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Environmental Racism In Historical Context: The Robbins Incinerator Debate, 1980s-1990s, Brian Reyes
Environmental Racism In Historical Context: The Robbins Incinerator Debate, 1980s-1990s, Brian Reyes
The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal
Conventional narratives of environmental racism paint a “perpetrator-victim” scenario, in which an environmental hazard is forced upon a powerless nonwhite community. This is not always the case. In 1988, a deal was struck to locate an incinerator in an all-Black suburb of Chicago called Robbins. The debate over the Robbins incinerator, which lasted nearly a decade, emerged as a particularly notable incident of environmental racism because of the willingness of Robbins’ Black leadership and residents to accept the plan. Their support was the result of a longstanding history of racialized underdevelopment and political neglect which had left the town destitute …