We know that the majority of the prison labor to clean up BP’s calamitous mess is African American. But are they now dumping their hazardous trash in the black community as well?
First off, BP is using cheap black labor, but regular African American workers and contractors are not receiving their proportionate share of contracts in the cleanup efforts, despite being the convenient and easy dumping ground for BP’s mammoth mess. According to oilspillnews.com, an NAACP investigation this month discerned that “Community members and business owners [of color] have been locked out of access to contracts for cleanup and other opportunities related to addressing this disaster.”
Extracting from the latest Federal Procurement Data System information, environmental writer Brentin Mock reports that “minorities see little green in BP oil spill jobs.” The FPDS records states that only $2.2 million of $53 million in federal contracts, a disgraceful 4.8 percent, has actually gone to small, disadvantaged businesses. Women-owned businesses received 4.2 percent of contracts. And of the 212 vendors with contracts, incredibly just two are African American, and only 18 are minority owned. None of these are historically black colleges or universities (HBCUs), despite the existence of three HBCUs in New Orleans alone: Xavier University, Dillard University and Southern University at New Orleans.
At the same time, Gulf residents are frantically trying to find out where BP’s trash is going.
Before a single drop of oil was cleaned up, black people began inquiring about where the waste would go after it had been collected from the beaches and skimmed off the water. The answer: solid waste landfills. And where are most of the waste landfills? In the black community or adjacent to them.
Residents, ministers and other community leaders are seeking redress with the EPA’s regional offices in Atlanta and Dallas, as well as the Obama administration, with reportedly little response thus far. –terry shropshire
