Within two miles of the data centers in Boxtown, a South Memphis neighborhood, live 38,000 people. Seventy-three percent of them are Black. Widen the circle to five miles and it is 163,000 people, still 73% Black.
Those figures come from a new NAACP tool launched Tuesday, one week before the Nov. 3 midterms, as Word In Black reported. The dashboard, called Climate on Your Ballot, lets voters type in an address and see the data centers nearby, how many people and how many Black residents live within two and five miles, and how candidates on their ballot answered the NAACP’s questions about the projects.
The map covers 1,728 data centers already operating and another 1,042 that are proposed, approved or under construction. The NAACP sent its questionnaire to candidates in 17 states. It built the tool with Young, Gifted, and Green, according to the NAACP’s campaign page.
“Voters deserve to know where candidates stand on the climate and environmental issues shaping their communities,” said Abre’ Conner, director of the NAACP’s Center for Environmental and Climate Justice. Decisions about these projects, she said, “have real consequences for our health and our neighborhoods.”
In Boxtown, three local candidates had answered the questionnaire, Word In Black reported. State Rep. Justin Pearson, a Democrat running for Congress, had not yet responded.
Memphis is where the fight has been sharpest. In April, the NAACP’s Mississippi State Conference and the national organization sued xAI and a subsidiary, MZX Tech, in federal court in the Northern District of Mississippi. The suit alleges that xAI runs 27 methane gas turbines at Southaven, Mississippi, without the required air permits, in violation of the Clean Air Act. The turbines power a data center in South Memphis that runs the company’s Grok chatbot. The suit says the plant could emit more than 1,700 tons of nitrogen oxides a year. xAI has not been found liable; the case is pending.
“A data center should not be a potential death sentence for a community’s health,” Conner said when the suit was filed.
Residents elsewhere are asking the same questions about their power bills, their air and the water these facilities draw. A survey by HIT Strategies for the Climate Equity Action Fund and the League of Conservation Voters, fielded Sept. 24 to Oct. 10 in seven swing states, also found data centers on Black voters’ minds, as Capital B reported.
Election Day is Nov. 3. Early voting is already open in many states.
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