It's Apparently Racist to Creat Jobs in Minority Neighborhoods
I remember the fuss a number of years ago that a disproportionate number of heavily polluting industrial plants were in poorer neighborhoods. I suppose it is no surprise that companies look to site plants where there are large labor forces and cheap land, which probably means that they are not going to buy of large swaths of Grosse Pointe for their new auto plant. But there also seemed to be some chicken and egg here - residential land around industrial tracts probably attract residents who can't afford to live somewhere else.
Anyway, I had never realized just how destructive public policy had become in response to this "problem," nor how much our current climate czar had to do with it:
Case in point is "Climate Czar" Carol Browner, former EPA chief under Bill Clinton and ghostwriter of Al Gore's apocalyptic book Earth in the Balance. In the late 1990s, Browner championed the effort to apply Title VII U.S. civil rights law to plant permitting, arguing that locating industrial facilities in majority black cities "disproportionately impacted" minorities and was there "environmental racism."The policy provoked outrage among those black elected officials across the country who believe it's a good thing to have jobs available in minority areas.
Some of those officials were in Michigan, where Browner's green allies tried to use EPA rules to shut down electric power facilities and auto plants. At the time, Browner had already bagged the pelts of two major facilities in Louisiana -- a plastics plant and nuclear fuel facility -- that would have brought hundreds of jobs to minorities.
As can be expected, African-American politicians who were told it was racist to locate jobs in their communities were not amused:
Horrified by this threat to jobs within poor communities, Detroit mayor Dennis Archer led the primarily Democratic U.S. Conference of Mayors to scrap "green redlining" -- so called because the EPA actually drew circles around plants located in minority areas that would encourage lawsuits. The mayors were joined by a rainbow coalition of groups from the National Association of Black County Officials to Republican pols like L.A.'s Richard Riordan and Michigan Rep. Joe Knollenberg.
Addressing the Black Chamber of Commerce's annual meeting, then-U.S. Chamber president Thomas Donahue said: "I'm trying to think of a policy that would be more effective in driving away entrepreneurs and jobs from economically disadvantaged areas -- and I can't do it."
Apparently, the whole to-do was BS anyway
Mastio's News investigation further uncovered that Browner's EPA had suppressed documents finding that there was not a corporate conspiracy to locate polluting industries in black areas (in fact, they are mostly in white areas), and the bipartisan outrage eventually led to a Congressional vote blocking the EPA rule.
