by Emily Prest, Class of 2021, Environmental Studies
In 1982, the North Carolina state government approved the building of the state’s first hazardous waste landfill site in the small, low income, and predominantly African American community of Warren County. While state officials perceived this location to be the best fit for a hazardous waste landfill, community members pointed to systemic racist reasoning as to why this area was chosen. Subsequently, the Warren County community banded together, protesting the introduction of a hazardous waste landfill site filled with toxic and contaminated waste, such as polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) riddled soils, that would inevitably bring about environmental harms and associated adverse health impacts. With the backing of the NAACP, and having gained widespread attention from media outlets, citizens of Warren County were able to gather support in protesting the hazardous waste site, resulting in over 500 arrests. During his protest and subsequent arrest, Reverend Dr. Benjamin Chavis yelled “this is environmental racism!” marking the first use of the term, and catalyzing the fight for environmental justice.
In a 1982 Washington Post interview, Reverend Luther G. Brown, a local pastor in Warren County, stated, “We know why they picked us… It’s because it’s a poor county — poor politically, poor in health, poor in education and because it’s mostly black. Nobody thought people like us would make a fuss.” According to Charles Lee’s excerpt in the book Confronting Environmental Racism, Warren County served as an example to how communities of color fall victim to bearing the ramifications of hazardous waste due to their interconnected economic inequities. Lee argues communities of color are already more likely to be economically depressed, and as a result, policymakers are more keen to risk public health and build hazardous waste facilities in these communities in exchange for potential employment and economic development.
Justifying environmental harm in exchange for economic growth, as witnessed in Warren County, runs in line with the Reagan Administration’s narrative where economic prosperity is seen as more valuable than environmental protection. In a 1987 New York Amsterdam News article, Chavis claimed that environmental racism persists due to the Environmental Protection Agency’s “malignant neglect” and “the Reagan Administration’s general non-enforcement policy” regarding civil rights.
Despite the lack of environmentally motivated policies emerging in the 1980s, the advent and coining of environmental racism was still able to take root. While the hazardous waste site was still built in Warren County, the case allowed for further research on environmental inequities occurring across the country, helping to produce a more concrete definition and realization of the reality of environmental racism in the United States. Warren County’s sacrifice uncovered a new subset of social justice and ultimately birthed the environmental justice movement as we know it today.
Sources
Bullard, R.D. Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots. Boston: South End Press, 1993.
Bullard, Robert D. “The Threat of Environmental Racism.” Natural Resources & Environment 7, no. 3 (1993): 23-56. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40923229.
Lazarus, Richard. “Environmental Racism! That’s What It Is.” Georgetown University Law Center, 2000. https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/160
Onorevole, Kathleen. “Warren County, NC: Birthplace of Environmental Justice.” Under the C (blog), January 15, 2016. https://underthecblog.org/2016/01/15/warren-county-nc-birthplace-of-environmental-justice/.
“Rights Head Charges Environmental Racism.” New York Amsterdam News, April 25, 1987.
Russakoff, Dale. “As in the ’60s, Protesters Rally.” Washington Post, October 11, 1982. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1982/10/11/as-in-the-60s-protesters-rally/47e2d0e3-8556-4d9f-8a77-8a78ab51ca61