Environmental Racism Quotes

Generally speaking in America, a lot of environmentally problematic facilities tend to be located in places where poor folks live because wealthier folks have the ability to say, "not in my backyard."

The environment is the most important, the most fundamental, civil-rights issue.... Four out of every five toxic-waste dumps in America is in a black neighborhood.

All definitions of wilderness that exclude people seem to me to be false. African 'wilderness' areas are racist because indigenous people are being cleared out of them so white people can go on holiday there.

Native communities are focal points for the excrement of industrial society.

This is America, but the way that the people of Flint are being treated with this water crisis is like a third-world country.

Being told about the effects of climate change is an appeal to our reason and to our desire to bring about change. But to see that Africans are the hardest hit by climate change, even though they generate almost no greenhouse gas, is a glaring injustice, which also triggers anger and outrage over those who seek to ignore it.

While cheap products are exported to western countries, the waste is dumped mostly in China's back yard, contaminating its air, water, soil and seas.

Our most polluted neighborhoods are disproportionately home to Latinos, African Americans, and other communities of color.

If we talk about the environment, for example, we have to talk about environmental racism - about the fact that kids in South Central Los Angeles have a third of the lung capacity of kids in Santa Monica.

It turns out - this is a metaphor out of [Charles] Dickens - that the raw sewage emptied into the Anacostia comes from the Federal Triangle. I have a sewer map, and on it you can see the pipe from which congressional wastes empty into the river that then flows through the black neighborhoods of Washington, D.C. It is very expensive to do anything about the river, but somebody's working on it.

I mean, think of Flint. I mean, think of the lead poisoning of thousands of poor and black children across the United States.

Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Less Developed Countries]?... I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that... I’ve always though that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City.

Many of us regard ourselves as mildly liberal or centrist politically, voice fairly pleasant sentiments about our poor children, contribute money to send poor kids to summer camp, feel benevolent. We're not nazis; we're nice people. We read sophisticated books. We go to church. We go to synagogue. Meanwhile, we put other people's children into an economic and environmental death zone. We make it hard for them to get out. We strip the place bare of amenities. And we sit back and say to ourselves, "Well, I hope that they don't kill each other off. But if they do, it's not my fault.

Those who say "not in my back yard" are saying "rape someone else's back yard.

I just heard that some lead was coming into Newark into schools, and I asked the question, "Whose schools?" They said, "The Black and the Brown." Is that an accident? I don't think so. We are being designed to be destroyed - and unless we see that, and come together as a people under vicious attack we will suffer the consequences of evil that's in high places.

Why did they pick the [Indian] Reservations to lay down their pipeline? They were probably thinking the indigenous people were not going to stand up.

Events like Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy were unlike any weather disasters before. They showed the world who suffers the most from the impacts of extreme weather: low-income families and communities of color.

What happened in Flint is immoral. The children of Flint are just as precious as the children of any other part of America.

We have to have a planet to pass on to the next generation, and these issues of climate change and climate justice and the disproportionate burdens that communities of color actually bear from our damaging climate is a huge issue.

As a black person in America, I am twice as likely as a white person to live in an area where air pollution poses the greatest risk to my health. I am five times more likely to live within walking distance of a power plant or chemical facility - which I do.

Race and class are extremely reliable indicators as to where one might find the good stuff, like parks and trees, and where one might find the bad stuff, like power plants and waste facilities.

For someone with a background of economic justice, what scared me about climate change is not just that the sea level will rise and we'll have more storms - it's how this intersects with that cocktail of inequality and racism.

I feel greatly at fault in not having made a loud public protest about Belle Glade before this.

Environmental justice is the movement to ensure that no community suffers disproportionate environmental burdens or goes without enjoying fair environmental benefits.

What we are seeing here is environmental injustice