Excerpt: Black, Brown, Red, and Poisoned

Austin, Regina, and Michael Schill. [1994] 2005. "Black, Brown, Red, and Poisoned". Pp. 373-378 in Understanding Society, 2nd ed., edited by Margaret L. Andersen, Kim Logio, and Howard Taylor. Belmont, CA: Thomson Learning, Inc.

Minority communities face a disparate amount of pollution, the authors claim. In some cases factories and housing for workers arose at the same time, but as whites' social status improved they left for better housing while "poorer black and brown folks who enjoy much less residential mobility" moved in. In other cases the housing came later and was built near industrial land because the location was cheap and the people were poor. In still other cases, industries are built near residential land due to several criteria, such as the land's low cost, the presence of cheap laborers in the nearby vicinity, and low population density of the area (which the authors correlate with poverty and race in certain regions of the country).

To companies looking to build factories and landfills and waste disposal sites, poorer communities also offer less resistance than the more educated and more affluent neighborhoods. The promise of an economic boost, creation of jobs, and increased taxes to local government make industries sound appealing, and "once the benefits start to flow, the community may be reluctant to forgo them even when they are accompanied by poisonous spills or emissions". Often these benefits are minimal or don't come in at all, with taxes going towards improving infrastructure to support the company instead of social services and jobs being given to those from outside the community.

Grassroots environmental activist groups are growing in these poor minority communities, but unlike the "mainstream" activist groups or the activism of wealthier whites (who often work for "the preservation of wildlife and wilderness") the poor activists work towards bettering their own communities.

This article relies on a huge assumption: that minority communities are more likely to be located near pollution-producing industries. The premise here is that big, evil corporations are poisoning minorities and that white environmentalists are idealist and ineffective on the home-front, and as such it is pretty one-sided. The problem is not addressed; of the three patterns, only one is handled and only when it's proposed and hasn't happened yet. The solution is inadequate; campaign!

Relevance: 2/5 (irrelevant)
Salience: 1/5 (very trivial)

References:

• none.