The Integrity of Justice

MOST OF US HAVE NEVER HEARD OF GAULEY BRIDGE IN West Virginia. This is the site of the worst recorded occupational disaster in U.S. history. During the 1930s, hundreds of African-American workers from the Deep South were brought in by the New Kanawha Power Company, a subsidiary of the Union Carbide Corporation, to dig the Hawks Nest tunnel. Over a two-year period, approximately 500 workers died and 1,500 were disabled from silicosis, a lung disease similar to Black Lung.

Men literally dropped dead on their feet breathing air so thick with microscopic silica that they could not see more than a yard in front of them. Those who came out for air were beaten back into the tunnel with ax handles. At subsequent congressional hearings, New Kanawha's contractor revealed, "I knew I was going to kill these niggers, but I didn't know it was going to be this soon." An undertaker was hired to bury dead workers in unmarked graves; he agreed to perform this service for an extremely low rate because the company assured him that there would be a large number of deaths.

Some 40 years later, during the 1970s, a new vision began to emerge within the peace movement. This broad and influential movement in modern society began to grapple with a fundamental question about itself, its calling, and the premises upon which its actions were based. The question was this: Is it moral to advocate for peace without justice? Indeed, is it even possible to achieve peace without justice?

Out of the questions, a concept called peacemaking emerged. Not to be confused with peacekeeping, which implies the preservation of the status quo, this concept highlights the connection between peace and the protection of human rights. The religious community very naturally gravitated toward the debate.

These developments bring to mind the need to raise a similar set of questions within another influential and expanding social movement -- that of environmentalism. Particularly in the United States, a linkage between justice and the environment has yet to be made by environmental groups. The question needs to be posed: Can there truly be a healthy environment without justice?

The working paper for the recently launched World Council of Churches' World Convocation on Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation attempts to provide an answer. It states that "while it has special application to the natural world, the term integrity reminds us of human society as well, which is part of nature in the broadest sense. It reminds us, too, of social evils such as racism, sexism, unfair land distribution, political and economic oppression by dominant groups, and other manifestations of the human sin of greed and the thirst for power." Set in the context of disasters such as that at Gauley Bridge, the connection can hardly be overstated.

Another answer, based on fundamentally different assumptions, is provided by Dr. Norman W. Jackson, executive director of the United Church of Christ Council of American Indian Ministry:

The western Christian perspective, which spawns a whole set of assumptions, emerges from thousands of years of interpreting Genesis 1:27-28. This is based on humanity being created in God's image, to have dominion over the earth, and to subdue it. Indian creation stories have very different affirmations. Generally, humanity is understood to be an integral part of creation like everything else, with no authority or powers for domination and subduing creation. The integrity of creation means living in integral harmony with creation, which means justice and peace. Hence, indigenous peoples believe that "justice, peace and the integrity of creation" is not only a wrong sequence, but betrays a fatally flawed understanding of the nature of creation, humanity's place and role in creation, and how justice and peace are achieved.

The western Christian understanding of justice and peace seem to assume that human relationships are qualitatively different from the relations of the remainder of creation. Indians, however, believe justice and peace to be expressions of harmony, not convictions one adds in an attempt to ascribe integrity of creation. As long as humanity believes it can manage creation, it will manage it for self-perceived, short-term self-interest, oblivious to the consequences of disharmony and the limitations of creation.

THE QUESTION OF THE ROLE of justice also reveals the highly analogous social and class bases of the peace and environmental movements. Environmentalism has often been criticized as a predominantly white, upper-middle-class movement that is more sensitive to wildlife and the wilderness than to human needs. Its leaders readily concede that African Americans, Hispanics, Asian/Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, and other racial minorities in the United States are largely absent from its ranks.

There is ample reason, historically, for the distrust and disaffection that racial minorities have for the environmental movement. In 1970, for example, during Earth Day activities at San Jose City College, organizers bought a brand new Cadillac and buried it. The Black Student Union demonstrated in protest, contending that such money could have been better spent on the problems of the inner cities.

Lois Gibbs, a mother who led the struggle at Love Canal in New York and who is now director of the Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Wastes, once characterized the nation's attitude toward hazardous wastes as "out of sight, out of mind." These words appropriately describe the manner in which modern industrial societies have treated environmental pollutants over the past century. Such an approach has proven to be highly flawed as the vast accumulation of toxic, radioactive, and other hazardous contaminants in our air, water, and soil now threaten the very survival of our planet's ecology.

Besides being an apt description of the way pollution has been handled, however, Gibbs' remark is a commentary on social relations. As the following examples will show, "out of sight and out of mind" is where the poor and powerless live and work.

- The nation's largest hazardous waste landfill, receiving toxic materials from 45 states and several foreign countries, is located in predominantly African-American and poor Sumter County, in the heart of the Alabama "black belt."

- The predominantly African-American and Hispanic South Side of Chicago, Illinois has the greatest concentration of hazardous waste sites in the nation.

- In Houston, Texas, six of the eight municipal incinerators and all five of the municipal landfills are located in predominantly African-American neighborhoods.

- African-American residents of a West Dallas neighborhood whose children suffered irreversible brain damage from exposure to lead from a nearby smelter won a $20 million out-of-court settlement.

- Pesticide exposure among farm workers, predominantly Hispanic, causes more than 300,000 pesticide-related illnesses each year. A large percentage of farm workers are children and women of child-bearing age. This exposure may be directly related to the emergence of childhood cancer clusters in McFarland and Delano, California.

- Navajo Indians were used as the primary work force for the mining of uranium ore, leading to alarming lung cancer mortality rates. In addition, the Navajo community in Shiprock, New Mexico, where more than 100 tons of uranium mill tailings flooded the Rio Puerco River, is one of numerous Native American communities near uranium mills and nuclear facilities.

- Three executives in Illinois were convicted of murder in the death of a Polish immigrant worker from cyanide poisoning. The plant employing the worker hired mostly Hispanic and Polish immigrants who spoke and read little English. The skull and crossbones warning labels had been erased from the plant's cyanide drums.

- Puerto Rico is one of the most heavily polluted places in the world. For example, Puerto Rico's underground aquifers have been contaminated by massive discharges from pharmaceutical companies, oil refineries, and petrochemical plants. La Ciudad Cristiana, a small community near Humacao, is the only community in North America that was relocated due to mercury poisoning.

- The Marshall Islands, Bikini, and other islands in the Pacific have been devastated by nuclear bombing and other weapons testing. The effect of radiation exposure is now a major health problem in these areas.

To understand the causes of these injustices, it is important to view them in a historical context. Two threads of history help to explain the disproportionate impact of toxic pollution on racial and ethnic communities. The first is the long history of oppression and exploitation of African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans. This has taken the form of genocide, chattel slavery, indentured servitude, and racial discrimination in employment, housing, and practically all aspects of life in the United States. We suffer today from the remnants of this sordid history, as well as from new and institutionalized forms of racism.

The other thread of history is the massive expansion of the petro-chemical industry since World War II. Between 1950 and 1980, the production of synthetic organic compounds increased from less than 10 billion pounds to more than 350 billion pounds a year. Each year, approximately 1,000 new compounds are added to the 70,000 in use in 1980. In addition, nuclear weapons facilities and nuclear reactors have the capacity to make entire regions uninhabitable for decades, if not centuries. Recent revelations about leaks from nuclear weapons facilities suggest that these weapons may be potent killers even without ever being used.

Nor are these problems limited to the United States. The problems of pesticide misuse, toxic waste dumping, and other domestic environmental threats all have international dimensions, particularly in the Third World. Of special concern is the continuing production and export to the Third World -- by U.S. corporations -- of pesticides that have been banned or restricted for use in the United States. In addition, the world was shocked by the catastrophe in Bhopal, India, where leaking methyl isocyanate killed thousands and crippled tens of thousands. Recently, leaders of African nations at a summit meeting of the Organization of African Unity denounced the dumping of toxic wastes in Africa, calling the practice "toxic terrorism" and "a crime against Africa and the African people."

IT WAS AGAINST THIS BACKGROUND that the residents of the predominantly African-American Warren County, North Carolina approached the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice in 1982, asking for assistance in their protest against the proposed siting of a polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) landfill near the community of Afton. This culminated in a campaign of civil disobedience that resulted in more than 500 arrests, including Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., director of the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice; Dr. Joseph Lowery of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; and Congressional Delegate Walter Fauntroy (D-D.C.).

Fauntroy subsequently requested a study on the demographic patterns of communities surrounding hazardous waste landfills. In 1983, the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) found that three out of the four landfills it looked at in the Southeast were located in predominantly poor and African-American communities. The GAO study, though limited in scope, was the first to document that poor and racial minority communities are indeed disproportionately impacted by hazardous waste sites.

In 1986, the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice decided to undertake the first comprehensive national study on the demographic patterns associated with the location of hazardous waste sites. This study, titled Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States: A National Report on the Racial and Socio-Economic Characteristics of Communities Surrounding Hazardous Waste Sites, was released in April 1987. Its findings led Benjamin Chavis to conclude the existence of "environmental racism."

The study found that the racial composition of a community is the single variable best able to explain the existence or non-existence of commercial hazardous waste facilities in that area. Racial minorities, primarily African Americans and Hispanics, are strikingly overrepresented in communities with such facilities; in fact, communities with a single hazardous waste facility were found to have twice the percentage of racial minorities as do communities without such a facility (24 percent vs. 12 percent). Communities with the highest level of hazardous waste activity -- that is, having two or more facilities or one of the nation's five largest landfills -- have three times the minority representation of communities without facilities (38 percent vs. 12 percent).

Furthermore, three of the five largest landfills in the nation are located in predominantly African-American or Hispanic communities. These three sites account for more than 40 percent of the nation's total capacity for commercial hazardous waste disposal. The largest of these, in Sumter County, Alabama, accounts for almost one quarter of the nation's capacity.

The location of "uncontrolled" toxic waste sites, numbering approximately 20,000 at the time of the study, shows an equally striking racial imbalance. African Americans are particularly heavily represented in the populations of metropolitan areas with the largest number of uncontrolled sites. Although African Americans comprise 11.7 percent of the total population, they make up 43.3 percent of Memphis, which has 173 sites; 27.5 percent of St. Louis with 160 sites; 23.6 percent of Houston with 152 sites; 23.7 percent of Cleveland with 106 sites, 37.2 percent of Chicago with 103 sites, and 46.1 percent of Atlanta with 94 sites. Overall, three out of five African Americans or Hispanics in the United States live in a community with one or more uncontrolled hazardous waste sites. This represents more than 15 million African Americans and eight million Hispanic Americans.

The report made a series of recommendations, directed at the federal, state, and municipal governments; at the civil rights, environmental, and religious communities; and at local communities themselves. It was aimed at making the public cognizant of an issue that is not presently at the forefront of the nation's attention. Of paramount importance is the need to initiate education, organizing, and mobilizing efforts to confront these pollution problems in racial minority communities. The report concludes that hazardous wastes and environmental pollution should be made a priority issue at all levels of government.

In response to this report, Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) wrote, "Toxic Wastes and Race is a powerful indictment of those who argue that poor health and other problems in Black, Hispanic, and minority communities are self-inflicted. The findings of this impressive study are as chilling as they are compelling." In addition, Dr. Barry Commoner, noted environmentalist and activist, pointed out that the report "shows that there is a functional relationship between poverty, racism, and powerlessness and the chemical industry's assault on the environment."

Commoner's remarks begin to address the question posed at the beginning of this article: whether or not there can be a healthy environment without justice. They make the link between environmental pollution and issues of racial and social equity. The unwritten law governing corporate decision making around toxic pollutants seems to have been "Do what you can get away with," otherwise known as "malignant neglect." Communities that are poorer, less informed, less organized, and less politically influential become likely targets for the dumping of toxic wastes and other abuse from polluters.

THE GROWING ACTIVISM AMONG racial minority communities about environmental issues is encouraging. For example, the Southwest Organizing Committee, a community group in Albuquerque, New Mexico, used voter registration and block organizing in predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods to get political leaders to address underground water contamination, nitrate poisoning, and other severe environmental problems in that area. The predominantly African-American and Lumbee Indian area of southeast North Carolina was able to prevent the local siting of the first commercial low-level radioactive waste incinerator. This effort was spearheaded by the Center for Community Change, a group now in the midst of a fight to stop the placement of a regional chemical waste treatment plant along the Lumbee River.

In a similar situation, the residents of Hancock County, a 78 percent African-American county in Georgia, recently stopped the proposed placement of a garbage incinerator in that county. In Louisiana in November 1988, a coalition of civil rights community activists, environmentalists, and labor unions organized the "Great Louisiana Toxics March" along the "cancer corridor" between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Finally, pesticide poisoning caused the largely Hispanic United Farm Workers Union to initiate another national boycott of California table grapes, called the "Wrath of Grapes."

Since the inception of the environmental movement, it has become evident that modern industrial society, no matter what benefits are forthcoming, will not find alternatives to harmful production practices without pressure from a highly mobilized people. In the case of hazardous wastes, for example, the stated goal of national legislation is reduced production of such wastes. Research has shown that not only will this be technologically feasible but economically beneficial. Nonetheless, the United States has made very limited progress in this area.

Perhaps the real explanation for this lack of progress was expressed by the Rev. Leon White, of the Commission for Racial Justice and a primary organizer of the Warren County protests. White said, "As long as there are poor and minority areas to dump on, corporate America won't be serious about finding alternatives to the way toxic materials are produced and managed."

Racial minorities in the United States and their brothers and sisters around the world clearly bear a disproportionate burden of pollution. This fact is directly related to the economic, political, and social oppression that they also bear. If we are serious about cleaning up the environment, we must begin to link these issues. The environmental movement needs to undergo a transformation, similar to that which took place in the peace movement, toward becoming a just environmental movement.

Since the Warren County protest, a growing number of African-American, Hispanic, Native American, and Asian/Pacific Islander communities have become conscious of environmental racism and have actively taken up the fight against toxic pollution. These efforts must not only be embraced and supported but also used to articulate a new understanding of the basic premises and goals of the struggle to clean up our environment.

Charles Lee was the director of research for the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice in New York City when this article appeared. He directed and authored the study Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States.