ppreboard

Environmental Racism: A Modern Jim Crow

Sumayyah Borders

November 1, 2022

In this article, I will explore the relationship between environmental racism and discrimination within minority neighborhoods and households in the South. The southern region of America has had a long history of segregation dating back to Jim Crow laws at the end of Reconstruction; however, the implementation of exclusionary zoning policies in the 1960s has created a new, subtle form of segregation, particularly between Black and White Americans. This article aims to do three things: explain what environmental racism is, describe exclusionary zoning, and provide modern examples of areas in the southern United States in which the two concepts have had a profound impact on minorities.

The Climate Reality Project defines environmental racism as “the disproportionate burden of environmental hazards placed on people of color.”1 It is a form of systemic racism, which involves the use of government policies to put people of color at a disadvantage. In this case, the aim of these policies and practices is to place communities of color in areas near polluting facilities. As a result, people of color are exposed to pollutants at a higher rate than whiter and wealthier communities. A 2018 study conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) revealed that minority and low-income communities are disproportionately affected by air pollution; however, Blacks are shown to be more affected by air pollution than people below the poverty line. Blacks have a 54 percent higher health burden compared to the general population while citizens under the poverty line have a 35 percent higher health burden. Furthermore, non-white populations have a 28% higher health burden.2

So, what exactly causes racial and ethnic minorities to reside in regions with high pollution? The answer is rooted in our definition of systemic racism. Exclusionary zoning is the primary practice that the federal government has used for decades to keep minorities out of wealthier neighborhoods.3 This puts many racial groups at a huge disadvantage as wealthier communities tend to have better education and more access to job opportunities. For one thing, richer neighborhoods get millions of dollars more in public funding from local, state, and federal governments than poorer ones. Highly experienced teachers are attracted to schools with wealthier students because they get paid more by the school district. Moreover, magnet schools typically get extra funding to support their specialized programs, and smaller schools allow for an educational experience that provides more attention to individual students.4 On another note, joblessness is extremely high in poor neighborhoods. Among unemployed men between 25 and 54, about 37 percent resided in extremely poor communities. Furthermore, 61 percent of those in poor neighborhoods have received a high school education or less. This data suggests a correlation between poor residents, education level, and jobs; residents of poor neighborhoods are more likely to have lower levels of education which could mean lower levels of employment, and lower wages.5

Exclusionary zoning ordinances were first introduced by local governments in the early 1900s. In 1914, the city of Louisville, Kentucky passed a city ordinance that prohibited the sale of property to Black people; the Supreme Court case Buchanan v. Warley challenged this law in 1917 involving white real estate agent Charles Buchanan and Black civil rights activist William Warley. When Buchanan tried to sell a house to Warley, Warley refused to pay full price for it. He claimed that the city’s ordinance made the house less valuable than it was because he could not fully occupy the lot as a Black resident. The Court ruled that Louisville’s zoning ordinance violated the due protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment which says that a state cannot deprive a person of their rights without going through fair legal procedures in a court of law. However, the Court failed to grant equal protection under the law, meaning that racial discrimination remained legally acceptable in the states.6

Buchanan v. Warley led to the creation of the Fair Housing Act of 1968. The legislation passed with the goal of prohibiting “discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin, sex, (and as amended) handicap and family status.”7 Notice how the bill does not prohibit housing discrimination based on class. This provides a loophole that allows predominantly rich, white neighborhoods to keep low-income people from moving into their communities.8 The fact that racial minorities are more likely to be lower-income means that the class-based discrimination of today runs parallel to the racial discrimination of the past. Exclusionary zoning policies keep certain residents out of suburbia by enforcing minimum lot size and square footage requirements, allowing a single residence per lot, or even dictating that homeowners must rent to their blood relatives. Thus, these laws eliminate affordable housing in the form of apartments, townhouses, and duplexes for lower-income residents.9 By default, these citizens are forced to stay in inner-city neighborhoods that are set up within or near industrial areas.  

We can look at a 2009 Supreme Court case in which the nonprofit Inclusive Communities Project (ICP) sued the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs (TDHCA) over its method of allocating tax credits for low-income housing, particularly in Dallas.10 The ICP claimed that Texas’s formula for distribution specifically concentrated low-income housing in poor, inner-city minority neighborhoods instead of white suburban ones.11 In the broader sense of Dallas County, about 75 percent of residents are people of color but that number is expected to go up to 88 percent by 2050.12 Additionally, a 2022 “State of the Air” report released by the American Lung Association showed that Dallas Fort Worth is among the worst areas for particle pollution and ozone. In fact, the area is ranked as the 16th most polluted city for ozone in the United States and has received an “F” grade for this pollution. In terms of short-term particle pollution, which can be lethal, Dallas Fort Worth is ranked 44th nationwide. Overall, the report found that racial and ethnic minorities in America “were 61 percent more likely than white people to live in a county with a failing grade for at least one pollutant.” They were also “3.6 times as likely to live in a county with a failing grade for [ozone pollution, particle pollution, and other types of air pollution].”13 The exclusion of class-based language in the Fair Housing Act allows government officials and agencies like the TDHCA to get away with subtle housing discrimination through these zoning policies. In turn, many minorities get caught between a rock and a hard place because they end up not having many affordable options except for those in environmentally hazardous areas. We can do a deep dive of three specific incidences of environmental racism that illustrate the impact of the issue in different areas across the South.

St. Gabriel, Louisiana

Located between Baton Rouge and New Orleans is an 85-mile stretch of land known as “Cancer Alley.” Previously known as “Plantation Alley” for its past abundance of slave-owning plantations, Cancer Alley holds a relatively high concentration of industrial facilities including oil refineries and plastic plants. Much of this concentration takes place in St. Gabriel, a town located south of Baton Rouge and along the Mississippi River.14 Like the rest of Cancer Alley, St. Gabriel tends to be more isolated from the rest of suburban Louisiana with a littering of farms and smaller neighborhoods and hardly any recreational facilities. In terms of demographics, a little less than 5,000 out of the 7,300 residents in St. Gabriel identify as Black; of course, many of these residents descend from African slaves who were brought over as slaves or lived as sharecroppers post-Civil War. Urbanization in the 20th century caused the development of chemical plants to pop up in major Louisiana cities, though many of these manufacturers would later construct their facilities near predominantly Black communities, including St. Gabriel. This case creates a prime example of environmental racism; however, the town’s close proximity to the Mississippi River also provides an incentive for companies to build petrochemical plants. For example, the river allows for easy access to busy shipping routes and plenty of cheap land to accommodate large facilities.15

Dickson, Tennessee

Our next case takes us to rural Dickson County in north-central Tennessee for a closer look at a more micro-level example of environmental racism. To summarize, a Black family, the Holts, lived in their home for almost forty years before discovering that their well water was contaminated with cancer-causing chemicals. The Holt family accused government officials of discrimination for failing to notify them of the contamination when the White families in the surrounding area were informed within 48 hours of this occurrence. Due to the toxins in the drinking water, every family member including Sheila Holt-Orsted, her mother Beatrice Holt, and her father Harry Holt developed some form of cancer and other serious health problems. Harry Holt eventually died of prostate cancer in 2007.16 Sheila later learned that the family’s well water was contaminated with an industrial solvent called trichloroethylene (TCE); TCE is a carcinogen, or cancer-causing substance, that had been dumped into the landfill adjacent to the family’s home starting in the 1960s. Unfortunately, neither the manufacturing companies nor state and federal regulators had made any effort to remove the TCE from the landfill.17 According to the EPA, the maximum contaminant level for TCE is 0.005 milligrams per liter; the levels in the Holt’s well water was nearly thirty times this limit.18 However, a settlement secured with the help of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund ensured that the family got the justice they deserved with compensation and assurance that the county would permanently provide clean, safe drinking water. In essence, the tragic case of the Holts has made them the poster family of environmental racism.

The Everglades, Florida

In 2019, Donovan and Jayceson Sonson, who were 5 and 6 years old respectively, spent roughly two months in hospital beds upon developing upper respiratory infections; both had already been suffering from severe asthma for years. The doctor’s primary advice to the boys’ grandmother was to “keep your child away from secondhand smoke”; however, nobody in the home was a known smoker. It turned out that the respiratory problems were not caused by the family, but by the sugar companies in the area. These companies would set fire to cane fields in western Palm Beach County throughout the spring and winter seasons. The purpose of this method is to rid the plants of their outer leaves, and smoke is subsequently released; the result is a sheet of ash known as “black snow.” The practice primarily affects the towns of Pahokee, South Bay, and Belle Glade, where one-third of residents live in poverty; however, the smoke hardly, if ever, reaches whiter, wealthier areas such as West Palm Beach. Like in the case of the Holt family, the government officials as well as the sugar industry remained confident that the air was safe and healthy to breathe. Eventually, residents of the Everglades sued sugar companies alleging that their burning practices were detrimental to their health. Companies fought back by arguing that the air monitor was well in compliance with the Clean Air Act when, in fact, the monitor had appeared to be malfunctioning for the past few years. A study conducted by six experts in air quality and pollution found that residents were being exposed to pollutants in ways that could not be picked up by monitoring systems. They also concluded that the pollution was produced as a result of cane burning. Further research shows that racial and ethnic minorities are disproportionately exposed to higher levels of particulate matter than Whites. To make matters worse, data collected by the EPA showed that Palm Beach County emits the most particulate matter from agricultural fires compared to the rest of the country. Much of this pollution can be attributed to two major sugar companies: U.S. Sugar and Florida Crystals. Today, both companies are the two largest producers of cane sugar in the nation. Being such a large manufacturer means there are plenty of jobs for people in the area; though, the Everglades still hold some of the poorest communities in Florida, many of which consist of Black and Hispanic families. On the other hand, the burning season produces health problems and smoky conditions that force residents to seek medical care and students to stay home from school. The mounting ignorance of these two companies to recognize the severity of their practices leaves the window open for more cases of asthma, heart attacks, and premature death to occur.19

Environmental racism and housing discrimination are critical issues to civil rights discussion. The implementation of exclusionary zoning policies combined with the issue of pollution leads us to a discussion about the subtle ways in which minorities can be disadvantaged and mistreated in their own neighborhoods. It is safe to say that these factors institute an era of modern Jim Crow laws. However, we may not necessarily think of incidences of environmental racism and housing discrimination in that way. To the general population, it is the norm for lower-income people and minorities to live in ghettos and slums, so-called ‘bad’ areas. In reality, most of these residents can only afford homes in those neighborhoods. There are other modern examples of environmental racism that have brought the issue to the national spotlight including the water crises in Flint, Michigan and Jackson, Mississippi in 2015 and 2022, respectively. Environmental racism becomes more pronounced in the minds of the people in these cases then quickly peters out after some time. People’s beliefs However, as of September 24, 2022, the EPA has established the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights with the goal of fighting environmental racism and providing equity to marginalized groups.20 Across its offices, the office aims to provide assistance on environmental justice and civil rights, enforce federal civil rights laws, and engage with and provide support for communities with environmental justice concerns.21 We can only hope that this new office will bring justice to the communities of color that have suffered the profound impacts of environmental racism.

Thank you to Dr. Patrick Shirey of the University of Pittsburgh Department of Geology and Environmental Science for the insightful feedback.

Edited by Tabea Schneider, Patrick Swain, and Lauren Rubowitz.

  1. Climate Reality Project. “Environmental Racism: What It Is and How You Can Fight It.” April 6, 2021. https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/environmental-racism-what-it-and-how-you-can-fight-it.
  2. Mikati, Ihab, Adam F. Benson, Thomas J. Luben, Jason D. Sacks, and Jennifer Richmond-Bryant. “Disparities in Distribution of Particulate Matter Emission Sources by Race and Poverty Status.” Research-article, March 7, 2018. https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.2017.304297.
  3. Rigsby, Elliott. “Understanding Exclusionary Zoning and Its Impact on Concentrated Poverty.” The Century Foundation, June 23, 2016. https://tcf.org/content/facts/understanding-exclusionary-zoning-impact-concentrated-poverty/.
  4. Mathewson, Tara García. “New Data: Even within the Same District Some Wealthy Schools Get Millions More than Poor Ones.” The Hechinger Report, October 31, 2020. https://hechingerreport.org/new-data-even-within-the-same-district-some-wealthy-schools-get-millions-more-than-poor-ones/.
  5. Neumark, Daniel. “Concentrated Poverty and the Disconnect Between Jobs and Workers | Econofact”, January 22, 2019. https://econofact.org/concentrated-poverty-and-the-disconnect-between-jobs-and-workers.
  6. https://www.bostonfairhousing.org/timeline/1917-Buchanan-v.Warley.html
  7. Chapman, Nathan, and Kenji Yoshino. “Interpretation: The Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause | The National Constitution Center.” National Constitution Center – constitutioncenter.org. Accessed October 21, 2022. https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/amendments/amendment-xiv/clauses/701.
  8. HUD.gov / U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). “History of Fair Housing – HUD.” Accessed October 21, 2022. https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/fair_housing_equal_opp/aboutfheo/history.
  9. Hermosillo, Max. “It Is Time To Exclude Exclusionary Zoning From America’s Housing Policy.” COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW, April 20, 2022. http://www.cpreview.org/blog/2022/4/it-is-time-to-exclude-exclusionary-zoning-from-americas-housing-policy.
  10. Badger, Emily. “Supreme Court Upholds a Key Tool Fighting Discrimination in the Housing Market.” Washington Post, June 25, 2015. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/25/supreme-court-upholds-a-key-tool-fighting-discrimination-in-the-housing-market/
  11. Badger, Emily. “The Supreme Court’s Housing Decision Is a Warning against Subtle Discrimination Everywhere.” Washington Post, June 25, 2015. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/25/the-supreme-courts-housing-decision-is-a-warning-against-subtle-segregation-everywhere/.
  12. “U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: Dallas County, Texas.” Accessed October 4, 2022. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/dallascountytexas.
  13. Martinez, James. “New Report: DFW’s Air Quality Gets Worse Residents Exposed to More Unhealthy Air Pollution.” American Lung Association, April 21, 2022. https://www.lung.org/media/press-releases/sota-dallas-fy22.
  14. Addish, Sumaya. “1) Cancer Alley, Louisiana (1987- ).” Black Past (blog), July 1, 2021. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/cancer-alley-louisiana-1987/.
  15. Baurick, Tristan, Lylla Younes, and Joan Meiners. “Welcome to ‘Cancer Alley,’ Where Toxic Air Is About to Get Worse.” ProPublica, October 30, 2019. https://www.propublica.org/article/welcome-to-cancer-alley-where-toxic-air-is-about-to-get-worse.
  16. The Thurgood Marshall Institute at LDF. “Sheila Holt-Orsted.” Accessed October 21, 2022. https://tminstituteldf.org/sheila-holt-orsted/.
  17. Huang, Albert. “‘Poster Child’ for Environmental Racism Finds Justice in Dickson, TN.” NRDC, December 8, 2011. https://www.nrdc.org/experts/albert-huang/poster-child-environmental-racism-finds-justice-dickson-tn.
  18. US EPA, OW. “National Primary Drinking Water Regulations.” Overviews and Factsheets, November 30, 2015. https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/national-primary-drinking-water-regulations.
  19. Ramadan, Lulu, Ash Ngu, and Maya Miller. “The Smoke Comes Every Year. Sugar Companies Say the Air Is Safe.” ProPublica, July 8, 2021. https://projects.propublica.org/black-snow/.
  20. Dennis, Brady. “EPA Unveils New Office to Place Environmental Justice at Agency’s Core.” Washington Post, September 24, 2022. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/24/epa-environmental-justice/.
  21. US EPA, OA. “About the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights.” Overviews and Factsheets, September 26, 2022. https://www.epa.gov/aboutepa/about-office-environmental-justice-and-external-civil-rights.

Image via Pexels Free Photos.

Leave a comment