Whether by force of stereotypical perception or the prevalence of such interpretation I the political discourse, people have always perceived racism through the prism of economic and legal mistreatment of black people. However, people can maltreat their own fellow countrymen with skin color other than white by disposing of hazardous toxic waste in immediate proximity to their area of residence. It is disturbing how Americans exploit their own endangering their physical wellbeing. Since coming to surface in the 1980s, the notion of environmental racism has not lost its relevance for what is now 3.5 decades. While some US locations store wastes not only from other states, but also from foreign countries, the Global South, Asia and Africa included, remains the principal dumping ground. The exposed memorandum of the World Bank has thrown light on the plans of the west to apply environmental racism against poor countries with low wage standards. The point is that environmental racism is a widespread phenomenon that reveals the uncomfortable reality of the exploitation of the Global south and nonwhites in the developed countries.
The Notion of Disturbing Eco-Racism
Mitchem and Townes (20) state that the examples of environmental racism lay bare the big-scale essence of sickness and suffering. Chavis (n.pag.) suggests that millions of Latinos, African Americans, Native Americans, and Pacific Islanders stay trapped in contaminated environment for no reason other than their color and race. The problem is that these people are left vulnerable to environmental and health-related risks that stand no comparison with the ones faced by whites (qtd. in Mitchem and Townes 20). Sociologist Robert Bullard concludes that, based on a mounting body of studies, the problem is that color communities in the USA shoulder the burden of pollution that is out of proportions. They sustain the adverse influence of municipal landfills, dirty drinking water and air, industrial toxins, incinerators, hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal facilities (Weiskel 540). Indeed, according to Chavis (n.pag.), Americans do not enjoy the same opportunities to drink clean water, to breathe clean air, to work is a safe and clean environment, and spend leisure time in clean playgrounds and parks. Environmental racism is nothing short of racial discrimination in the realm of environmental policymaking. The racial discrimination has place in the implementation of laws and regulations. What happens is that the authorities arrange for color communities to reside close to polluting industries and toxic waste disposal locations. How the authorities discriminate against the racial minorities is by authorizing the life-endangering presence of pollutants and poisons in color communities. Furthermore, the exclusion of non-white residents from the major environmental groups, regulatory bodies, commissions, and boards making important ecology-related decisions also falls under the category of environmental racism (qtd. in Mitchem and Townes 20).
How the Concept Gained its Notoriety and Worldwide Attention. Its Evolution in the USA
Where the concept was used for the first time ever was in North Carolina in 1982. The local authorities were planning to gather an estimated 27.000 cubic meters of soil polluted with toxic chemicals referred to as polychlorinated biphenyls. The idea was for the soil from 14 locations to be stored in a facility for toxic waste in Warren County. What is attention stirring is that, back then, largely blacks owned the land of storage, which they had been doing since the days of slavery. Locals shared an understanding that it was not because the place had requisite environmental suitability that the authorities chose it; it was because its whereabouts were in a mostly black, impoverished, and politically powerless community that they did. People were quick to see the racial component to the decision; thus, the protest they organized saw 500 arrested. A year after, Congressman Walter Fauntroy requested of the US General Accounting Office to study eight American states in the south on the correlation between the economic and racial status of communities and the layout of dangerous waste dumping ground. The results pointed to 3 out of 4 landfills being situated in proximity to communities whose demographic composition was largely composed of minority members. The Commission on Racial Justice of the United Church of Christ found that 60% of Hispanic and African Americans dwelt in communities with uncontrolled toxic waste sites (Weiskel 540).
The situation with environmental racism as none too bright in the 1990s. To quote a few examples, a landfill in Emelle, Alabama, which is for the most part a poor African-American community. Not only 45 states, but also a few foreign countries supply the area with toxic materials. Seriously affected by pesticide-associated diseases are in excess of 300.000 farmers of Hispanic descent, inclusive of a large quantity of women of childbearing age. On the South Side of Tucson, Arizona stands a neighborhood mostly constituted by Hispanics who have nothing to do but live in proximity to toxic industrial waste. The chemicals have contaminated water as much as they have air leading to an upswing in genetic mutations, birth defects, cancer, and other diseases among area residents. The level of trichloroethylene alone is 20 times the permissible norm (Weintraub n.pag.).
Companies engaged in waste disposal went to great lengths to reason Native American into allowing the discharge of waste in reservations under the noble pretext of improving local economic conditions. In Navajo reservations, the high levels of poisoned land and lung cancer due to the presence of uranium mining were reported. The South Side of Chicago largely inhabited by Hispanics and African Americans is the place of the biggest concentrations of detrimental waste sites throughout the entire country (Weintraub n.pag.). The situation does not seem to have become any better in recent years. NAACP (n.pag.) reports that 39% of 6 million Americans resides three miles away from a coal plant are the US residents of color. This figure even exceeds the total share of black population in the country standing at 36%. In general, a depressing 78% of all African Americans dwells 30 miles away from a power plant fired by coal (qtd. in the Goldman Environmental Prize n.pag.).
Africa’s Dumping Ground and the Global Conspiracy
The racism in question along with subsequent sickness may be attributable to the calculated practices of global fiscal institutions. To quote an example, the chief economist at the World Bank in 1991, Lawrence Summers, issues an internal memorandum targeting the countries of the Third World, which he treated as less developed, in his own words. As follows from the memo of his, the paramount purpose of the bank is generating revenue for monopoly capitalist corporations at the expense of poor countries and the health of working-class people. The concept of “dirty industries” was the concept opening the text of the memorandum. What he also did was show his awareness of pollution causing sickness for people and the earth alike. He recommended that pollution undermining health be done in a country with the lowest cost, that is, the country with the lowest wage rate. Summers defined the logic of discharging toxic waste into the lowest-salary country as immaculate (Mitchem and Townes 21).
These will most likely be African countries, in all likelihood, where, apart from low wage standards, there is little involvement of people in the decision-making. What the officials of the World Bank will also need will be corrupt national elites, poorly functioning or nonexistent controlling bodies and institutions, and a deplorable economic state to legitimize the transaction of money from the European benefactor under the guise of aid funds. Ordinary people from African countries with poor infrastructure and rulers with pocket environmental services, police, and media may never know the act of waste release had place. According to Mitchem and Townes (21), the official did confirm Africa as the ideal destination of waste due to it being under-polluted and having potential to host a plethora of dumped wastes. The strategy appears to be already working. Weiskel (540) notes that the best cases in point exemplifying elitist planning and environmental racism originate in the formerly colonial regions that are presently subject to corporate exploitation with little-to-no control or supervision on the part of the government. For example, the extraction activities of the Shell Oil Company have contaminated the land and water of the Ogoni people in southeastern Nigeria for close to 10 years on end affecting people’s health and welfare.
Conspiracy Continues: The Global South
The African continent is not the only to experience the environmental racism of the West. Martini (n.pag.) describes the problem of electronic waste. Circuit boards from hand-held gadgets and computers alone are the source of heavy metals like silver, zinc, tin, antimony, copper, and chromium. The disposal of these in American landfills poses danger to the health of the Americans and their environment. By 2005, US dumping grounds had become the final resting place of 60 million computers. The better part of e-waste is believed to be shipped from the Global North to the Global South for recycling since it is there that environmental standards are less strict.
Conrad (348, 352) and Zhang (981-982) state that workers in the Global South do the sorting by hand with an eye to extracting the last remaining precious materials like copper or gold, which leaves them vulnerable to upwards of 700 toxic chemicals (qtd. in Martini n.pag.). Garber and Ghosh (n.pag.) refer to the UN Environment Programme to report 2.6 million tons of e-waste from the USA to reach Africa and Asia, which is equivalent to 80% of the electronic garbage generated by the USA (qtd. in Martini n.pag.). Zhang (982) reveals that the level of lead poisoning among children aged 6 amounts to 81% in Guiyu, which is in China (qtd. in Martini n.pag.). Children’s presence in the workforce in the capacity of e-trash sorters may account for the health impact rate.
Winant (3) explains that environmental racism is not just about releasing toxic waste. Corporate mining and agriculture, forced migration, famine, drought are considered involved. Climate change is a global racism problem. Interestingly, the global South has come to be more exposed to global warming. The poorest and hottest countries across the globe are the first to be hit by mounting temperatures, and such impact is the hardest (Winant 3). The adjective “forced” may point to migration intentionally caused through environmental racism to allow the cheap workforce to seek shelter in Europe to enter a different group of racism as wage slaves. So may be the hint of the article author left unrevealed. Last, but not least, the USA does not seem willing to have pollutants spoil the health of the nation or at least a part thereof, that is why it has taken to outsourcing industries to the Global South. Spegele (n.pag.) states that the USA has outsourced a vast number of its contamination-producing industries to China over the years.
No Way out
The described memorandum is a crucial revelation providing explanation to environmental racism, and, if it be so, it is in the interest of the developed countries or their elites to keep developing states like those in Africa impoverished. Thus, the most marginal of people, be they on the local or national level, will be the recipients of toxic wastes. Once they have gained political power and financial resources, they will start clamoring against waste dumping; thus, the west will go through all the trouble of keeping them suitable candidates for dumping through economic leverage like the limitation of trade volume through unconducive commerce terms or the maintenance of corrupt and loyal dictatorial regimes. Africa has always been a region of economic exploitation for the white West. The era of colonial exploitation in the shape of resource extraction and slavery has given way to a different form of exploitation, which are wage slavery and waste dumping. As the west, based on the World Bank leaked memorandum, does not need Africa developing, one should not expect it to cease being the dumping ground of the West.
The USA has the oases of Africa on its soil too turning them into the location of waste disposal and economic hopelessness, as is evident in the section above. The principle is similar. Despite the presence of advocacy groups and institutions that are nowhere to be seen in Africa, there is institutional racism not long ago imposed nationally; thus, working out a solution of the monopolistic waste release on the territory inhabited by Latinos or African Americans is a hard task to accomplish. Of course, experts can offer solutions as they always do especially while speaking on the camera during top conferences, yet, if big players are involved making serious inter-state institutional decisions, changing the disproportionate disposal problem at the root of environmental racism may be as good as impossible. Regions like Africa or the global South may be too valuable a base of cheap labor and waste disposal for the North to let go its separate way towards development and achievement of economic parity.
Honestly, waste disposal in Africa is a good case in point showing a classic self-deception. The West would get Africa to bury its waste before it would do so in the country of waste origin in the belief that their ecology stays safe. They disregard the fact that exotic fish caught in the Indian Ocean, which they may serve in their restaurants, may contain hard metals and other substances they throw into the Africa waters if only to keep their ecology secure. The same is true of industry relocation. Spegele (n.pag.) noted that migratory transboundary air pollution already makes itself felt in the west of the USA.
Conclusions
Thus, environmental racism is a widespread violation of human rights that brings to light the uncomfortable reality of the exploitation of the Global south and nonwhites in the developed countries. Indeed, Asia and Africa have become the dumping ground of toxic wastes and the destination of industry relocation for outsourcing countries like the USA that would just as soon export their source of pollution as deal with it domestically. The Global North countries like the United States continue their discriminatory practices against its own citizens, as seen in the placement of toxic waste in proximity to their dwellings despite it causing health impairment. The revelation of the World Bank memorandum in the early 1990s reveals the uncomfortable truth about the exploitative mindset of the corporatist world. The involvement of big money and the scope of environmental racism makes the problem resolution an uphill task taking a Herculean effort, which may be more of Sisyphean toil.
References
Martini, Catherine. E-waste ad You: a Daily Choice. Prospect Journal. 10 September 2012. n.pag. Web. 12 Apr. 2016.
Mitchem, Stephanie Y., and Emilie Maureen Townes. Faith, Health, and Healing in African American Life. ABC-CLIO, 2008. 1-207. Web. 12 Apr. 2016.
Spegele, Brian. “US Consumers Contribute, not Little, to Chinese Air Pollution.” The Wall Street Journal. 21 January 2014. n.pag. Web. 12 Apr. 2016.
The Goldman Environmental Prize. “Environmental Racism in America: An Overview of the Environmental Justice Movement and the Role of Race in Environmental Policies.” Goldmanprize.org. 24 June 2015. n.pag. Web. 12 Apr. 2016.
Weintraub, Irwin. “Fighting Environmental Racism.” Australia: University of Wollongong. n.d. n.pag. Web. 12 Apr. 2016.
Weiskel, Tim. “Environmental Racism: An Interpretation.” Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience. Oxford University Press, 2005. 540. Web. 12 Apr. 2016.
Winant, Howard. “The Dark Matter: Race and Racism in the 21st Century.” Critical Sociology. 2014. 1-13. Web. 12 Apr. 2016.
