Environmental Racism within America

p Environmental Racism within America

Table of Contents

1 . The dark legacy of racism in the United States --------------- 03

2 . What is environmental racism --------------- 04

3 . Environmentalism - an elitist movement --------------- 06

4 . A sociological perspective on environmental exploitation --------------- 08

5 . Clash of the classes --------------- 11

6 . Is race the most potent factor in environmental discrimination --------------- 13

7 . The blacks fight back --------------- 18

1 . The dark legacy of racism in the United States

I had dreamed such

a happy dream , in imagination had drunk of the water the pure , sweet crystal water of life , but now--now--the flowers had withered before my eyes darkness had settled down upon me like a pall and I was left alone with cruel mocking shadows

- Elizabeth Keckley ca .1818-1907 , a Negro Slave (1868

In the nineteenth century , the black slaves in America , languishing under the yoke of bondage , for centuries hoped to see in one divine event the end of all their plight . Perhaps few men ever worshipped freedom with such unrelenting zeal as did the American Negroes . To them slavery was the cause of all sorrow , and emancipation - the key to a promised land of sweeter beauty than ever stretched before the eyes of wearied Israelites ' At last emancipation did come decades passed away from then on , a century and a quarter of progress , development , and national renewal - the black man 's lot did improve significantly . And yet , the freedman had not yet found in freedom his promised land . One black writer , a former slave , made an observation at the beginning of the nineteenth century that Whatever of good may have come in these years of change , the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people (Du Bois 1903 . At the beginning of the twentieth century , the observation still holds true . Racial segregation discrimination , and disparities remain prevalent in the modern-day United States , despite the passing of civil rights legislation , the dismantling of ideas about the biological basis of race , and a growing spirit of celebration of multiculturalism , nationally and globally

In the August of 1963 , Martin Luther King fervently proclaimed that

Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy . Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice . Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood . Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God 's children Ironically , in the subsequent years of the 1960 's and 1970 's a new mode of racial discrimination and racial injustice was taking root in places and communities across the nation it was environmental racism environmental injustice . In the traditional type of racial discrimination at its vilest , the blacks were treated as filth that needed to be kept at a good distance always , disregarded and dumped as garbage themselves . In the modern form of environmental racism , filth...