For many years, my work in the justice and peace movement concerned issues of nuclear and conventional disarmament. The Cold War ended in 1989 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. There were high hopes that with the end of that struggle would come the long-hoped for “peace dividend”—the transfer of federal funds from bloated Cold War era defense programs to badly needed civilian programs including education, health care, job training, and environmental restoration to name a few. But instead, the U.S. began to consolidate its global power and launched a $60 billion reinvestment in its ability to design, develop, test and deploy new more “usable” nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons would now target any and all who might threaten U.S. military and economic hegemony, specifically non-nuclear developing nations.

Over the years, good people of many different faith denominations, political affiliations, and citizen movements challenged U.S. nuclear weapons policies on a number of levels. The common denominator among these various efforts was an analysis that located U.S. Nuclear weapons policy as a core component of militarism. Many shared this critique and worked diligently to raise a moral voice in opposition to nuclear weapons and the mass and indiscriminate destruction they threatened.

While it is certainly true that the threat posed by the continued reliance on nuclear weapons is real and such use would put the very existence of life on earth in jeopardy, by focusing only on the militaristic aspects we fail to address and support those who are being victimized today. An anti-racist critique of the nuclear endeavor can open our eyes to the mass destruction that has plagued communities of color from the beginning of the nuclear era and continues today.

Nuclear weapons could not be possible without racism. Indeed, the nuclear industry as a whole would be impossible without racism. Nuclear weapons are the product of highly enriched uranium and the plutonium that can be processed from it. Most mining and milling of uranium ore is done on the lands of indigenous peoples: Hopi and Navajo lands in the Southwest United States, Cree land in Northern Canada, Aboriginal lands in Australia, and Tribal Homelands in South Africa. Communities of color bear a disproportionate share of the risks and health effects caused by radiation released during mining and milling. The uranium fuel made from this ore for commercial reactors is processed in plants often located intentionally in communities of color, mostly African-American.

When the U.S. government went looking for a place to test its nuclear weapons, they chose an isolated area north of Las Vegas, Nevada. That land belonged to the Western Shoshone Nation, who called it Newe Segobia. It became the most bombed land on earth. Since 1951, more than 1,000 full-scale nuclear weapons explosions have taken place on this, the now infamous Nevada Test Site.

The radiation released by nearly 40 years of exploding nuclear weapons in the Southwest have dramatically increased cancer-related deaths among the predominantly Hispanic populations east of the Test site. The ripple-effect of such a high rate of cancer deaths on families living in that part of the country is incalculable. The wanton disrespect shown to these communities was exacerbated by decades of denial by federal authorities of any connection between the weapons testing and the high rate of cancer deaths.

The end of the nuclear cycle is similarly wrought with racist practice as energy corporations, as well as federal and state entities continue to site radioactive dumps in or near communities of color. Seventeen of the 20 potential sites for federal interim storage of high-level radioactive waste were on Native American lands. In Nevada, Yucca Mountain, a sacred site of the Western Shoshone Nation, is being developed as a central depository for the U.S.’s high-level nuclear waste.

What do we see when we open our eyes to the racism of nuclear policy? We see whole communities of color affected by displacement and terrible health effects that destroy families. We see thousands of persons of color who have been killed by radiation exposure as they mined and processed nuclear materials that would eventually be incorporated into weapons of mass destruction. We see those weapons now pointed at people of color in other parts of the world.

As we view the disintegration in Iraq we must remember that the pretext for the invasion and occupation was the alleged intent to develop the very same weapons upon which U.S. Military power has been built. Racism and hypocrisy are not always flip sides of the same coin. If we look carefully and clearly through an anti-racist lens, we see that there is in fact nothing hypocritical about going to war to prevent a non-white nation from developing nuclear weapons. It is simply one more ominously congruent aspect of the racism that underscores every aspect of U.S. Nuclear weapons policy.

This year we commemorate the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As we look back on this tragic event and mourn the Asian victims of what Pope Paul VI called “a butchery of untold magnitude,” let us also mourn the other victims of the nuclear age: all those indigenous peoples, African-Americans, and Hispanic victims who died mining, processing or simply living downwind of the nuclear sin. Let our mourning incite within us all a renewed commitment to end the nuclear era. We can begin by recognizing the racism that has been at the core of the nuclear endeavor since its very beginning and which continues to take a deadly toll today.

David Robinson is the executive director of Pax Christi USA, and a featured speaker at “Many Stories, One Vision for a Nuclear-Free World,” a national conference and action from August 4-7, 2005 in Las Vegas, NV to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For more information on this conference, please visit http://www.paxchristiusa.org/news_events_more.asp?id=735.

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