A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind Audiobook (Free)

A ‘powerful and indispensable publication’ (Gerald Markowitz) for the devastating outcomes of environmental racism — and what we are able to do to remedy its toxic effects on marginalized communities.

Do you realize…

Middle-class African American households with incomes between $50,000 and $60,000 reside in neighborhoods that are even more polluted than those of inadequate white households with incomes below $10,000.When swallowed, a lead-paint chip no bigger than a fingernail can send a toddler into a coma — about A Terrible Point to Waste materials: Environmental Racism and Its Assault within the American Mind one-tenth of that amount will lesser his IQ.Nearly two of every five African American homes in Baltimore are suffering from lead-based paint. Almost all of the 37,500 Baltimore kids who suffered lead poisoning between 2003 and 2015 were African American.

From injuries caused by lead poisoning to the devastating effects of atmospheric air pollution, infectious disease, and industrial waste, Americans of color are harmed by environmental dangers in staggeringly disproportionate amounts. This systemic onslaught of toxic exposure and institutional carelessness causes irreparable physical injury to thousands of people over the country-cutting lives tragically brief and needlessly burdening our health and wellness care program. But these lethal environments make another insidious and often overlooked outcome: robbing communities of color, and America all together, of intellectual power.

The 1994 publication of The Bell Curve and its own controversial thesis catapulted this issue of genetic racial differences in IQ towards the forefront of a renewed and heated debate. Now, in A Terrible Thing to Waste materials, award-winning science writer Harriet A. Washington provides her incisive analysis towards the fray, arguing that IQ is normally a biased and flawed metric, but that it’s useful for tracking cognitive harm. She takes aside the spurious notion of intelligence as an inherited characteristic, using copious data that rather indicate a different cause of the reported African American-white IQ distance: environmental racism – a confluence of racism and various other institutional factors that relegate marginalized neighborhoods to living and functioning near sites of harmful waste, air pollution, and inadequate sanitation services. She investigates large metals, neurotoxins, lacking prenatal care, bad nutrition, and even pathogens as key agents influencing cleverness to describe why communities of color are disproportionately affected — and what can be done to remedy this devastating problem.

Featuring extensive scientific study and Washington’s clear, lively reporting, A Terrible Thing to Waste materials is sure to outrage, transform the conversation, and inspire debate.