But is it a question of race, or of expertise? After all, ever since the beginning, biolab opponents have had to contend with impressively credentialed scientists — including representatives of the NIH — who promised that the facility would be safe. The reason the NRC’s finding made waves is because it involved other credentialed scientists ruling that these assurances had been shoddy and unconvincing.
“I think it’s about race when they’re placing [these facilities],” Allen answered. “Because I’m talking to people nationally, in twelve other states. The majority of those folks who are fighting are people of color. I think it was racial when we were trying to get the word out, and nobody would listen to a word we were saying, except for a chosen few.”
Allen may be frustrated by what she considers a lack of respect. But she’s also using this frustration as a motivational force. At one point, she cited a comment she claims was made by Mark Klempner, the biolab’s director, at a meeting several years ago. According to Allen, Klempner called the biolab opponents “incompetent.” (Klempner has since stated that he doesn’t remember making the alleged remark.) “If Klempner would have treated us with respect, if he would have answered our questions, we would have been like, ‘Biolab? These people seem like they’re cool, and we don’t know shit,’ ” says Allen. “We would have just went to the meetings, done what we had to do, maybe put up a little fight here and there.
“[But] you just don’t call a person ‘incompetent’ in a room of 90 and then expect for that person to walk away,” Allen continued. “And if that’s what you expect, then that’s a pretty good understanding of why you think this lab should be here. Because [you think] these people aren’t competent. [You think] they’re sucking 40s every day; they’re smoking blunts every day; they’re really not aware; we got ’em working three and four jobs; their kids are getting shot left and right; everything is going on pretty well. And we can plop this puppy in here.”
In fairness to biolab proponents, one problem with this theory is that it ignores the complexity of the biolab’s immediate environment. Roxbury — which sits to the south and west — is, as Allen suggests, filled with lower-income, nonwhite residents. But just to the north are the vast swaths of the South End that have become urban playgrounds for affluent whites. And the manses of the Back Bay aren’t much further away, either.
Still, the notion that there’s something nefariously racist behind the biolab is prevalent among opponents of the project. “I liken it to the Dred Scott decision,” Mel King, the South End activist, former mayoral candidate, and plaintiff in the federal case, told me. (In that case, King and other South End residents are represented by the Boston-based Conservation Law Foundation.) “Those two black folks were told by the white court that they had no rights that they had to respect. And there’s no other way for me to understand how this has worked, other than that the people in the area had no rights that needed to be respected.”
