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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (April 17, 2019)
Page 2 The Skanner Portland & Seattle April 17, 2019 ® Challenging People to Shape a Better Future Now Environmental Racism is Real, Destructive and Deadly Bernie Foster Founder/Publisher Bobbie Dore Foster Executive Editor F Jerry Foster Advertising Manager Christen McCurdy News Editor Patricia Irvin Graphic Designer Monica J. Foster Seattle Office Coordinator Susan Fried Photographer 2017 MERIT AWARD WINNER The Skanner Newspaper, es- tablished in October 1975, is a weekly publication, published every Wednesday by IMM Publi- cations Inc. 415 N. Killingsworth St. P.O. Box 5455 Portland, OR 97228 Telephone (503) 285-5555 Fax: (503) 285-2900 info@theskanner.com www.TheSkanner.com The Skanner is a member of the National Newspaper Pub lishers Association and West Coast Black Pub lishers Association. All photos submitted become the property of The Skanner. We are not re spon sible for lost or damaged photos either solicited or unsolicited. ©2018 The Skanner. All rights re served. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission prohibited. Local News Pacific NW News World News Opinions Jobs, Bids Entertainment Community Calendar it d ay ! • L i ke u s o n F ac ebo TheSkannerNews o k • learn • co m me in y o u r c o m m u n Stacy M. Brown NNPA Columnist guished Professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy at Texas Southern Uni- versity. “Our Environmental Justice movement has been trying to change this and related envi- ronmental inequities for the past four decades,” Bullard said. “ he said, noting a term coined by NNPA President and CEO Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr. Chavis, whose also known as the “Godfather of the En- vironmental Justice Move- ment,” first coined and de- fined the term environmental racism in his 1983 work, “Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States.” Chavis said environmental racism is racial discrimina- tion in the deliberate target- ing of communities of color for toxic waste facilities, the official sanctioning of the presence of life threatening poisons and pollutants near In order to do that much damage to a community, one must so thor- oughly objectify and dehumanize the people in it that they become things that can be discarded and forgotten about, While the study takes a somewhat different approach in examining disparities in air pollution exposure by examining consumption of goods and services, “its find- ings once again reveal blacks and Hispanics bear a dispro- portionate ‘pollution burden’ or costs, while whites experi- ence ‘pollution advantage’ or benefits,” Dr. Bullard said. “There is a clear disparity between the pollution white people cause and the pollu- tion to which they are ex- posed,” he said. The study concludes that “pollution inequity is driv- en by differences among ra- cial-ethnic groups in both ex- posure and the consumption that leads to the exposure.” There’s a name for this in- equity, Dr. Bullard said. “It’s called environmental racism,” I Updated daily online. • nts or many, Earth Day stands as a reminder of everyone’s role as stew- ards of the planet. It’s a time to reflect and to plan ahead for a cleaner and healthier environment. Still, for many others, it’s also a stark reminder about how African Americans and other minorities are often forgotten when it comes to the protection of their com- munities. A March 2019 study pub- lished in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found that whites experience 17 percent less pollution caused by their consumption of goods and services. On the other hand, Blacks and Hispanics experience 56 percent and 63 percent, respectively, more pollu- tion than their consumption would generate. Whites experience a “pollu- tion advantage” while Blacks and Hispanics experience a “pollution burden.” On his global issues blog, Dr. Robert Bullard said the study builds on a growing body of environmental jus- tice literature showing racial and ethnic disparities in air pollution exposure. It shows that particulate matter exposure in the U.S. is disproportionately caused by consumption patterns of whites and inhaled by people of color minority, said Bull- ard, the former dean of the Barbara Jordan-Mickey Le- land School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University and the founding director of the Environmental Justice Re- source Center at Clark Atlan- ta University. Known as the father of Envi- ronmental Justice, Dr. Bullard currently serves as a Distin- communities of color and the history of excluding people of color from leadership of the environmental movement. The civil rights leader also noted that there are different forms of racism, “yet environ- mental racism is a particular- ly insidious and intentional form of racism that negative- ly affects millions of Black, Native Americans, Hispanics and Asian Americans, as well as people of color around the world.” “Environmental justice is the corrective antidote to the reality and prevalence of en- vironmental racism,” Chavis said. While studies like the one performed by PNAS con- tinue to reveal that race is a major predictor of exposure to goods and services to air pollution, conditions aren’t helped when politics come into play. A recent press release from the nonprofit Earth Jus- tice said President Donald Trump’s policies continue to “chip away at the shield against environmental rac- ism.” Particularly, the NEPA Act has come into the cross hairs of the president. The NEPA ACT requires review of federal projects be- fore they proceed — among other things to assess envi- ronmental, human health and socioeconomic impacts on communities. Properly implemented, it gives every person a voice in decisions affecting the well- being of their local communi- ty, from providing comments on project design to pointing out how a project could harm clean air and water, according to Earth Justice. It’s far more than an ob- scure environmental statute: The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe made use of the law to fight back against the Dako- ta Access Pipeline project in 2017. And today, advocates are charging that the Trump ad- ministration is violating core NEPA protections in its quest to build its border wall. Simply put, NEPA is one of the most effective tools in the fight against environmental racism. It is essential to ensuring that communities of color, who so often bear a dispro- portionate pollution burden, get a say in the decision-mak- ing processes that are most likely to affect their health, resiliency, and vitality, envi- ronmental experts said. Read the rest of this commentary at TheSkanner.com Why Are Humans Killing Whales Again? LOCAL NEWS BRIEFS LOCAL EVENTS to y • Opinion t was announced this past weekend that Japan will resume the killing and har- vesting of whales. The only qualification, which, appar- ently, is supposed to make the world feel better, is that this will take place in Japanese territorial waters. One can, perhaps, argue that at a point in human histo- ry prior to the awareness that whales are the second most intelligent animals on Planet Earth, the killing of whales for oil and blubber was un- derstandable. I am not saying that someone need agree that it was a good idea, but one could at least understand a decision made based upon profound ignorance. There is no excuse today. We know that humans hunted whales nearly to extinction. We know that whales remain Bill Fletcher Jr. The Global African in a fragile environment both due to their numbers and due “ ing? What could they possibly be thinking that would justify moving against another spe- cies? We have seen the impact of the conscious human de- struction of various species — the buffalo being a profound example — and we know that once a species is gone, there is no bringing it back. There is no “…oops…sorry…” moment. …what is the Japanese whaling in- dustry thinking? What could they possibly be thinking that would justify moving against another species? to the impact of the current and growing environmental catastrophe. Therefore, what is the Japa- nese whaling industry think- The people of the world cannot sit back and view this as a matter of Japanese sov- ereignty. The stakes are too high to allow any country to fly its flag while plunging a spear into the side of a mighty whale. There need to be con- sequences and those conse- quences need to be substan- tial in punishing Japanese capitalism for embarking —o nce again, and after repeated violations of international agreements — in this direc- tion. The arguments have been made. The issues are clear. If Japan pursues this course, then a strategic response needs to be offered, if not by cowardly governments, then by courageous global citizens. Bill Fletcher, Jr. is the former president of TransAfrica Fo- rum. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and at www.billf- letcherjr.com. See his recently published murder mystery The Man Who Fell From the Sky, from Hardball Press. nt • lo c a l n e w s • eve
