Environmental Racism
Practices and policies that disadvantage (whether intentionally or unintentionally) individuals, groups, or communities based on race, ethnicity, and color (Bullard 91).
Editorial Cartoon: Poverty/Environmental Justice. Source: climatecurriculum.com
Elements of racism are rooted in world history, through colonialism, expansionism, and slavery. These inequalities, especially among people, continue to persist today. Many communities that are inhabited by people of color usually do not have the same financial or political power compared to their white, affluent counterparts and, therefore, these communities receive less environmental protection. The interplay of economics, politics, and race have been used against communities of color to establish landfills, incinerators, toxic chemical plants, and other hazardous sites in their backyards. Historically, zoning ordinances have been subtly used by governments to encourage these discriminatory practices (Bullard 90). Because these communities do not have the same political and financial resources as white communities, the installment of these hazardous waste sites disadvantages these groups further, making it difficult for these communities to take action and fight against these inequalities. However, with the onset of the environmental justice movement, these communities are gaining traction and are beginning to fight back, through policies such as Not in My Backyard (NIMBY) and Not in Anybody’s Backyard (NIABY), in which these communities are protesting the placement of these hazardous sites in their communities, but also highlighting the need to reduce these sites altogether (Yuan 290).
Further readings:
Bullard, Robert D. “Confronting Environmental Racism in the Twenty-First Century.” The Colors of Nature: Culture, Identity, and the Natural World, by Alison Hawthorne Deming and Lauret E. Savoy, Milkweed Editions, 2011, pp. 90–97. (course material)
Pulido, Laura. “Geographies of race and ethnicity II: Environmental racism, racial capitalism and state-sanctioned violence.” Progress in Human Geography, Vol 41, issue 4, p.524-533, 2017.
Yuan, Quan. “Environmental Justice in Warehousing Location:State of the Art.” Journal of Planning Literature, vol. 33, no. 3, August 2018, pp. 287–298. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1177/0885412217753841
Related Case Studies:
