Robert D. Bullard Quotes

It’s not just the landfill, it’s not just the incinerator, it’s not just the garbage dump, it’s not just the crisscrossing freeway and highway, and the bus barns that dump all that stuff in these neighborhoods — it’s all that combined. Even if each particular facility is in compliance, there are no regulations that take into account this saturation. It may be legal, but it is immoral. Just like slavery was legal, but slavery has always been immoral.

There is no level playing field. Any time our society says that a powerful chemical company has the same right as a low income family that’s living next door, that playing field is not level, is not fair.

The gentrification that oftentimes occurs in many of our communities, it occurs at the—I guess, the detriment of communities that have historically lived in those areas...we have to say that we want to make sure that we redevelop and we develop our communities in a way that minimizes displacement of incumbent residents, and also ensure that those residents who want to remain in those older neighborhoods that are undergoing transformation, that they can. And those who want to leave, by choice, can leave.

The environmental protection apparatus is broken and must be fixed. The environmental justice movement has set out a clear goal: to fix this protection apparatus by eliminating unequal enforcement of environmental, civil rights, and public health laws.

what you’re seeing in that kind of analysis is basically certain neighborhoods are unofficially zoned for it, even though we don’t have zoning, unofficially zoned for the things that other people don’t want.

It was very clear that people who were making decisions — county commissioners or industrial boards or city councils — were not the same people who were “hosting” these facilities in their communities. Without a doubt, it was a form of apartheid where whites were making decisions and black people and brown people and people of color, including Native Americans on reservations, had no seat at the table.

The course for justice is not a sprint. It’s more like a marathon or a relay race. You pass the baton to the next generation, and you hope there’s a smooth pass off. At the same time, you don’t leave that next generation to run the race by itself.

we have to have strong community-based organizations on the ground with the capacity to assist and support families and households that can get things right, that can pressure and apply the points of saying, “Well, we need to make sure that just because you don’t have a car, just because you don’t have a big bank account doesn’t mean that you should not be safe, that your community should not come back and that you should not have the same level of protection and the same level of importance as if you were a middle-class white neighborhood.” That is—that’s what we have to ensure.

those populations that lived, for example, on those fencelines with those chemical companies, people say, “Well, what’s happening at the chemical company that burnt and exploded? They say it’s safe. The chemical company says it’s safe. The EPA says it’s safe. But I’d like to know: Where does the CEO of that company live? If it’s so safe—you know what I’m saying?—how about him pack up and camp out next door?” The problem is, individuals making decisions oftentimes don’t have to deal with the kinds of issues that fenceline communities have to deal with, even when we’re not talking about flooding. We’re talking about the flooding of pollution and chemicals on communities. And people don’t ask for—to be polluted. It’s without their consent.

The (environmental justice) movement has come a long way since its humble beginnings in Warren County, North Carolina, a rural and mostly African American community, where a proposed landfill for disposing of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) ignited protests that resulted in more than five hundred arrests. These protests prompted a study by the U.S. General Accounting Office, Siting of Hazardous Waste Landfills and Their Correlation with Racial and Economic Status of Surrounding Communities. This study revealed that three of the four off-site, commercial hazardous waste landfills in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Region 4 (composed of eight southern states) happen to be located in predominantly African American communities, although African Americans made up only 20 percent of the region's population. The protesters of Warren County put the term "environmental racism" on the map.

We have to talk about environmental racism and call it out when it exists. We can’t just run from it

I saw that 100 percent of all the city-owned landfills in Houston were in black neighborhoods, though blacks made up only 25 percent of the population. Three out of four of the privately owned landfills were located in predominantly black neighborhoods, and six out of eight of the city-owned incinerators. In a city that does not have zoning, it meant that these were decisions made by individuals in government.

This whole question of environment, economics, and equity is a three-legged stool. If the third leg of that stool is dealt with as an afterthought, that stool won’t stand. The equity components have to be given equal weight. But racial and economic and social equity can be very painful topics: people get uncomfortable when questions of poor people and race are raised.

we will have more hurricanes. We will have more floods. But the thing is, how do we—how do we build, rebuild in a way that will make our city more resilient?

Redlining steals health and wealth. It was bad for America in the 1920s, and its continuing effects are harmful in the 2020s today.