Environmental Racism and Communication in the U.S.

Environmental racism has been a social justice issue in the United States since settlers first arrived at the North American continent. The current pandemic of COVID-19 has proven how communities whose health is adversely affected by environmental racism has led to more complications with the virus. According to David Pellow, “Environmental racism denotes the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards on communities of color, environmental justice is focused on improving the overall quality of life for those same populations”. Soil within the United States is 74% degraded, 40% of rivers and lakes are too polluted for swimming or fishing, there are 3 million tons of toxic chemicals released each year, and 60% of Americans live with air pollution causing a growing number of 25 million Americans that are affected with asthma (Conners). These are just a few examples of environmental hazards that exist in the United States and are disproportionately placed in locations that are majority people of color and low-income these hazards are created by big industries, government, a lack of polices and communication. There have been ongoing attempts to change the effects of environmental racism since before laws or borders were established in this country. Although there have also been many attempts to make changes through policy to protect communities of color from further exploitation beginning in 1982, the creators of these acts and damages have vigorously found loop holes and laxed polices that continue to allow them to place environmental hazards on people of color across the United States for the last 38 years (Pellow). The purpose of this study is to provide a background on the social justice issue of environmental racisms’ history, significance, as well as analyze communications role in environmental racism in every form from identifying, explaining, representing and attempting to change or continue the social justice issue within the United States. Environmental racism has regenerated year after year systematically through the naturalized decision making of millions of whites in a racialized society, through my analyzation I hope to provide a better understanding of communications role in the continuation and fight against environmental racism.

Indigenous and Black communities have been struck with environmental racism in what we now know as the United States for an unprecedented amount of time and continue to face challenges of environmental racism to this current day. Environmental racism in the United States in not a new phenomenon that has suddenly came to exist by accident, it has existed long before it even had a name, its roots started as early as the beginnings of colonization in the American continents by different European conquers. Which first took place by the Spanish that began in 1565, by the British in 1587, the London Company in 1606, the French in 1608 and the Dutch in 1609 (Geographic). The acts of forcibly removing Africans from their homeland and holding them as slaves to help build on colonized land that was already occupied by Indigenous Americans is considered to be one of the first acts of environmental racism that occurred and lead to the continuation of much more (Pellow). The United States early foundation was based on the idea of whiteness being associated with cleanliness and purity, founding fathers of this country believed that “all men are equal under god”. However, they did not see Indigenous Americans or African captives as men because they did not believe them to be human and as a result they did not have citizenship or rights. During a period between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries captive labor from Africa was desired by American landowners because they had already attempted to use Indigenous Americans as slaves but were unsuccessful when diseases like influenza and smallpox killed them and the rest knew ways of the land to escape, that the white settlers did not. African slaves did most of the “dirty” and hard work white American landowners did not want to do. The economy of America was built upon the captive Africans labor . The many early acts of resistance by these two groups can be viewed as some of the earliest forms of environmental activism, but because there acts were seen by European settlers as rebellious they were never recorded as such. This along with the fact they are not in-line with todays normal or the environmentalist standard of justice they are often ignored in environmental justice communication (Taylor).

As the United States grew so did the population of cities in the free North, and along with-it deprivation, unsanitary conditions and disease. In Philadelphia for example, urban families had to draw their drinking water from wells they built that were very close to streets that were polluted risking potential infectious diseases. In fact, Benjamin Henry Latrobe the architect of the U.S. Capitol wrote about Philadelphia in 1789, and he found that there were obvious connections between urban families who due to lack of infrastructure dug wells for their drinking water that resulted in poor water sanitation, overcrowding, and regular yellow fever outbreaks. Although, the communication made by Latrobe was necessary and resulted in civic leaders trying to implement public water systems. Philadelphia city streets were not only being polluted by their own waste, but waste from other early industries like animal slaughter, tanneries, and soapmaking that let of noxious odors, runoff and sound. It would be half a century before Philadelphia citizens would obtain reliable and safe water. (Zimring). In 1793, the yellow fever pandemic hit Philadelphia killing 5,000 people, whites left, abandoning the city and free blacks along with it. As a result of some of the first environmental justice communication was written by community leaders Absalom Jones and Richard Allen during this 1793 pandemic. Jones and Allen helped organize their black community that was left and forced to take care of; the city, keeping it clean, the sick, and the dead, with no acknowledgment or compensation in return. Except criticism by whites who conspired that their survival must have meant they were the reason for the yellow fever epidemic. Matthew Carey a publisher at the time often and openly accused blacks of looting, stereotyping and racist remarks became rampant. As a result of such strong accusations leaders of the Free African Society Allen and Jones were forced to explain and defend their actions in front of the mayor. Creating A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People, to discuss and explain their role in what they described as the most devastating environmental challenges they had ever faced (Taylor). 

As America continued to expand, white settlers continued the frontier running into Indigenous Americans and although, some Native Americans became “civilized Christians” to avoid death, they were still occupying land that white settlers desperately wanted and felt was their right to take for themselves to create prosperous futures by growing cotton. This resulted in settlers forcibly removing tribes by destroying or burning down their households and committing mass murders. These settlers quickly got the help of their U.S. President Andrew Jackson when he signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830, Jackson and his government frequently ignored the requirements of the Indian Removal Act to create fair treaties by forcing Indigenous Americans to abandon the land their ancestors had lived on for generations before them. The Choctaw Tribe was the first to be threated of invasion by the U.S. Army resulting in them being banished from their land and forced to make a journey to “Indian Territory” which is present day Oklahoma by foot. It was a Choctaw leader who described to an Alabama newspaper that forced movement to “Indian Territory” was “a trail of tears and death”. This is how this movement got the infamous name The Trail of Tears. Many indigenous tribes continued to be expelled from their lands by force, out of the 15,000 Creeks who left for Indian Territory only 3,500 survived. Tribes like the Cherokee were pushed to move faster out their homeland by President Martin Van Buren who sent his General Winfield Scott with 7,000 soldiers who stole belongings from the Cherokee along with exposing them to diseases like typhus, whooping cough, and cholera to name a few. As well as subjugating them to starvation for the 1,200 miles they marched the tribe toward so called “Indian Territory” resulting in the death of at least 5,000 Cherokee. The United States was successful by 1840 as tens of thousands of different Indigenous American tribes were forcibly removed from their southeastern native lands and forced to travel by foot to “Indian Territory” (Peterson). 

In 1848 the United States signed a treaty with Mexico called the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that resulted in the ceded land that is now the American Southwest in exchange Mexico was promised that all Mexicans who were living on that land would be given U.S. citizenship. However, like many times before and to come the United States government found a way to deny American citizenship to Pueblo Indians and Black Mexicans despite them being Mexican citizens. The United States government left Black Mexicans with the choice of becoming slaves or being deported back to Mexico where slavery was outlawed and those Mexicans who were granted citizenship lost their land to white American settlers. 

Although slavery was abolished in Northern states and later in others by 1865, cities grew and as they developed industries relied heavily on the work of former slaves. By the 1860s the United States had developed a network of commerce by creating a series of canals and later railroads across lands that fueled further industrial developments in new and existing cities. With this further development of the United States came population growth and an expansion of manufacturing that led to heightened racial animosity, industrial pollution, and public health crises (Zimring).

The continuation of railroad development in the United States brought even more settlers to the United States in 1879 and they began to purchase up land in New Mexico, Las Vegas, and the rest of the Southwest. Because these new settlers land was fenced, the rights to the land were transferred to the private landowner while hunting and gathering rights also remained in their possession. Indigenous Americans and those of Hispanic descent who occupied that land were left without access to their communal land and grew frustrated over time because their resources were suddenly cut off. This led to the formation of Las Gorras Blancas in 1889 who committed night raids to take down settlers fencing and free their livestock as a way to restore traditional land rights. They continued to grow as group and later formed the Knights of Labor chapter the Caballeros de Labor and a new populist party the United People’s Party. A leader of the group named Juan José Herrera became elected probate judge of San Miguel County in 1892, but eventually left government because he along with two to other members that were in government were unable to pass the populist legislation they were campaigning on (Taylor). During this same time, National Park advocates were making strides to transform beautiful American lands into protected national parks and forests and eventually establishing Yosemite National Park in 1890. However, the Indigenous American tribe the Ahwahneechees, whose ancestral land was once on Yosemite but were forced out by white settlers petitioned Congress for a million dollars in gold to compensate for the brutality that they faced as a result of white settlers obtaining their land. They were ultimately ignored (Taylor). 

The United States created cities that hid and kept waste in unwanted areas and in order to keep desired areas with predominantly white Ameriocans only, whites created laws that allowed them to legally do so. Chinese residents were affected by this in 1890 in San Francisco when they were arrested for violating Order No. 2190 that stipulated the location and specific district that more than 20,000 Chinese residents could reside or conduct business. By the 1900s there was an alarming amount of pollutants produced by increased industrialization, which proved to be aiding to affluent whites and the demise of the poor and people of color who were living in an “environmental hell” (Pellow). Despite people of color doing all they could in order to become successful enough to move out of areas that had been contaminated with environmental waste and hazards, only fueled whites to vigorously continue to keep people of color out their neighborhoods. For example, a prominent Black graduate of Yale Law School and attorney along with his wife a teacher moved onto McCulloh Street, this motivated white residents to draft a petition asking the Mayor to “take measures to restrain the colored people from locating in a white community, and proscribe a limit beyond which it shall be unlawful for them to.” Pushing Baltimore to develop anti-black racial zoning laws, which was first declared constitutional on December 17,1910 the signed into law by Mayor J. Barry Mahool on December 20, 1910. This resulted in many other southern and western cities to also create and adopt racial restrictive ordinances that would divide up these cities by race keeping out people of color and waste created by wealthy whites from white neighborhoods (Taylor). 

In 1987 the term environmental racism was used widely after Reverend Benjamin Chavis used it in Toxic Wastes and Race in The United States, a study conducted by the United Church of Christ. Chavis defined environmental racism in 1992 as “racial discrimination in environmental policy-making and the enforcement of regulation and laws, the deliberate targeting of people of color communities for toxic waste facilities, the official sanctioning of life threatening presence of poisons and pollutants in our communities, and the history of excluding people of color from leadership in the environmental movement.” Once again in 1993 Chavis expanded on his definition “it is the deliberate targeting of people of color communities for hazardous waste facilities, such as landfills and incinerators. One of the responsibilities of the Civil Rights Movement is to define the postmodern manifestations of racism, We must not only point to overt forms of racism, but also to institutionalized racism.” Hazel Johnson also known as “the black mother of the environmental movement” was present in 1992 at the United Nations Conference on Environmental and Development in Rio de Janerio, Brazil as well as in 1994 when she was present for the signing of Executive Order 12898 signed by former President Bill Clinton. This Executive Order would require all federal agencies to incorporate environmental justice concerns into their mandates. The Executive Order was renamed Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations. Many people felt a sigh of relief as they would finally gain help from agencies who could now regulate pollutants and help those who have taken on the unfair burdens of environmental hazards. However, by the sixth anniversary of this order, citizens and environmental justice organizations went to Washington with a report that was given to the press and found that communities of color and low-income populations remain battling against “toxic terrorism” put onto them by chemical industries and federal facilities. As a result, human health continued to be affected and these industrial activities led to an array of respiratory diseases, nervous and reproductive system disorders and even cancers (Pellow).

Throughout the history of environmental racism, white minorities who publicly raised concerns were often answered, but people of color were often ignored and made to stay quite as very little continued to be done for their safety and health. In 1990, The Gulf Coast Tenants and the Southwest Network for Economic and Environmental Justice wrote a letter to the “Big Ten” who were mainly white middle-class environmentalists for ignoring the struggle of people of color due to environmental racism. It stated, “Your organizations continue to support and promote policies which emphasize the cleanup and preservation of the environment on the backs of working people in general and people of color in particular.” “We suffer from the end results of these action, but are never full participants in the decision-making which leads to them” (Pellow). There have been many films made in the 21st century that depict different battles communities faced or face in regard to environmental battles against polluting industries, but many like the “Big Ten” neglected the blatant racism aspect. In present day United States of America we continue to see environmental racism and negligent policies. Perhaps even more so due to our current presidential administration, who has made numerous rollbacks of environmental policies that were put in place to protect people. For example, President Trump rolled back the Obama era Clean Power Plan that he believes was a job killing policy not a lifesaving one which the previous administration believed it to be. Changes in the climate have gained more attention as effects have been vast, and this has caused many on social media to discuss our current climate crisis with the help from activist figures like Greta Thunberg a young Swedish girl. This awareness is needed but once again ignores the fact people of color have been suffering as a result of their changing climate long before these global affects were seen. The COVID-19 pandemic we are currently in has unfortunately proven that communities of color who have been living with underlying health issues like cancers and respiratory illnesses as a result of environmental racism are more vulnerable to complication related to COVID-19 than communities who are untouched by environmental hazards (Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II). 

In conclusion, the history of environmental racism proves that without communication and writings on perspectives of non-white communities the awareness of environmental racism in some instance might not exists to the same extent that it does today. Although, communication plays a major role in defining environmental racism and brining about changes we can see that it does not benefit all groups the same way. Some have publicly addressed this issues of people of color struggling more to be heard by the public and government compared to their white counterparts such as Jane Fonda an American actress and activist, who hosts Fire Drill Friday protests providing a space and platform for different people of color to speak on their truths with environmental racism. Now more than ever it is important that communication is being made about environmental racism and hazards especially with its relevance to the current COVID-19 pandemic. Hopefully, with increased communication during this time and evidence showing a disproportionate effect of COVID-19 among communities of color, new policies can be implemented to help really protect these communities. Environmental hazards are extremely dangerous to the communities of color who immediately face them, but without drastic changes to policies these environmental hazards will outgrow communities and will in time affect the planet as a whole.

Works Cited

Geographic, National. National Geographic. n.d.

Pellow, David Naguib. Garbage Wars The Struggle For Environmental Jusitce in Chicago . MIT Press, 2002.

Peterson, Herman A. The Trail of Tears : An Annotated Biblography of Southeastern Indian Removal. Scarecrow Press, 2010.

Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, William J. Barber III, JD. The Nation : Racism and Discrimination . 21 April 2020. 10 May 2020.

Taylor, Droceta E. n.d.

We the People 2.0. Dir. Leila Conners. 2017. Alexander Street .

Zimring, Carl A. Clean and White: A History of Environmental Racism in the United States. New York University Press, 2015.