Housing Inequality in America

Conceptualizing Environmental Racism: The 1987 Report on "Race and Toxic Waste"

The origin of the concept of environmental racism is credited to the 1987 report by the United Church of Christ’s Commission for Racial Justice “Toxic Waste and Race in the United States: A National Report on the Racial and Socio-economic Characteristics of Communities with Hazardous Waste Sites.” The Commission sought out to conduct a national study on prevalence of toxic waste sites in communities of color and found that the communities near toxic wastes sites such as landfills and incinerators were more likely to have a higher percentage of residents of color and poor residents. Race was found to be a significant factor for predicting the location of these waste sites even after controlling for class. Below is reproduction of the cover page of the original study. The shaded areas represent counties where the percentage of the Black and/or Latino/a/x population was higher than the national average in 1987 (12% and 6% respectively) and the dark areas represent counties where both the percentage Black and Latino/a/x population is higher and there are 5 or more toxic waste facilities.  The map illustrates how toxic wastes sites often surround predominantly POC communities

The Commission concluded that “some underlying factor or factors, related to race, played a role in the location of commercial hazardous waste facilities.”The report provided empirical evidence for what communities had known for years and helped inspire movements for environmental justice in the late 1980s and 1990s. In the decades since the report, there has been debate among scholars of environmental racism and environmental activists about what exactly defines the “factor or factors” related to race that result in communities of color facing greater exposure to toxins and pollutants and how we should understand the “racism” of environmental racism.

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