Houston is very segregated along racial and economic lines. And this flood has really shown that. If you look at ZIP codes, you can map where that vu… - Robert D. Bullard

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.

disasters like this widen and exacerbate inequality. And so, the communities that are most at risk from not having, you know, the kinds of infrastructure in those areas, in terms of flood protection, in terms of trying to get out, in terms of transportation, etc., I mean, it played out

In 1990, my book Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality chronicled the convergence of two social movements-the social justice and environmental movements-into one, the environmental justice movement. This book highlighted African Americans' environmental activism in the South, the same region that gave birth to the modern civil rights movement. What started out as local and often isolated community-based struggles against the siting of toxic waste and industrial facilities blossomed into a multi-issue, multiethnic, and multiregional movement."