquently and forcefully in "Unequal Protection," the less likely they will be to find white communities that will accept their relocation. A far better approach, I would think, would be to focus on the interconnectedness of all of our communities. You can't dump toxins in the environments of Richmond or Oakland and not expect that they'll end up someday, somehow or other, in the air or water of Cupertino. While mobilizing minority communities, minority environmental activists need to point out to the larger community its stake in all of this. That's how alliances will be formed.

What the environmental justice movement needs is the equivalent of an "Unsafe At Any Speed" or a "Silent Spring"--an "Uncle Tom's Cabin," even--a landmark book that can both encapsulate the problem in small, but overwhelmingly powerful bits and inspire, no, compel, people to action. "Unequal Justice" is clearly not that book, though it does have some strong and effective parts. But perhaps, from among its many talented contributors, one will be produced.