Environmental racism exists wherever low income or minority communities bear a disproportionate exposure to the pollutants put into the environment by major corporations. Hazardous waste sites are all too often placed in already blighted communities inhabited by racial minorities and the poor. In the United States, since the 1980s warriors for environmental justice have sought to codify laws and statutes prohibiting large corporations from exploiting the already meager resources of low income minorities and the communities in which they live. Questions concerning the intent of US corporations immediately arise. Do big businesses target minority groups and the poor? That is, are these polluting corporations actually racist, or are there reasons other than demography that these neighborhoods are chosen? And further, is the effect of placing hazardous waste sites in lower income communities entirely detrimental to those communities? It is possible that some facets of the environmental racism debate may work in the favor of those populations that appear, prima facie, to be disadvantaged by the existence of these sites.
On the one hand, environmental problems are inseparable from poor economic conditions, and the poorest economic conditions clearly plague primarily racial minorities and the poor. A typical major corporation will choose to "dispose of its waste product at the minimum cost to itself, despite the potential effects to others, thereby shifting its production costs to the general public, that is, to the commons" (Brook 613). Thus, throughout the United States, contaminants will be emitted into the air and toxic waste will be discharged into the waterways in the "lowest rent" areas. Because the most cost-effective portions of the "commons" will be those in the poorest communities, the "burden of industrial waste" will ultimately fall "more heavily on black and brown than on white" (Szasz, as quoted in Brook 615). Thi...