Environmental Justice:
An Interview with Robert Bullard
July 1999
Here is the full text of an interview with Dr. Robert Bullard,
one of the pioneering scholars and activists in the environmental
justice movement. Robert Bullard is one of the major researchers and organizers in
the environmental justice movement. This interview is
anti-copyright and may be reproduced and distributed at will.
by Errol Schweizer
[2877 words]
Errol Schweizer (ES): What is the environmental justice movement?
Robert Bullard (RB): The environmental justice movement has
basically redefined what environmentalism is all about. It
basically says that the environment is everything: where we live,
work, play, go to school, as well as the physical and natural
world. And so we can’t separate the physical environment from the
cultural environment. We have to talk about making sure that
justice is integrated throughout all of the stuff that we do.
What the environmental justice movement is about is trying to
address all of the inequities that result from human settlement,
industrial facility siting and industrial development. What we’ve
tried to do over the last twenty years is educate and assist
groups in organizing and mobilizing, empowering themselves to
take charge of their lives, their community and their
surroundings. It’s more of a concept of trying to address power
imbalances, lack of political enfranchisement, and to redirect
resources so that we can create some healthy, liveable and
sustainable types of models.
ES: How have environmental justice groups organized themselves?
RB: For the most part, a lot of the small grassroots groups
operate from a bottom up model. They don’t have boards of
directors and large budgets and large staffs but they do operate
with the idea that everyone has a role and we are all equal in
this together. The environmental justice groups are more
egalitarian, most of them are led by women, and its more
democratic. Not to say its perfect but it does bring out the idea
that power rests in all of us and when we operate as a
collective, that’s when we are most powerful and we move forward
as a unit, as a body and not necessarily with a hierarchy. But I
think a lot of it is when you can have an issue that can
mobilize, organize and create the catalyst that gets thousands of
people at a meeting, saying this is what we want and we’re not
gonna back up till we get it.
I think that’s where the environmental justice movement is more
of a grassroots movement of ordinary people who may not see
themselves as traditional environmentalists, but are just as much
concerned about the environment as someone who may be a member of
the Sierra Club or the Audubon Society.
ES: How has the environmental justice movement come into conflict
with these traditional, white environmental groups?
RB: There’s been a lot of conflict and misunderstanding about
what the role of some of the green groups are as it relates to
environmental justice and particularly working in communities of
color. And what we’re saying is that its just one environment.
You’re talking about planet earth, where we live, and if in fact
we are going to have a global movement for environmental justice,
we have to understand what environment is and what the agendas
are. A lot of grassroots groups and communities of color are
saying that we have to work in our communities and take care of
educating and empowering our people before we can talk about
having other people do stuff for us. I think to a large extent a
lot of grassroots groups have come head-on with a lot of the
larger groups that have not understood exactly what environmental
justice is.
We are saying that environmental justice incorporates the idea
that we are just as much concerned about wetlands, birds and
wilderness areas, but we’re also concerned with urban habitats,
where people live in cities, about reservations, about things
that are happening along the US-Mexican border, about children
that are being poisoned by lead in housing and kids playing
outside in contaminated playgrounds. So we have had to struggle
to get these issues on the radar on a lot of the large
environmental groups.
We’ve made a lot of progress since 1990 when a letter was written
to them charging them with environmental racism, elitism, looking
at their staff, looking at their boards and saying that we need
to talk. And there’s been some talking and sharing and working
together along the way. We’ve made progress but there’s still a
lot of progress that needs to be made because to a large extent
the environmental movement, the more conservation/preservation
movement, really reflects the larger society. And society is
racist. And so we can’t expect a lot of our organizations not to
somehow be affected by that.
We’re not saying that people are evil and that these
organizations are setting out to do harm, but we’re saying that
we have to educate ourselves and learn about each other. We have
to cross those boundaries and go on the other side of the tracks,
go to the meetings downtown and learn from each other. That’s
what we’ve been doing for the last twenty years: trying to get a
handle on how we can work together in a principled way. And in
1991 we had the first national people of color environmental
leadership summit and we developed 17 principles of environmental
justice. Basically, how can we as people of color, working class
people and poor people work on agendas that at the same time may
conflict with the larger agendas of the big groups. And what
we’re saying is that we may not agree on 100 percent of the
things but we agree on more things than we disagree on. And I
think that we have to agree to work on the things we are in
agreement on and somehow work through those things where there
are disagreements.
ES: What kind of role has race played in the siting of toxic
facilities in this country?
RB: Race is still the potent factor for predicting where Locally
Unwanted Land Uses (LULUs) go. A lot of people say its class, but
race and class are intertwined. Because the society is so racist
and because racism touches every institution–employment,
housing, education, facility siting, land use decisions, you
can’t really extract race out of decisions that are being made by
persons who are in power and the power arrangements are unequal.
When we talk about the institution of racism as it exists in
environmental policy, enforcement, land use, zoning and all those
things. All of that is part of the environment and we have to
make sure that our brothers and sisters who are in environmental
groups understand that’s what we are saying.
Environmental justice is not a social program, it’s not
affirmative actions, its about justice. and until we get justice
in environmental protection, justice in terms of enforcement of
regulations, we will not even talk about achieving sustainable
development or sustainability issues until we talk about justice.
A lot of the groups that are trying to address these issues in
the absence of dealing with race may be fooling themselves. When
we talk about what’s happening along the US-Mexican border and
the colonias and the maquilas and the devastation that is
happening along the border, the health conditions of children and
workers and not understand that it’s also related to our
consumption patterns, consumption behavior and who has the most
money to consume the most. And those are issues that may be
unpopular when we sit in rooms and talk but I think that’s how
the environmental justice movement is forcing these issues on the
table and really getting a lot of people to think about how we
can start to address the disparities and the inequities and the
privileged position that some people have only because of the
skin color that they were born in. And that’s where the justice
issues come into account.
Now all of the issues of environmental racism and environmental
justice don’t just deal with people of color. We are just as much
concerned with inequities in Appalachia, for example, where the
whites are basically dumped on because of lack of economic and
political clout and lack of having a voice to say “no” and that’s
environmental injustice. So we’re trying to work with groups
across the political spectrums; democrats, republicans,
independents, on the reservations, in the barrios, in the
ghettos, on the border and internationally to see that we address
these issues in a comprehensive manner.
ES: Are you seeing more of a convergence between the traditional,
white environmental groups and the people of color movements?
RB: We haven’t seen a total convergence; what we’ve seen is a
better understanding of the various sides that are there, the
various elements, the various components and priorities that are
there. And for a long time historically, for example, black
people in the south were not even allowed to visit state parks,
because of Jim Crow and segregation. And somehow we were blamed
for not having appreciation for state parks. I mean, it wasn’t
our faults, we couldn’t go to them! So we’re finding as the more
urban folks get to visit parks and wilderness areas and are able
to appreciate that these are national treasures and not just
treasures for people that have money to visit them, its
everybody’s. We all pay taxes. And so we are seeing more and more
young people being able to take field trips to see the beauty of
nature. And more and more people who are in environmental groups
are now beginning to understand that what happens in cities also
impacts their lives.
So we can’t just let cities buckle under and fall into this
sinkhole. We have to talk about this convergence of urban,
suburban and rural and talk about the quality of life that exists
and talk about the issue of urban sprawl. Basically everybody is
impacted by sprawl. People who live in cities face disinvestment,
in suburbs with the trees being knocked down, chewing up
farmland. So you talk about this convergence, a lot of it is
happening now, but it has to happen with the understanding that
we have to include everybody, that it has to be an inclusive
movement or it won’t work.
ES: How can you pose these issues to people when organizing in
low income and politically disenfranchised communities,
especially communities with very little open space or access to
natural areas?
RB: The first line is that we have to start early. We have to
educate young people that it is their right to have access to
open space, green space, parks, outdoors, as opposed to people
thinking that their supposed to be living in an area where the
only park is a basketball court with no net. We have to give
people this idea that it’s their right to have access to open
space and green space and we have to provide funds to make sure
that we get them early on and take them on field trips, take them
to a wilderness area, a refuge, a reserve, to a park-a real park
and to integrate this information into our curriculum.
In your geography course, in your social studies course, or
science course make sure you integrate this into it, and have
videos that you can show, but ultimately the best example that
you can have is that young people visit these places and see for
themselves what nature is.
If you talk about people of color, African Americans for example,
we are land-based people. Africans are land-based people. Native
Americans are land-based peoples. We have been pushed off land
and we now find ourselves in cities but that doesn’t mean that
the institutional memory of what the land was to us and how we
are tied to the land and how our whole existence was based on
community and being tied to the land. And so I think we’ve gotten
away from that but the reintroduction of those concepts can be
achieved if we make a concerted effort at trying to do that. And
some of that is being done if you look at the environmental
education curriculum that is integrating environmental justice
into it. We’re trying to do that but there is a whole lot of
resistance.
Traditional environmental education is to basically do it by the
numbers the way it’s been done for the last 50 years and thats
not working. It’s not working for our communities.
ES: What is the EJ perspective on the population/border debate
within the Sierra Club?
RB: (Hehehehehe) Well, you know… My position–and I can only
speak for myself, is that immigration is not the problem in terms
of environmental degradation. If we talk about having no borders
and addressing issues of economic justice–we can address lots of
the environmental injustices around the world. If we talk about
respecting life and respecting people and respecting communities,
if we do that we can end a lot of the international friction that
results from transboundary waste trades, and imbalances created
as a result of NAFTA–people call it “ShAFTA”. We can do a lot of
things and I think this whole anti-immigrant wave is just another
wedge that is driven between folks that are organizing and
mobilizing. I don’t think it will work.
This country is changing demographically and it is scaring a lot
of people. The year 2050 is supposed to be the magic year when
people of color will be in the majority in this country. But at
one point in time this country was people of color, it was
indigenous people. So when we talk about these issues, we have to
put them in the context of the long term. We need to address
things within US borders but at the same time we cannot export
problems abroad and create problems in areas that we know do not
have the capacity to handle garbage and environmental waste and
the risky technologies that are being exported and the
unsustainable development policies that are being exported
abroad, most of it by our government. So I think that
environmental justice folks are saying that we are going to have
to work across borders and those ties are already there and it is
just a matter of making sure that we strengthen those and we
expand and keep reaching out.
ES: How has the environmental justice movement attacked the mode
of production, the way that things are made, as well as the fact
that things are being dumped on people.
RB: Well, as a matter of fact, there was a meeting in Detroit
[recently] on clean production. And what we’re saying is that
clean production can be a major component in the environmental
justice movement because if we are talking about clean
production, changing the way things are made and what goes into
the manufacturing of products, we can save a lot of headaches for
communities that are surrounded by polluting industries. So if we
clean up the production and a lot of communities that are living
on the fence lines with these facilities, a lot of their problems
can be solved immediately. So EJ and clean production go hand in
hand. What we are saying is that we have to make sure that as
these new movements come along we integrate EJ into it. We’ve
done that with the clean production movement.
ES: EF! considers itself to be the radical end of the
environmental movement. What can EF!ers do to further the vision
of the environmental justice movement?
RB: Well, you know, the EJ movement is an inclusive movement.
What we are saying is that everything on the spectrum as it
relates to siting, pollution, industrial contamination in
communities, non-sustainable development, non-sustainable
patterns of production, I think everybody has a role in that. The
EJ movement is an anti-racist movement and I don’t think you can
get any more radical than fighting racism. Because when you talk
about fighting racism, you make a lot of enemies because racism
permeates everything.
I think Earth First! can really embrace a lot of the
environmental justice principles that we have and see that there
are a lot of things that environmental justice groups are
advocating and trying to implement that cut cross some of the
issues that you’re addressing. And I’m not saying that you are
gonna get a lot people of color inundating your organization
[sic] with membership but we can work together without being
members and that’s where I think the collaboration, coalitions
and signing onto supporting specific campaigns has really made a
difference in some of the more recent campaign victories that
we’ve had on EJ.
The fact is that the environmental justice movement over the last
ten years has really matured onto developing policies and issue
statements and working on issues ranging from housing,
transportation, health to economic development, community
revitalization, you name it. I think that the mere fact that we
have a number of environmental justice centers around the country
now that are working with communities–not organizing
communities– but working with, in support of and providing
technical assistance and training, we’ve been able to do some
things that no thought we could do 10-15 years ago and thats
really making a difference when we talk about working across
disciplines and geographic, racial and economic spectrums, we’re
the most powerful and thats when we are the strongest.
—
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Last modified: 22 January 2000
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