Environmental racism? Flawed argument is a barrier to resolution
08-09-2001
Environmental racism is a real problem but it is not a term that should be thrown around loosely, as President of the Anniston chapter of the SCLC Rev. N.Q. Reynolds did in Montgomery Tuesday.
This aspect of racism is the practice of allowing, or even simply ignoring, pollution and the destruction of the environment in minority neighborhoods.
Indeed, there's plenty of environmental racism in Anniston. The iron works built by the founding fathers certainly weren't located on the eastern side of town. In more recent memory, the community has ignored the pollution of much of western Anniston, where the highest concentrations of PCBs, lead and mercury are to be found..
But to say, as Rev. Reynolds did at a Southern Christian Leadership Conference convention, that the incinerator being built to destroy chemical weapons at the Anniston Army Depot is an example of environmental racism is misleading and misinformed.
Ignoring the fact that the incinerator's nearest neighbors in Bynum are largely white by the latest census reports, the construction of the incinerator represents more than $1 billion worth of environmental cleanup.
The furnace itself is not the villain — the 2,400 tons of nerve gas are.
Destroying the nerve agent affects all of us, black and white, regardless of race. And, we might add, nerve agent is color blind.
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