Conventional wisdom holds that people of color care less about environmental issues than whites. This is blamed on a number of factors. But it's a misperception based, in part, on the fact that African Americans Latinos, Asian Americans and American Indians are more likely to see what many whites call environmental issues as issues of health, community, economy, land access, indigenous rights and human rights.
The circumstances people of color are more likely to find themselves in compared with whites as a consequence of the intersection of race and class predisposes them to this difference in perception. They are more likely to live in areas where toxic dumps, polluting industrial plants and mining operations are sited as well as where heavy vehicle traffic occurs. Their water is more likely to be contaminated. Public facilities like schools are more likely to be decrepit and hazardous in their neighborhoods than in whiter, more affluent locales.
But a Los Angeles Times/USC poll of 1689 registered California voters published Saturday shows that even on an issue that is less visible and more abstract than these concrete daily reminders - that is to say, global warming - Latinos and Asians are more worried than whites. African Americans were also polled, but they constituted too small a sample to analyze reliably.
...50% of Latinos and 46% of Asians who responded to the poll said they personally worry a great deal about global warming, compared with 27% of whites. Two-thirds of Latinos and 51% of Asians polled said they worry a great deal about air pollution, compared with 31% of whites.
Similarly, 85% of Latinos and 79% of Asians said they worry a great or a fair amount about contamination of soil and water by toxic waste, compared with 71% of whites. ...
California has one of the nation's largest concentrations of minorities living near hazardous chemical wastes and air pollution produced by refineries, port operations, freeway traffic and railroads. An analysis of census data by researchers at four universities for the United Church of Christ showed that 1.2 million people in the greater Los Angeles area, 91% of them minorities, live less than two miles from facilities handling hazardous materials such as chrome-plating businesses and battery recycling centers.
One underlying reason for the poll's results is that Latinos and Asians are "far more likely to be registered as Democrats than whites, and Democrats hold these views more closely," according to Peyton Craighill, who supervised the poll.
Eco-groups, most of them with overwhelmingly white memberships, have become increasingly aware of the misperception about the environmental views of people of color.
Now they are aggressively reaching out to ethnically diverse communities to gain financial support and inspire a new generation of environmental stewards. Because these communities are more directly affected by pollution, the strategy makes sense, the groups say.
"We spend the vast majority of our resources in districts that dominated by, or have substantial, Latino and Asian populations, said David [Allgood], Southern California director of the California League of Conservation Voters. "Their concerns will help us build broader support for aggressively dealing with global warming."
It's heartening to see these eco-groups reaching out to people of color in their efforts to strengthen their political clout in getting environmental matters higher up the agenda of politicians, too many of whom give lip service to green issues but little else. But this is a two-way street. And the groups need to do a better job of listening to those they hope to recruit to their cause if they plan to speak for them on issues of concern to all of us, whatever our ethnicities.