The Racist Foundation of Nuclear Architecture

Excerpt, “Like the countries U.S. presidents have chosen for a first strike, the U.S. selection of nuclear testing sites indicates a belief that people of color are expendable. The painful instance of the Marshall Islands is succinctly summarized by the Washington Post’s Dan Zak“The United States tested 67 high-yield nuclear bombs between 1946 and 1958, resettling whole islands of Marshallese people, exposing many to radioactive fallout and bequeathing exile and ill health to ensuing generations.”15 One of the bombs was 15 megatons. Describing the total impact of the 67 tests, Zak reckons, “If their combined explosive power was parceled evenly over that 12-year period, it would equal 1.6 Hiroshima-size explosions per day.”16 The picture is not more heartening when one turns to tests carried out on U.S. soil. On the arrival this summer of the 75th anniversary of the July 16, 1945 Trinity test in New Mexico, observers noted the racial distribution: “It should come as no surprise that the downwinders of Trinity were largely impoverished agricultural families, mostly Hispanic and Native.”17 As in New Mexico, so in Nevada. A study published in the medical journal Risk Analysis concludes, “Native Americans residing in a broad region downwind from the Nevada Test Site during the 1950s and 1960s received significant radiation exposures from nuclear weapons testing.”18 ”  Read the entire article at https://bostonreview.net/war-security-global-justice/elaine-scarry-racist-foundation-nuclear-architecture

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