“In fact … race continues to be a significant and robust predictor of commercial hazardous waste facility locations when socioeconomic factors are taken into account.”
Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty: 1987-2007, United Church of Christ
Background Information:
During the the mid to late 1980s the United Church of Christ(UCC) was at the forefront of the intersection between racial inequality and environmental hazards. Directly following in the wake of the Warren County Landfill protests, the UCC sought to quantify and prove a pattern of racial inequality. While individuals of all race and ethnicity participated in the protested, it was the predominately black population that were punished and arrested.
Several civil rights leader, to include the Revered Benjamin Chavis Jr., came to the realization that this was not an isolated incident. All across America, communities of color were facing similar situations to those of Warren County.
Following this realization, Rev. Benjamin Chavis Jr. formed and spearheaded the Commission for Racial Justice of the United Church of Christ. The goal of the commission was to look for and document the pattern of where toxic waste sites were located within America.
1987 – The Initial Report
The original report, which was published in 1987, was the first research to statistically prove the link between economic status, race, and their proximity to hazardous facilities. Of all the variables present within the research, race was the strongest predictor of where hazardous and industrial waste locations were located. The highest amount of facilities were in large minority populations from the South, Midwest and West; with them being predominantly Latino or Black.
The Followup: “Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty: 1987-2007”
20 years following the initial report, the UCC released a comprehensive followup report to determine if the racial disparity had improved, worsened, or remained the same.
Despite countless new environmental regulations and social policy, the report found that race is still the most powerful indicator of where toxic and hazardous sites are located.
Even after accounting for income, the report indicated that communities of color comprised 56% of all communities located near commercial and industrial hazardous waste sites.
The report used more accurate and advanced research methodology, to include geographical information systems(GIS), which is software that is commonly used for climate and earth science mapping. The report also made heavy use of more statistical modeling in an effort to isolate race as the predetermining factor.
The report concluded that socioeconomic factors played a major role, but not to the level that race did. Poor white communities were still less likely to be located near hazardous sites as compared to affluent communities of color.
References:
Commission for Racial Justice, United Church of Christ.
Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States: A National Report on the Racial and Socio-Economic Characteristics of Communities with Hazardous Waste Sites.
United Church of Christ, 1987, https://www.ucc.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/ToxicWastesRace.pdf
United Church of Christ Justice & Witness Ministries, Mar. 2007, https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/toxic-wastes-and-race-at-twenty-1987-2007.pdf