EP. 4 Pt.1 Kofi Boone - The Black Landscape

Environmental racism, a product of policy, leading to environmental justice.  The lack of environmental benefits which may be missing in environmental justice.  Democratic design as a part of planning and community design.

Transcript

Wading Deep Podcast 

Kofi Boone 

Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects, The Joseph D. Moore, Distinguished Professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at North Carolina State University 

SPEAKERS: 2 

Speaker 1–Reverend Jemonde Taylor, Rector – St. Ambrose Episcopal Church Speaker 2–Professor Kofi Boone, Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects, The Joseph D. Moore, Distinguished Professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at North Carolina State University 

FIRST SEGMENT 

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Speaker 1 

0:07 

This is Wading Deep, a podcast that explores the connection between environmental justice and race. I'm your host Reverend Jemonde Taylor, Rector at St. Ambrose Episcopal Church, Raleigh, North Carolina, a congregation with a long history of challenging environmental racism. 

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Speaker 1 

0:28 

I am honored to welcome today's guest, Professor Kofi Boone, a fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects, who is the Joseph D, Moore Distinguished Professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at North Carolina State University. Welcome Professor Boone. 

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Speaker 2 

1:09 

Thank you, thank you, it's good to see you. Even though we're not in the exact same place. It's good to speak with you today. It's great. 

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Speaker 1 

1:15 

Always appreciate you, Kofi I met you years ago, and I came to Saint Ambrose almost 10 years ago, and we've run in the same circle. So I appreciate your scholarship and your work. It makes the community a better place.

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Speaker 2 

1:29 

I appreciate that. But you know, likewise, leadership in the community we follow. So thank you for being a great leader. 

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Speaker 1 

1:37 

What is environmental racism? In your own words? 

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Speaker 2 

1:40 

And that is a good…good question. I'll give you how I learned it. And then I can give you how I experienced it. Or maybe I'll do it, and the first time I experienced it first. So I grew up in Detroit, Michigan, on the east side of Detroit, and at a time when city was in decline. And I remember growing up, and everything around me was in various stages of repair. So no, the streets, we didn't have any parks or vacant lots all over the place where I lived on the east side was close to where there was a huge industrial sector that closed down. And so even though it was closed, it was still there and still had toxic chemicals in the ground and had a lot of different things going on. So, you know, all of those things impact how we live, our physical health, you know, so asthma rates are high in my community, all kinds of diseases that were instigated by the built environment, safety was an issue in my neighborhood where there was so much vacancy and so many other things happening, that those became opportunities for people don't get into other… other things other than legal activities. And… and, you know, maybe more importantly, the perception of the community as a whole was weakened because people didn't feel like no, it was going to change. So my lived experience with environmental racism, once I became older and realize things like demographics, data mappings, and things of that nature, was, you know, Detroit at that time was 70, to 80%. Black City, the neighborhood I grew up in was close to that 90, that that was occurring in my community, but there were other communities, white communities and other communities weren't experienced. And the idea that growing up, we thought it was like individual choices, you know, personal behaviors, that somehow we were acting in a way that meant that we, quote, unquote, deserve to be the dumping ground for the whole region. But it turns out, it came from policy decisions, it came from, who got elected in office and what their values were, it was a result of the level of civic activism and community resistance movements that in fact, these communities that didn't have all of these negative consequences and lack of access to environmental benefits. They were organized, they were poorly organized, economic people organized, are very proactive about who they pushed for elections to meet their interests. They were very protective, you know, and saw threats coming along the way and basically drew the line. So that was my lived experience. Academically, I went to Michigan, and I was at Michigan when a number of scholars who were really central to the environmental justice movement really got going. People like bunion, Bryant and Christina Taylor and a number of others, and environmental racism is that disproportionate impact on black and communities color, exposure to toxics, exposure to environmental hazards, but also a lack of access to environmental benefits, healthy access to food safe communities access to open spaces, you know that the effects, so

I have the lived experience, but the academic one is that and in fact, environmental racism was the first term coined for this phenomenon that became environmental justice, its original title as environmental racism. 

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Speaker 1 

5:15 

I appreciate that Kofi actually educated me, I didn't realize that the term environmental racism preceded environmental justice. And you spoke about a number of great things your lived experience, really impacted or really helpful in the trajectory of where you are now. And you spoke a little bit about the resistance movement and being organized Saint Ambrose in its history, has helped birth two community organizations. The first was Partners for Environmental Justice, which Father Callaway and the 1990s, along with Dr. Norman Camp, help form and that still exists today. The other is a newer movement called One Wake, community organizing effort that was launched in 2021 of the first things we took on was the king development, the 150 acre development only a half mile upstream from Saint Ambrose. So I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit of more about your observation, you know, as a challenge Detroit, of being organized of community organizing, and then maybe now that you're an academic coming from that lens as well. 2 

Speaker 2 

6:30 

Yeah, I mean, organization and mobilization, I have a good friend, who reminds me what those two words mean, two different things. So mobilization, which is, you know, it raised the flag, something's coming, you attract a bunch of people, but that's like a real critical moment where it flips into organization, like, how do you leverage that collective power, and that's really integral to the environmental justice, environmental racism, anti-racism movements, which is to say, often people aren't aware that there are threats or benefits, they don't have access to, once they become aware, how did they get activated, plugged into processes change, and, you know, your church and your leadership is one of the shining examples of how that could happen. You know, in my personal experience, you know, coming from Detroit, you know, that is also an industrial city. So there was a great history of labor organizing, that then connected to, you know, all the subsequent movements. And when I was younger, Gracie Boggs was just an exemplar, you know, who started the Detroit summer movement, to really infuse the next generation with, you know, in our own backyard now, in North Carolina, the legacy of SNCC and Ella Baker, and the same sorts of principles apply to the whole community, which is to say that we invest in people with information and with agency, and build collectively, building everybody's infrastructure. And it turns out, that's perfectly aligned with the idea of environmental justice and environmental racism, which is to say, even though a lot of this is policy and large decision making, the way that you shifted, changing is learning how to apply pressure, collectively in the right spot to be present in the rooms when decisions are being made. And pulling is influencing those decisions. And historically, black and brown people, it's been a collective and community effort. So with regards to an academic space, often that's been providing technical assistance and support. So as a landscape architect, and someone who's professionally trained to deal with a built environment, and we speak a certain kind of language, we use certain kinds of tools that are can be somewhat exclusive, but we tried to

make those as open, as accessible, and in the hands of the people that need to make those wishes. And so the idea that with technical support, you know, knowing what planning means what different types of infrastructure means knowing how to read certain documents, where certain examples of change have occurred in other places. Those are our gaps that we try and fill in the academic space to support community efforts. 1 

Speaker 1 

9:02 

I appreciate that. The phrase that you use environmental benefits certainly caught my attention. Could you talk a little bit more about that and how certain communities certainly historically, black and brown communities have not been able to live into these environmental benefits? 

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Speaker 2 

9:23 

Yeah, it's a major thing. I think, no, the basis of environmental racism, leading to environmental justice was more or less an anti-toxics movement was saying that there was a correlation between black and brown communities and exposure to brownfields to exhaustion. freeways like a lot of the things we all agree are bad. But later on in the literature and in current now, also a lack of access to the things that are beneficial, particularly in the public realm, parks and open space, access to healthy food, safe streets, a lot of things that we know advantage and provide better life experiences for other people. And it's been looked at, you know, analytically. So one example is the Trust for Public Land, you can go to their website now, they have mapped and developed a tool called parks score, where they will tell you, you know, what communities don't…don't have access to open space within 20 minute walk. There are, you know, lack of tree canopy which we take for granted, you know, in certain parts of where we are, but that ability to cache the cool homes to create comfort for people who need to walk and use other means of transportation or just have a beautiful view. Like all these things have mental and physical impacts. The very short story that is relevant is, in the early 20th century, there was an era called redlining where communities were divided by the Homeowners Loan Corporation for viability for reinvestment or getting access to loans to purchase housing. And long story short race was the biggest determinant of being in a red line anything and a red line was a hazardous investment. And there was no bank investment there. And in cities like Durham, which had redlining, you can map current tree canopy like the beautiful oaks that are 100 years old and shape to that era, because they were planted in the 20s 30s. Right. And so black and brown communities at that time, have the least amount of tree canopy, the least amount of access to open space, you know, you scratch your head, and you say, Well, why is that true? That means generations ago, those investments were made. So it's a real thing that produces material benefits to people have access to material costs, the people who don't 1 

Speaker 1 

11:43 

In the shift from the phrase environmental racism to environmental justice, do you think something was lost? I do a lot of work around the operation of white supremacy. And I'm

just curious, your thoughts of that change and nomenclature, and…and hunt to be expansive? As far as language do you think something was lost? 

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Speaker 2 

12:07 

It's a really good question. So environmental racism gets coined and the toxic waste and race report that came from the United Church of Christ, which at that time was led, that that commission that commission, that report was led by Dr. Benjamin Chavis. So really, you know, someone from the religious community, also from our backyard in North Carolina, racism, very strategically, saying that this was the product policies and larger movements, not the individual behaviors back to those policies, move to justice. And Robert Bullard has written pretty extensively on this part from Texas, but the idea that justice indicating that movement, right, that we're not just stopping at stopping racism, we are we are in a pursuit of justice, right. And that that goes from individual to group to community. So that shift wasn't perceived as sort of a softening of the term. However, really, current decisions that are happening right now at the federal level, are calling that into question. One of the first things that President Biden, when he took office was issue an executive order, that's now known as justice 40, where he issued a mandate for every federal agency to prepare a plan to talk about how they would help to support 40% of renewable energy investments going to black and brown communities and most affected by environmental justice issues. And so coming back out of that all these federal agencies produced their responses in terms of how they would deal with that from agriculture, to housing, urban development, transportation on down the line. However, at the same time, they developed a new tool to evaluate where those funds would go. So there's an online tool that talks about areas that are already pre-approved by the federal government to compete for some of this funding, and they took race out of that criteria for environmental justice. Why did they do that? That is the question. So in their research, they've tried to, and this has been true from the beginning of the environmental justice movement is race another term used for income is another term used for other characteristics of populations and his race to broader general wealth. The people who started this were people of color black people, brown people, indigenous people, the initial scholars the same thing. So that that focus on black communities, brown communities, indigenous communities, is endemic, right? It was saying that this disproportionate impact was the things The Federal Government perspective and it's not a slam dunk. There are people who have disagreed and are people freaking out, including Dr. Bullard, saying, you know that by removing races or criteria, some people think it's political expediency, right. So to be able to work and operate in communities where race is still a contentious topic, and to kind of make it more pragmatic for people to accept these investments, other people are really pushing that idea that maybe race is one factor, if not the main factor. So it's not decided yet. But we know that politically, it gives more cover for these decisions that are to come in terms of investments. So it's a real issue in terms of how central race is and should be moving forward. Just to put my personal attitude on the table, I think race is a huge factor. And as it connects to culture and how people are connected to place, you almost can't talk about the history of our country, or any community without talking directly about the legacy of race.

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Speaker 1 

16:05 

I agree with you and the fact that they removed race is concerning. I think people get confused with correlation and causation. Race and the economy, or money do tend to correlate a socio economic status, but they are not replaceable. And one of the statistics that continue to floor me around medicine is that a white woman without a high school diploma, fares better in maternity, child care delivery prenatal care than a black woman with an advanced degree. Both Beyonce and Serena Williams, experienced that tragedy two of the world's great greatest athletes. So in that case, you have a socioeconomic status, you have education, but race cuts through…through all of those. So certainly race needs to be included. You know, you spoke about, you know, Ben Chavis, Muhammad and United Church of Christ, Ben Chavis, also as an Episcopal Church connection. He and his family grew up at St. Cyprian Episcopal Church in Oxford, and his sister, Dr. Chavis, has just died not too long ago. So they are still important families at the historically black Episcopal Church and Oxford. And he spoke about redlining. And certainly Raleigh also was a red line city. And Dr. Earl Ijames, and his research was North Carolina history museum and has done a lot of work about Raleigh being unique, and that we had two color lines, a north south and an East West color line - Wilmington Street and Morgan Street. And Saint Ambrose, by virtue of our history, was impacted by both color lines, because when the neighborhood's changed in 1900, we found ourselves on the wrong side of two color lines, and we picked up our church put it on logs and rolled it a mile south across Morgan Street, and then across Wilmington, street to Shaw, across two color lines. So certainly race is an extremely important factor and does not always correlate to socio economic status or economics. 

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Speaker 2 

18:28 

100% 100%. 

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Speaker 1 

18:32 

Do you mind talking a little bit about your research focus? things that interest you? 2 

Speaker 2 

18:38 

Sure. I went to school for landscape architecture, at Michigan. That's the design and planning and stewardship of outdoor spaces. So because people don't know, the landscape architects do if you take everything but the building doesn't mean we do it. But that's what we're trained to think about and deal with. And so there's an ecological side, there's a human side, there's… there's lots of components to it. And when I was at Michigan, landscape architecture was on one floor and the building, environmental justice is on another floor - never talk, right never interacted. But again, because of my lived experience, and I sought it out. So every elective every option, I had to take seminar or a lecture class and one of the environmental justice scholars I would do, which leads to why I ended up doing what I was doing, I found that I really enjoyed engaging communities and helping

them with tools to make decisions about the environment that as we're trained as designers, we're trained to think as experts, right? So we gather all this information but we individually we’re like a superhero, kind of comes in draws a beautiful picture of wildlife go and build it and it'd be great. But we I learned that that has done a lot of damage and past particularly to our community So there was a counter movement in the mid-20th century, advocacy Planning and Community Design where designers said, Well, if communities were prepared with the right tools and provided the right settings, that they were fully capable of making their own decisions, and understand the impacts of those decisions. And so it's a movement that was called democratic design. And that's where I spend a lot of my time. So there's an ecological side to it in terms of using our tools to identify patterns of correlations that are produced sort of injustice in the environment. And kind of strategically looking at those areas to see if there were solutions strategies, developing partnerships with communities and organizations to bubble up groups of people that would like to certainly engage in a process of transformation, providing those tools so that people can make those decisions, capturing those decisions, translating them into tools that can affect real change. So… so that's where my research kind of lives, which means that I have to deal with some history, I have to deal with some analysis, environment analysis, I have to deal with some politics and of course, I have to deal with tools for engaging people. 

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Speaker 1 

21:17 

Thank you so much. Today's guest was Professor Kofi Boone, a fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects, who is the Joseph D more Distinguished Professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at North Carolina State University. 1 

Speaker 1 

21:45 

The Wading Deep podcast comes to you from a place we affectionately call The Brose, Saint Ambrose Episcopal Church, Raleigh, North Carolina. Follow us on Facebook, YouTube, The BroseNC on Twitter and TheBrose1868 on Instagram. 

I am your host, the Reverend Jemonde Taylor. God is going to trouble the water of environmental racism, resurrecting a river of life clear as crystal. 

Shalom, Salaam, Peace