Robert D. Bullard

This book documents the problem of environmental racism as well
as the diverse environmental justice movement that has recently
emerged in African-American, Hispanic, Native-American, and other
minority communities to address it Growing out of the work of scholars
and activists at the First National People of Color Environmental Lead-
ership Summit held in October 1991, this book speaks with both clarity
and urgency. It offers the reader the chance to hear important voices of
pain and resistance, voices from the grassroots.

The book thus stands in stark contrast to the report Environmental
Equity. Reducing Risk for All Communities, published in February 1992
by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. That report, which
took the EPA over eighteen months to complete, was written as a
response to several scholars of color active in the environmental justice
movement who wrote to the EPA's top administrator, William Reilly,
asking that the agency finally address the disproportionately high envi-
ronmental risks borne by people of color and low-income communities.
Yet, despite more than eighteen months of study, the EPA failed to grasp
the interplay of race and class biasing environmental decisionmaking.
The weaknesses of the report are worth analyzing.

The EPA's report is best seen as part of the EPA's "outreach
strategy" to mount a public relations campaign to drive a wedge between
grassroots environmental justice activists and mainstream civil rights
and environmental groups rather than offer a substantive effort to
address environmental problems that disproportionately harm people
of color and low-income citizens. The agency's overall outreach plan was
detailed in a confidential memorandum written by Lewis Crampton, an

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