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This essay is featured in
Boston Review’s new book,
Climate Action.
Tallevast, Florida, is a predominantly Black, unincorporated community between Manatee and Sarasota Counties. If anyone outside of the area knows of the town of fewer than eighty homes spread across two square miles, it is likely because, about twenty years ago, its groundwater was discovered to have been poisoned by the manufacture of weapons-grade beryllium during the Cold War.
Environmental racism is global, but it is particularly common to Black communities in the U.S. South, where state authorities tend to allow more latitude to industrial polluters.
The plot will sound familiar: a polluting industry, privately owned but authorized by the state, is placed near Black homes, fouls the natural resources, and causes irreversible harm to the community’s health. Environmental racism is global, but it is particularly common to Black communities in the U.S. South, where state authorities t ....

United States , North Carolina , South Africa , Environmental Protection Agency , District Of Columbia , Florida International University , Ringling Museum Of Art , Eastern Cape , Manatee County , Warren County , Bryant Chapel , Michael Gonsalves , Tom Larkin , Leroy Mazon , Paul Panik , Helen Heathington , Jeb Bush , Charles Ziegler , Charles Henry , Lillian Granderson , Zandy Reich , Deborah Getzoff , Lee Newman , Scott Carroll , Bill Galvano , Kimberly Brooks ,