Shacharit and weight training. Finding creative ways to daven.

I have generally believed in the concept of mind, body and spirit; and when the three are connected life is pretty good. This year I have been challenged around the concept of prayer. My main problem was, how to fit it in, so I didn’t. It bothered me that I did not have a spiritual practice. After a discussion with my spiritual director she reminded me that I do indeed have a spiritual practice.

My main spiritual practice has always been fitness: lifting weights, biking, running, walking, etc. I lift weights at least four times a week and bike to school almost everyday. This is my spiritual practice. With that said it started to become more important to me to incorporate traditional davening into my life.

Today, I incorporate. Shacharit into my weight training routine and I have said modeh ani, the morning blessings and the Shema while biking to school. By incorporating prayer into my fitness routine I can make time; time to thank God, and time for self reflection. Like many people in today’s society, I have a crazy busy schedule and it is hard to find time for traditional davenning. By incorporating prayer into my fitness routine I can make time.

Today, Jews need to find creative ways to pray. We need to be freed from our traditional concepts of connecting with the Divine. The harder we make prayer for people, then they won’t do it. I’m curious to know what other people do? How do you fit it in? Have you also found creative ways to pray and connect with the Divine?

Choseness

In Judaism, “chosenness” is the belief that the Jewish people were singularly chosen to enter into a covenant with God.  The idea of Jews as the chosen people is a fundamental tenet in traditional  Judaism. A tenet so fundamental that in 1945 the Union of Orthodox Rabbis voted to ban the newly published Reconstructionist Sabbath Prayer Book written by Mordecai Kaplan because the prayer book asserted that the Jews are not the chosen people, and the Torah is a human document and not supernaturally inspired. After the vote, the rabbis burned the book and proceeded to excommunicate Kaplan from Judaism.  The fact that the book burning accord shortly after the Allies declared victory over Nazi Europe is not lost on historians

In the Future of the American Jew Kaplan explains that the belief of chosenness was derived from the Torah and the stories around the Patriarchs, their descendants in Egypt, Moses and the Israelites on Mt Sinai and the belief that these stories in the Torah represented factual truth. In the book Kaplan states that “people use to think that the earth was the center of the universe, and their homes were the center of the earth.” The concept of Jews as the chosen people also must fit into this line of thinking, which we must get rid of and is a “thought which we can no longer inhabit.” The stories in the Torah according to Kaplan are considered legends and cannot be considered factual and Jews cannot use them as proof that they are the chosen people. He believed that a modern people cannot continue to believe in a supernatural God that favors one group of people over the other and claims one group superior to the other in a society. One group of people cannot be the “all time elite elect of God” and the idea of any people calling themselves chosen is “guilty of self infatuation.” Kaplan equated chosenness with arrogance and believed that “No people can achieve salvation until all people do. This can happen only when it is understood that all people possess equal access to god. That each peoples experience and expression when directed toward the highest goals are equally valid.”

According to Rebecca Alpert, Kaplan’s argument against chosenness would have not been a controversy if it had remained a theory.  Kaplan walked his talk and put his theory into action by changing prayers such as the Havdalah, Aleinu and the Kiddush, removing words that described chosenness and a supernatural deity.

As a person who came to Judaism as an adult and through the Reconstructionist movement, I had only known that Reconstructionism rejected the concept of chosenness I’m not even sure I understood how central the concept of chosenness was, until I started interacting with non-Reconstructionist Jews and visiting non-Reconstructionist synagogues.

The Reconstructionist of the early part of the 20th century “concluded that “chosenness” unlike other concepts cannot be reconstructed” and that chosenness implies a hierarchy and thus lends itself far too quickly to chauvinism and other anti-democratic behavior.” – Rabbi Deborah Waxman. The concept of chosenness was the central part of Reconstructionist thought that separated it from all other types of Judaism and maybe made it impossible to stay with the Conservative movement and be sort of a left leaning arm of the Conservative movement and thus the Recontructionist College was founded and a fourth movement of Judaism was created.

Jewish Belonging

Who is a Jew, is a basic question about Jewish identity. The question is based on ideas about membership to the Jewish people. Jewish identity has long been a source of questions and concerns for all Jews. How do we explain Jewish identity?

It used to be simple, if one had a Jewish mother then one was Jewish.  Most Jews probably believe that Judaism has always been a matrilineal religion, but this is not true, historically one’s Jewishness was passed down from the father, but the rabbis changed this sometime around the Roman occupation and the second temple period. In other words the rabbis “reconstructed” Jewish identity to fit with the times

Mordecai Kaplan’s pioneering work, Judaism as a Civilization challenged American Jews in the early part of the 20th century to think creatively and courageously about Jewish life.  Kaplan’s central argument was that Jewish civilization has never been static, but has always been dynamic. Judaism, he maintained, has evolved and changed as its practitioners have moved through time and space.

Kaplan felt that since Jews lived in a modern society it would be almost impossible for Jews to adhere to many of the same traditions of the past. American Jews of  Eastern European descent no longer lived in the shtetls of Europe but in a free America, where they could attain the full benefits of citizenship.  And Jews must always regard themselves as members of two civilizations – the Jewish civilization and the civilization of the secular state in which we live.

And just like in the beginning of the 20th century we are redefining what it means to be a Jew. The lines are not as clear as they once were.  High rates of intermarriage  between Jews and non-Jews, patrilineal descent, queer Jews, more Jews of color , adoption, conversion, and status vs identity all have changed the very fabric of what it means to be Jewish today.

As Judaism continues to evolve and we ask more and more: Who is a Jew? What is a Jew? What does a Jew look like? Do our stereotypes limit our openness to and welcoming of a wider array of Jews? How do we navigate an American Jewish population that is less tied to the past? Speaks less Hebrew? Is less connected to the State of Israel? And looks more and more like the rest of America? I don’t have the answers to these questions, but they are definitely questions to think about, and it’s time to discuss these issue, so let’s discuss

Teaching King and Heschel

This fall I had the privilege of learning about the relationship between Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. I was excited for the opportunity to learn about these two men. I had heard for many years that blacks and Jews worked together on civil rights and at one time the two groups were close. Having heard this for most of my adult life and seeing little evidence of it except in the relationship of King and Heschel and a few other well documented relationships I started to wonder if it were really true.  Now I had the opportunity to learn about two men, one black, one Jewish, both religious leaders. Once the class was over I had the additional responsibility to teach what I had learned to a diverse synagogue in West Philadelphia on the weekend of the King Holiday.

I grew up in a pretty typical black family in the 1980’s,  we had a picture of King on our wall and my parents had records of a few of his speeches.  I kind of feel like I grew up with the legend of King. My parents were not activist but instilled in me a black pride that one could hear in the song from James Brown “Say it Loud! I’m Black and I’m Proud.” As I grew up and learned more about King; I learned he was a revolutionary, a visionary and I realized that he was a real and true American hero who gave his life to help make this country a better place for everyone. Before taking this class I felt pretty comfortable in my knowledge of King and really wanted to learn more, but as a Jew I was kind of ashamed at my lack of knowledge of Heschel, even though I saw him as one of the great Jewish leaders

The Class

I had the honor of teaching the class, not just on the weekend of the King holiday but also when Jews are reading about the Exodus, freedom and the first Passover.

The 3rd Selma Civil Rights March frontline. From far left: John Lewis, an unidentified nun; Ralph Abernathy; Martin Luther King, Jr.; Ralph Bunche; Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel; Frederick Douglas Reese. Second row: Between Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ralph Bunche is Rabbi Maurice Davis. Heschel later wrote, “When I marched in Selma, my feet were praying.”

First I passed out the iconic photo of Heschel and King marching arm and arm in Selma.  Many of us know about this photo but I asked the adults in the room if they recognized the photo, some did but some did not. I then preceded to tell them about the marches in  Selma, Alabama in 1965.  And when that famous photo was taken it was the third attempt to March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama for voting rights. I talked about Bloody Sunday when several hundred civil rights marchers were attacked and beaten by local police and not allowed to march to Selma.

Alabama state troopers attack civil-rights demonstrators outside Selma, Alabama, on Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965.

The Selma protest organizers called in King for help, and with King’s help organized a second march which was held while waiting to get court approval for the group to march. With King’s help the courts got involved and soon the same police that beat the protesters the first time were ordered to protect the marchers as they left Selma. That photo of King and Heschel arm and arm has come to symbolize the great moment of symbiosis between and blacks and jews.

Then I shifted to “But how did they meet? I explained that King and Heschel met at the 1963 Conference on Religion and Race in Chicago, and after hearing King speak, Heschel wrote in his journal that the “Soul of Judaism is at stake in the civil rights movement.”  The relationship between these two men was a genuine friendship of affection as well as a relationship of two colleagues working together in political causes.

I told the group that what I considered remarkable about their relationship is these were two men with very different backgrounds; Heschel, who was saved from Hitler’s Europe by Americans, was born into a Hasidic Rabbi’s family in Warsaw, he wore a long white beard and Kippah.  He escaped the Nazi death camps by just a few weeks.  King came from a conservative black church tradition in the segregated American south.  Both men came from prominent religious families and were, in my opinion, groomed to take up the mantle of leadership in their communities. Both men believed in a God of compassion and righteousness and both men demanded that America live up to it’s ideals of being a nation for all people not just white Americans.

These two men were connected by the prophets and the Exodus story.  Both of these great leaders preached about the Exodus story.  I explained that King, like the American slaves before him connected with the Exodus story and saw the Exodus story as their own story of slavery and redemption.  King and the U.S. Civil Rights Movement saw themselves also embodying the Exodus:  The Israelites were the black American slaves and in King’s time struggling for equality and the end of segregation. And Pharaoh was the oppressive segregated and racist American society.  In King’s speeches we can hear how King saw himself as a Moses-like figure. In King’s last speech he sounds like Moses  “I’ve been to the mountaintop. He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.” And like Moses, King was allowed to see the promised land but he knew that he was not going to be allowed to enter. The next day King was dead.  Heschel in his speeches also likened black Americans to the Israelite slaves, and Pharaoh to an oppressive white America.

As the Reconstructionist movement’s only black rabbinical student I have trouble putting into words the effect teaching this class had on me.  It reminded me of why I came to rabbinical school; to educate. Here I am a black person, a Jew, telling the story of King and Heschel. I am someone who embodies both the dream of King and Heschel. And I want to see a future where blacks and Jews work together, and I want to help make the world a better place for all.

Remembering Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Gulf Coast Region

A good friend of mine was once a teacher in the New Orleans Public School system, he told me once that your average person could never imagine the amount of poverty that existed in New Orleans and how his students, most of them poor and black had to live. After days of watching the aftermath of hurricane Katrina unfold in our living rooms; watching the ineptness of our government’s inability to respond to help thousands of mostly, poor, black people, who could not leave New Orleans, I’d like to believe that everyone at least has some idea of the level of poverty that existed in New Orleans, before the hurricane, Katrina. In many ways Katrina did what many social workers, political activist and local leaders have been trying to do for years, put a face on race and poverty in this county and show the ever widening divisions between those that have and those that have not. Hurricane Katrina also showed children, families, and the elderly suffering because of decades of neglect and public policy that gave little thought to the poor.

Prior to Katrina nearly 50,000 poor people lived in areas of New Orleans where the poverty rate was over 40 percent. In New Orleans the poor black folks were clustered in extremely poor neighborhoods like the Lower Ninth Ward. These neighborhoods did not happen by accident they are the by product of decades of government policies that concentrated the poor, black people in public housing in the inner city. Federal tax dollars encouraged sprawl, neglected affordable housing for the poor thus cutting them from a decent housing, education and economic opportunities.

Katrina revealed to the America public, massive amounts of poverty in this country. Poverty fueled by public policy and urban sprawl which isolated inner city low income workers and people of color from jobs, public transportation, decent affordable housing, and educational opportunities. Katrina also showed the consequences of racial and economic inequality in the United States; massive amounts of people left behind to fend for themselves and most of them are black.

Policy Link, a national non profit research organization, has developed a ten point guide to rebuilding the Gulf Coast region. The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), and the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank that seeks to broaden the public debate about strategies to achieve a prosperous and fair economy, all of these organizations have come up with very similar strategies in rebuilding the Gulf Coast. I have tried to summarize some of their key points.

First, everyone who was evacuated from the region should be able to return. Governmental policies should require that local residents have preference for all jobs that are created during the reconstruction process. These residents also need to play a central role in rebuilding their communities. There should be focus on rebuilding the Gulf Coast so that all communities are mixed income this will help spread affordable housing across the region. There should also be a system in place to help families find housing in economically integrated neighborhoods.

Secondly, workers who rebuild need fair and decent wages, which will increase the wealth of residents and help lift people out of poverty. Unfortunately, President suspended the Davis-Bacon Act, in areas affected by the flood. Davis-Bacon enacted in 1931, is also known as the prevailing wage law because it preserves the local area wages and labor standards for contractors working with the federal government. Davis-Bacon also ensured affirmative action in employment and guaranteed civil rights protection for minorities and women. Third, voices of the residents need to be heard throughout the rebuilding process. Every effort should be made to ensure that everyone, including those displaced can continue to engage in the voting process and vote in state and local elections. Residents of color, whether returning to the Gulf Coast or settling permanently in other regions, must continue to have representation that serves their interests and needs.

Fourth, there needs to be massive jobs and skills training to help people qualify for jobs that will become available during the reconstruction process. Helping people get the training they need will help people participate in the reconstruction process. Lastly, establish a reconstruction fund for rebuilding new homes, business, etc. Government officials need to communicate with representatives throughout the planning and rebuilding process. In short the Gulf Coast region must be rebuilt in a manner that will not repeat the mistakes of the past and create large pockets of concentrated poverty.

In the aftermath of Katrina it is clear that the response by the federal government to the Gulf Coast region was a disaster in itself and overshadowed the hurricane. Dr. Robert Bullard has published a Twenty-Point Plan to Destroy Black New Orleans  his plan is based on his observations made since the storm destroyed the region.

Transportation Racism

One hundred and sixteen years after the Supreme Court decision of Plessy v. Ferguson, fifty-six years after the Supreme Court ended the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and forty-eight years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, government discrimination in transportation has not ended.  In this section we will look at racism in transportation policies showing that the policies are clearly not colorblind.  

All across the country, people of color and poor people do not have equal access to transportation.  Access to transportation, influences ones upper social mobility and allows people to achieve better social and economic opportunities.  Current transportation policies that favor roads over public transit, suburbs over cities create and enforce racial and economic inequality.  They help to further polarize communities on the basis of class and color, and municipalities need to stop transit racism and revisit their public transportation agendas.

As stated earlier the term racism refers to any policy practice, or directive that differentially affects or disadvantages (whether intended or unintended) individuals, groups, or communities based on race or color.  Institutionalized racism is part of the culture and history of the United States, it’s in the water and engrained into our society Transportation racism is the creation of racist, separate and unequal public transportation systems

Ever since the Emancipation Proclamation, which abolished the enslavement of Black people in the United States, Blacks have struggled to end discrimination on buses and trains.

In 1892, a black man, (actually he was biracial), named Homer Plessy who could easily pass for white,

Homer Plessy

decided to challenge a Louisiana law that required separate train cars for Whites and Blacks.  Plessy intentionally boarded a car reserved for Whites and knew he would be arrested.  The case made it all the way to the United States Supreme Court.  In 1886 the U.S. Supreme court upheld Louisiana’s Separate Car Act that called for segregated seating in railroad cars.  The case better known as Plessy v Ferguson ushered in an era of separate but equal.  Transportation racism dates back to the concept of separate but equal which was set in the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson, a U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld segregated seating on railroad cars.  In 1953 Blacks in Baton Rouge Louisiana staged the first successful bus boycott against racial discrimination.  This was followed by the infamous and successful 1955 Montgomery Alabama bus Boycott when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man.

The 1954 case Brown v. the Board of Education was also partly about transportation racism.  The famous civil rights case was a class action law suit.  One of the cases, Biggs v. Elliot was about getting a bus to transport kids to and from school.  The kids that went to the white schools in Calendon County, South Carolina, road the bus back and forth to school, the kids that went to the Black segregated school had to walk because the school board of Clarendon County refused to provide bus for the kids that went to the segregated schools.  The parents sued and this case became part of the famous Brown v. the Board of Education. 

Today, blacks are physically isolated from the means to upward mobility, in other words jobs.  Blacks tend to own fewer cars or no cars when compared to whites and transportation in most areas of the United States in inadequate.  Another part of transportation discrimination is the problem of Sprawl.

In their book, Sprawl City: Race Politics, and Planning in Atlanta the authors analyzes and critique the crisis resulting from urban sprawl in the Metropolitan area of Atlanta, Georgia.  The book puts sprawl related concerns as a core environmental justice and civil rights issue. The book focuses on how government housing, education, and transportation policies have aided and in some cases subsidized separate but unequal economic development and segregated neighborhoods.  The authors explain the causes and consequences of sprawl, and outlines policy recommendations and an action agenda for coping with sprawl-related problems, both in metropolitan Atlanta and around the country.

The authors define Sprawl as “random, unplanned growth characterized by inadequate accessibility to essential land uses such as housing, jobs and public services that include schools, parks, green space and public transportation.  Typically strip centers, low density residential housing, and other isolated, scattered developments leapfrog over the landscape without rhyme or reason.  Sprawl fueled growth pushes people further apart geographically, politically, economically, and socially.  The economic boom times that drive sprawl creates unequal opportunities. Developments in the suburbs often mean empty storefronts in the city’s core.  The government creates more roads that lead to the suburbs s but do not create public transit to the suburbs.  Without public transportation to the suburbs, new jobs, created by suburban business development are out of reach to city residents who do not have cars.  This creates the concentration of poverty in the city’s urban core.  Sprawl is not a necessary by-product of metropolitan growth and economic development. Growth can be planned and managed.  Sprawl drives up transportation cost.  Families are spending more money to drive further distances to work, school, etc.  There are more cars on the road which creates more pollution due to traffic congestion.  According to the CDC sprawl is a major health threat and during the 1996 Olympics games there was a 22.5% reduction traffic and a 42% reduction in Asthma related emergency room and hospital visits.

Transportation equity (TE) is where concerns extend to disparate outcomes in planning, maintenance, and infrastructure development.  Transportation is a key component in addressing poverty, unemployment, equal opportunity, and ensuring equal access to education, employment, and other public services.  Transportation equity is about fairness, access, and opportunity to better transportation that will take people to where the jobs are located.  Transportation equity looks at the negative environmental costs of transportation and scrutinizes discrepancies in resource allocation and investment.  It also seeks to address unequal outcomes in planning, operation and maintenance and infrastructure development.   Transportation equity focuses on the distribution of benefits and enhancements among the various population groups, especially among low income and people of color communities.

There are three general types of transportation equity, Horizontal Equity focuses on fairness of cost and benefit allocation between individuals and groups who are considered comparable in wealth and ability.  Vertical Equity with Regard to Income and Social Class is concerned with allocation of cost between income and social classes.  Vertical Equity with Regard to Mobility Need and Ability focuses on how well an individual’s needs are met compared with others in their community.

Cost and benefits associated with transportation developments are not randomly distributed.  The discriminatory effects of transportation projects can be included under three categories of inequity Procedural Inequity, Geographic Inequity and Social Inequity.  Procedural Inequity results when transportation decisions are not carried out in a uniform, fair and consistent manner with involvement of diverse public stake holders.  Geographic Inequity results from the geographic and special impacts of transportation decisions.  These impacts affect rural, urban, and central-city neighborhoods differently.  Such as physically being located on the wrong side of the tracks and receiving substandard services.  Social Inequality results when transportation benefits and burdens are not randomly distributed across population groups.

Access to transportation, whether public or private, influences ones upper social mobility and allows people to move into better social and economic opportunities.  The book Highway Robbery:  Transportation Racism & New Routes to Equity links the inequalities in transportation to larger economic, health, environmental justice, and quality of life issues.  The book shows that publicly funded segregation jeopardizes health and limits economic opportunities, and creates feelings of frustration and isolation.  The authors demonstrate how transportation policy and urban planning create and enforce racial and economic inequality.  Highway Robbery asserts these current policies will further polarize communities on the basis of class and color, and the authors in this anthology demand that cities and states revisit their public transportation policy agendas.

Changes in zoning have made it possible for suburbs to increase their share of office space, while the urban core of cities see their share declining.  Federal and state transportation funds favor roads and highways that lead to the suburbs and favor suburban commuters and auto owners over people who are dependent on public transit for their transportation needs.  Transportation users suffer rundown buses, long waits, longer rides, poor connections, service cuts, overcrowding, and daily exposure to some of the environmental pollutants from cars.  A few years ago I read an article that related that several members of congress felt that spending money on public transportation was a waste of time.  The belief was that government spends money on public transit, yet most Americans do not use it.  Thus, public transit is a waste of money.  This is not the entire picture of what happens with public transportation.

Far too much of our transportation dollars are spent on roads and highways at the expense of communities of color, the government encourages people to use their cars and not public transportation.  Federal tax dollars build and subsidize the roads, freeways and public transit systems.  The government builds highways to the suburbs and then subsidizes the construction of suburban homes.  In other words the government gives tax breaks to home owners who buy newer homes, basically paying people to move out to the suburbs, another term is middleclass welfare.  The transportation projects of building the roads out to the suburbs, have the unintended consequence of dividing, isolating and disrupting some communities while imposing inequitable economic, environmental, and health burdens on them.

Suburban communities benefit from the building of the roads and highways while the cities bear the burden and pay the cost in poor health and loss of jobs.  Many children who live in areas near an interstate suffer from asthma that is probably caused by pollutants that come from the exhaust of cars.

Moreover the federal government spends more money on highways than on public transit.  These new roads are built that lead to the suburbs without significant public transportation service, and thereby open up those areas for development and new jobs.  The result is people leave the city, move to the suburbs where the jobs are located, this takes jobs out of the cities core. Thus, highway spending shifts people and jobs to areas without public transit, thus gutting transit ridership.

Transportation is a key component in addressing poverty, unemployment, equal opportunity, and ensuring equal access to education, employment, and other public services.  Transportation equity is about fairness, access, and opportunity to better transportation that will take people to where the jobs are located.  Transportation equity looks at the negative environmental costs of transportation and scrutinizes discrepancies in resource allocation and investment.  It also seeks to address unequal outcomes in planning, operation and maintenance and infrastructure development.   Transportation equity focuses on the distribution of benefits and enhancements among the various population groups, especially among low income and people of color communities.

In the city of Atlanta transportation policies are implicated in land-use patterns, unhealthy air, and suburban sprawl in metropolitan Atlanta.  Transportation and land-use plans contributed to social, economic, and racial inequities.  Race shaped the path of land-use planning and public transportation in metro Atlanta.  Racism has kept the Atlanta region economically and geographically divided.  Atlanta metropolitan area has a regional transit system in name only.  The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) serves just two counties, Fulton and DeKalb.  The original plan called for a five-county regional transit system.  In the 1960s, MARTA was hailed as the solution to the region’s growing traffic and pollution problems. Atlanta’s white economic and political elites, led by Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen, Jr., pushed for a rapid-rail system that they felt would market Atlanta as a “cosmopolitan” New South city.  White suburbanites did not want public transit or blacks in their communities.  For whites in Atlanta MARTA has stood for “Moving Africans Rapidly through Atlanta.”

The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA) attempted to level the playing field between Highway and transit investment.  This law changed existing patterns where the federal government covered about 90 percent of the cost for highway and about 75 percent of the cost for transit.  This caused the local governments to invest their funds in highway transportation because the federal share was bigger.  This law also allowed states to be flexible in their highway funds and move funds to transit and other alternatives.  ISTEA has since expired and was replaced with the 1998 Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21) that authorized federal funds to improve the nation’s transportation infrastructure. TEA-21 expired 2003 and was replaced with TEA-3 to rejuvenate urban areas through transportation redevelopment, increased transit and sustainable alternatives to urban sprawl.  TEA-3 adhered to civil rights laws and affirmed the principles of environmental justice.

Race still matters in the United States and the deterioration of urban public transportation is totally do to racism and must be addressed.  Transit racism (TR) was responsible for the death of 17 year old Cynthia Wiggins of Buffalo, New York.  Wiggins was unable to secure a job in Buffalo but was able to find work in the mall. On her way to work Wiggins was crushed by a dump truck while crossing a seven lane highway because the number 6 bus, used by mostly inner city blacks was not allowed to stop at the suburban Walden Galleria Mall.  Members of the Wiggins family and members of the black community charged the Walden Galleria Mall with using the highway as a racial barrier to exclude some city residents.  The case was settled 10 days after it was filed with several million dollars left to Wiggin’s son.

Transportation racism is also responsible for a large part of the deaths that occurred during and after the Hurricane Katrina.  Forecasters predicted that Hurricane Katrina was going to be deadly, government officials knew that nearly 134,000 residents-most of them poor and black did not have transportation and would be stuck in New Orleans and would not be able to evacuate.  The government failed to provide transportation to evacuate people before the Hurricane and continued to fail in evacuating people after the hurricane.

Historical Background on Environmental Racism

In 1983, the United States General Accounting Office conducted a study of several Southern states that found three out of every four landfills were located near predominantly minority communities.  In 1987, the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice Toxic Waste and Race report showed that the most significant factor in determining hazardous waste facility sites, nationwide, was race.  The report also found that three out of every five African-Americans and Hispanics live in a community buttressing unregulated toxic waste sites.  This landmark study, further described the extent of environmental racism and the consequences for those who are victims of polluted environments.  The study revealed that: Race was the most significant variable associated with the location of hazardous waste sites. The greatest numbers of commercial hazardous facilities were located in communities with the highest composition of racial and ethnic minorities.

In 1991, the First National People of Color Leadership Summit  met in Washington, D.C., and forged the Principles of Environmental Justice.  The EPA established its Office of Environmental Justice (OEJ) in 1992.  In 1992, a study conducted by the National Law Journal (NLJ) reported that the (EPA) discriminated in its enforcement of laws pointing out that federal fines were not as strict for industries operating in communities of color, and that clean-up of environmental disasters in these communities were slower than in wealthier, white communities and that standards for clean-up in communities of color were not as high.  In 1993 President Clinton ordered the federal government to ensure equality in protecting Americans from pollution.  President Clinton then issued Executive Order (EO) 12898 in 1994; titled “Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority and Low Income Populations,” he then designated 11 agencies accountable for environmental justice.  The order prohibits discriminatory practices in programs receiving federal money.  The Executive Order signed by Clinton is not a new law it just reinforces old laws and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  More than a decade later, factory emissions still disproportionately place minorities and the poor at risk.  People of color continue to be victims of environmental degradation.  An analysis of data from a government research project shows that black Americans are 79 percent more likely than whites to live in neighborhoods where industrial pollution  poses the greatest health danger.

Early in the environmental movement, mostly white environmental groups used the NIMBY principle which means Not In My Back Yard, not realizing the implications, or caring about where the waste would eventually end up; and it ended up in someone else’s yard, mostly poor black peoples’ yards.  Some communities that have little or no zoning laws have just applied the PIBBY (Put In Blacks’ Backyards) principle.  Black communities over the years have continued to be targeted for toxic and hazardous waste facilities this include landfills.  These toxic facilities are filled with the life-threatening presence of poisons, toxins and pollutants that threaten our neighborhoods.  Black people are more likely than Whites to live near a landfill.  Far too many blacks live in communities with uncontrolled toxic waste sites.  The largest commercial hazardous waste landfills are located in Black communities.  As a consequence, the residents of these communities suffer shorter life spans, higher infant and adult mortality, poor health, poverty, diminished economic opportunities, substandard housing, and an overall degraded quality of life.

Low-income Black communities are the most vulnerable for siting of landfills incinerators, toxic waste dumps, lead smelters, etc.  These are also the same communities that are least likely to have adequate fire protection, housing code enforcement, health care delivery, and street lighting and sewer hookups.  Household incomes and home values were substantially lower when communities with hazardous-waste facilities were compared to communities in the surrounding county without such facilities.

There is tons of evidence that strongly suggest that this is environmental racism and that these toxic-waste dumps are not randomly scattered across the American landscape.  The siting process has resulted in minority neighborhoods (regardless of class) carrying a greater burden of localized costs than either affluent or poor white neighborhoods.  Landfills are often located in communities that have high percentages of poor, elderly, young, and black residents.  There is a ridiculously large concentration of uncontrolled toxic waste sites found in black urban communities.  For example, when Atlanta’s ninety-four uncontrolled toxic waste sites are plotted by zip code areas, more than 82.8 percent of the city’s black population compared with 60.2 percent of its white population was found to be living in waste site areas.  Despite its image as the “capital of the New South,” Atlanta is the most segregated big city in the region. More than 86 percent of the city’s blacks live in mostly black neighborhoods.  As is the case for other cities, residential segregation and housing discrimination limit mobility options available to blacks.  There are also toxic time bombs in rural areas of the south.  Large commercial hazardous-waste landfills and disposal facilities are more likely to be found in rural black communities.

The burden, or negative side, of industrial development has not been equally distributed across all segments of the population.  Living conditions in many communities have not improved very much with new growth.  Black communities became the dumping grounds for various types of unpopular facilities, including toxic wastes, dangerous chemicals, paper mills, and other polluting industries.

Who came first, the communities are the corporations?  Another way of looking at this is why are there so many landfills and hazardous waste disposal facilities in black neighborhoods?  I believe that this has everything to do with environmental racism.  Based on my research most Environmental Justice activists agree with me that the siting of landfills is the result of discrimination in how the sites are selected.  Another theory that has been brought forward is that of  Law Professor Vicki Been.

Been has looked at market demands and has come up with a theory that relates that waste facilities are not the product of discrimination and intentionally siting in minority communities.  Been believes that poor racial communities have formed around these facilities.  Basically under this idea the landfill is in the community, people who can afford to leave do, and those who cannot stay.  Property values go down and the property becomes more affordable to lower income families, add in other forms of housing discrimination elsewhere and the neighborhood becomes black and poor.  I do not buy this argument but I believe it might be worth some further investigation.

Lead Poisoning

Children of color are the most vulnerable population and suffer the greatest in the effect of Environmental racism.  Lead is a highly toxic substance, and exposure to it can produce a wide range of health problems.  Adults and children can suffer from the effects of lead poisoning, but childhood lead poisoning is much more common.  Over the many years since we have known about the hazards of lead, tens of millions of children have suffered its health effects.  As of 2004, there was still at minimum more than four hundred thousand children under the age of six who have too much lead in their blood.  Because of environmental racism, communities of color are disproportionately exposed to pollutants, including lead, air pollution, and pesticides.  Lawrie Mott also adds that Federal regulations fail to protect the most highly exposed population, children of color, because the government’s standards do not take into account children’s differential exposure to these toxins or the increasing nature of these exposures.

Also by virtue of their playing habits, such as playing close to the ground and playing outside, this gives them greater exposure to pollutants.  Poor inner-city children of color are more likely to suffer from lead poisoning than white inner-city children.  Children of color are more likely to suffer from asthma and have higher rates of cancer.

One could easily argue that Native Americans were the first victims of Environmental Racism, because they have been trying to protect their land from the ‘white man’ ever since that fateful day in 1492.  That day set off a series of events that have practically annihilated the indigenous people of the United States, and made them a mere smidgen of their once powerful nations.  Indian Nations are still being threatened with environmental racism.  Over the last few decades their communities are being sited as new dumping grounds of unwanted waste and their lands are being targeted as storage facilities for toxic substances produced outside their boundaries in other parts of the United States.  Native Americans, like most other racial minorities, have suffered disproportionately from environmental hazards, environmental degradation and environmental racism.  As regulations are making it harder to site toxic facilities, corporations and the government are at looking at, Native American lands, as potential dumping grounds to store their waste.  Over the last few decades Native lands have been targeted as storage facilities for toxic substances produced outside their lands in other parts of the country.

Some Indian Nations have been successful in reversing agreements for waste facilities and stopping dumping on their soil.  In 1990 Native American activist came together and formed what eventually became known as the annual “Protecting Mother Earth Conference” the activist later formed the grassroots environmental justice organization that later became known as the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN).

At the time of the conference a significant number of Native American communities were targeted for large toxic municipal and hazardous waste dumps and nuclear waste storage facilities.  Also some facilities that were currently located on Native lands were leaking and oozing out of the ground with toxic poisons.  The conference and the organization was established to find ways to protect native land, sacred sites, the health of the native people, the over all environment and to build economically sustainable communities.