Apparently the country is suffering from an outbreak of environmental racism. At least, the New York Times tells us so. The problem with this claim is that it doesn’t pay any attention to reality.

The actual truth is that, in general and on average, the black population of the country is poorer than the population as a whole. It’s also true that folks like living next to nice green parks and don’t like living next to polluting factories. This means that living by parks tends to be more expensive than living next to factories. The claim that blacks disproportionately live by factories is not a function of racism, but poverty.