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| xv Preface Reflecting upon the process of writing this book, we realized that the journey began in May 2004, when, during the annual convention of the Conference of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU), held that year in Atlanta, we made a commitment to our colleagues at the Community Action and Response Against Toxics (CARAT) Team to write a book on government responses to environmental and health emergencies in African American communities. We attended the CBTU convention to conduct a workshop on the National Black Environmental Justice Network’s (NBEJN) multistate Building Just and Healthy Communities Campaign, led by Damu Smith. This was not an easy book to write. Nevertheless, deciding to write it was not a hard decision to make, nor did it take a lot of convincing for us to undertake this project, since there was no such book on the topic at the time. Our goal was to fill this information void with a readable book about government response to disasters using a racial equity lens—one that connected the dots and provided a framework for explaining what many African Americans have seen with their own eyes for decades. Because of the positive response from the membership, from CBTU president William Lucy and Lula Odom, who coordinates the CARAT Team, invited our panel back the following year. By the time we attended the May 2005 meeting, in Phoenix, much of the basic research on toxic contamination , public health emergencies, industrial accidents, and bioterrorism threat case studies had been completed. On May 28, 2005, some of the preliminary findings of our study were presented in a CBTU workshop webcast. In June 2005, we began retrieving case studies on weather-related disasters, hurricanes , droughts, and floods. After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast three months later, in August, our book project was not only delayed but was placed on hold for some time because of personal losses. Hurricane Katrina inflicted harm on eighty thousand square miles of the Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama Gulf Coast. The levee breach flooded 80 percent of New Orleans and destroyed a large block of the research that the xvi | Preface Deep South Center for Environmental Justice had conducted, research that was housed at Xavier University and that was scheduled to be relocated to Dillard University on September 1; the storm delayed our project for nearly two years while the Deep South Center staff put their homes and lives back in order. The 2005 New Orleans flood destroyed all of the Center’s computer files and reports and scattered staff to Baton Rouge, Atlanta, Houston, and Jackson, Mississippi . Nevertheless, we were determined to complete this important book project come hell or high water. The Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta, Georgia, became the Deep South Center ’s temporary base of operation; the Center later moved to Baton Rouge and then back to New Orleans, in 2007. Atlanta became home to nearly 100,000 Katrina evacuees shortly after the storm; after five years, nearly fifty thousand New Orleans Katrina evacuees still called Atlanta home. Our book places the government response to Hurricane Katrina in historical context to compare and contrast how the government has responded to other emergencies, including environmental and public health emergencies , toxic contamination, industrial accidents, bioterrorism threats, and natural and human-induced disasters that disproportionately affect African Americans. Too often, African Americans have experienced slow “Katrina responses” from various local, state, and federal government agencies during a range of emergencies. Slow response or no response has often been the rule—not the exception. Many African Americans believe that “we have the wrong complexion for protection.” Much of this belief emanates from wrong-headed U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have served to buttress “white supremacy,” racial apartheid —transportation apartheid, residential apartheid, medical apartheid, food apartheid, parks apartheid, environmental apartheid, and disaster relief apartheid—affecting blacks, from homeowners to public-housing tenants, to transit riders, to hospital patients, to farmers. Race still matters. Even after more than 150 years, the impact of the 1857 Scott v. Sanford (Dred Scott) Supreme Court decision, in which the high court judges ruled, “No black man has any rights that any white man is bound to respect,” is still felt by millions of African Americans who are denied basic rights that whites take for granted. Leftovers from the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court ruling, a decision that codified “Jim Crow” segregation, linger, despite the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling that...

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