Chittlin' Talk: Link between race, hazardous-waste sites still strong

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Link between race, hazardous-waste sites still strong

"Twenty years after a landmark study showed that people of color were more likely to live near hazardous-waste sites than any other demographic, a follow-up report has found that the disparity is even greater across the U.S. today.

"The problem is more entrenched in metropolitan Phoenix, where 63.7 percent of the residents living in neighborhoods adjacent to hazardous-waste facilities are of color, according to the new report commissioned by the United Church of Christ. Nationally, the figure is 56 percent.

"Black and Latino residents are more likely than Anglos to live next to facilities storing the most dangerous types of wastes. They are exposed in disproportionate numbers to the potential health and safety risks of living next to volatile chemicals."

Go to http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0509toxic0509.html

Booker T. Washington said:

"There is another class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs -- partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs....There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who do not want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public."