This is What Racism Looks Like

Racism isn't always as obvious as Donald Trump's housing discrimination case in the 1970s, his full-page newspaper ads demanding the death penalty for the Central Park Five, who were later exonerated, or the lie that Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States.

Sometimes it is more subtle, as when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth purges the stories of distinguished service members of color (and women) from military history in the name of fighting "wokeness."

And sometimes it is hidden in plain sight, in the places chosen for the nation's dirtiest industrial projects.

Two years ago, one of the world's largest artificial intelligence data centers appeared almost overnight in Southwest Memphis, a predominantly Black community that already bears generations of industrial pollution. Because xAI could not obtain enough electricity from the grid, it has operated dozens of methane gas turbines, adding still more pollution to a community that already suffers cancer rates far above the national average and some of Tennessee's highest childhood asthma rates.

The NAACP and the Southern Environmental Law Center sued xAI, arguing that the turbines were operating without the permits required under the Clean Air Act. State regulators claimed that because the turbines were mounted on trailers, they qualified as "mobile" equipment. Yet the EPA later concluded that these turbines require permits, public participation, and environmental review. Even so, the Department of Justice has sought dismissal of the lawsuit on national security grounds.

When powerful people decide that one community can be sacrificed on the altar of the artificial intelligence race, while regulators and government agencies look the other way, that isn't simply injustice…

It is deadly racism.