Dan Farber recently posted at Legal Planet on "Jim Crow and the Fossil Fuel Industry":
This being Black History Month, I thought it would be worthwhile looking at the fossil fuel industry’s racial history. Given the historic concentration of the oil and coal industries in the South, it is no surprise to find that these industries have also been deeply entangled with Jim Crow and its legacy of discrimination.
The conclusion:
In sum, the racial history of the oil and gas industry seems to have been much worse [than that of the coal industry], associated with more virulent and blatant racism. Blacks were nearly excluded from the industry. In contrast, blacks found jobs in the coal industry, but only at the bottom of the job ladder. Those bottom rungs were decimated by new technology. In the end, the result in both industries was much the same: a workforce largely empty of Black faces.
Black miners at New River Gorge (NPS)
No comments:
Post a Comment