TOXIC WASTES AND RACE AT TWENTY: WHY RACE STILL MATTERS AFTER ALL OF THESE YEARS

TOXIC WASTES AND RACE AT TWENTY: WHY RACE STILL MATTERS AFTER ALL OF THESE YEARS (ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE PROJECT TOPICS AND MATERIALS)

ABSTRACT

In 1987 the United Church of Christ’s (UCC) Commission for Racial Justice published its landmark report Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States. The report documented disproportionate environmental burdens facing people of color and low-income communities across the country

. The report sparked a national grassroots environmental justice movement and significant academic and governmental attention. In 2007, the UCC commissioned leading environmental justice scholars for a new report, Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty: Grassroots Struggles to Dismantle Environmental Racism in the United States. In addition to commemorating and updating the 1987 report, the new report takes stock of progress achieved over the last twenty years. ∗ Robert D. Bullard directs the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University. His most recent book is entitled

GROWING SMARTER: ACHIEVING LIVABLE COMMUNITIES, ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE, AND REGIONAL EQUITY (2007). ∗∗

Paul Mohai is a Professor in the School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has been a major contributor to the growing body of quantitative research examining disproportionate environmental burdens in low-income and people of color communities. ∗∗∗ Robin Saha is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Montana and affiliated faculty with its School of Public and Community Health Sciences.

He is among the leading scholars conducting quantitative studies of environmental inequality using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). ∗∗∗∗ Beverly Wright directs the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice at Dillard University. She is one of the nation’s leading environmental justice scholars and is a Hurricane Katrina survivor.

TOXIC WASTES AND RACE AT TWENTY: WHY RACE STILL MATTERS AFTER ALL OF THESE YEARS (ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE PROJECT TOPICS AND MATERIALS)