Environmental Racism

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how the Environmental Justice Movement believes that minorities living in poor neighborhoods are exposed more frequently to environmental toxins because minorities are basically marginalized people in our society, whom nobody notices or cares about. The paper further examines how the Environmental Justice Movement tries to go beyond traditional concerns about cleaning up the environment and tries to include addressing social inequality. Finally, the paper attempts to look at how pollutants get distributed so unequally and what can be done about the problem.

From the Paper:

"Another explanation is that low-income people and minorities lack political clout. They are not generally well-organized for social action in their neighborhoods. When the government and industry leaders make decisions that affect the environment, they don't consider what objections could come up because usually there aren't any. Perhaps these officials have no intention of polluting low-income neighborhoods (as opposed to polluting affluent neighborhoods), but their policies of risk management may be flawed so that minorities are disproportionately impacted. Groups that do organize to resist industrial polluters are generally plagued by lack of funding, while the industries they want to fight have enormous financial, technical, and legal resources."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Friedman, D. (1998). The "environmental racism" hoax. The American Enterprise, 9 (6), 75-78.
• Talking race (2003). Alternatives Journal, 29 (1), 3-4.
• Warriner, G. K., McSpurren, K. and Nabalamba, A. (2001). Social justice and environmental equity: Distributing environmental quality. Environments, 29 (1), 85-99.

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