Race and poverty matter, even on Earth Day

http://www.tolerance.org/blog/race-and-poverty-matter-even-earth-day

There’s an old joke among real estate agents that the three most important things to consider in any property are location, location, location.

With that in mind, think about the poorer neighborhoods in your city. Where are they located? Most often the answer will be that they are hard up against some major source of pollution. Perhaps it’s the housing project sitting right under the freeway, or the trailer park by the airport or the rundown block sitting cheek by jowl with industrial waste.

In some cases, this happens because of economics. Land near airports tends to be cheaper thanks to the noise and that’s what poor people can afford.

In other cases, it’s part of a plan. County commissioners or state bureaucrats direct the freeway or site the dump near a black or Latino neighborhood. Robert Bullard noticed this in the 1970s when he was a sociology professor in Houston. His research found that 100 percent of the city’s waste dumps were in black neighborhoods even though blacks only made up 25 percent of the population. In a city without zoning, that couldn’t be happening by accident.