Housing Inequality in America

Explanations for Environmental Racism: The Racialization of Space and Economic Disinvestment

Some scholars and activists though have argued that a focus on discriminatory intent offers a limited understanding of the causes of environmental racism and of racism more broadly. Instead, they argue that environmental racism should be understood as a consequence of larger social and historical processes that over time have secured advantageous environmental conditions for white and wealthy communities and disadvantageous ones for the poor, working class, and communities of color. The history of housing inequality provides the structural context that helps explain instances of environmental racism. The processes of suburbanization, white flight, public housing, redlining, and restrictive racial covenants created racially segregated spaces where certain spaces, such as the suburbs, had a concentration of white communities, wealth, and economic investment, while others, such as the inner-city, witnessed a concentration of communities of color, poverty, and economic divestment. This residential segregation contributed to the racialization of space where geographical spaces became associated with those who lived in them. Zimring (2016) argues that this racialization of space should be placed within an even wider historical context of how the concepts of “waste” and “clean” were racialized throughout American history, with cleanliness being associated with whiteness and white spaces and dirt being associated with people of color, their spaces, and the labor they engaged in.

For some, this provides a key explanation for environmental racism as spaces that experienced divestment were then seen as prime locations to prioritize industrialization and waste management. This is especially seen through the practice of zoning laws that restricted the construction of industries and toxic waste facilities to certain areas, usually those that housed the poor and people of color. Understanding environmental racism in this way sidesteps the need to prove discriminatory intent and stresses instead that whether intentional or not larger economic and political decisions have created a society where communities of color and the poor are more likely to be exposed to environmental pollutants.

Other interpretations of the causes of environmental racism include Pulido’s (2016) argument that environmental racism should be understood as the product of the intersection of racism and capitalism. Using Flint as an example, Pulido argues Flint was not only a majority Black city but a city that had faced decades of economic divestment from businesses and the state. As a result, the population of Flint was devalued both because of their Blackness and because they were not a center of economic production and were more vulnerable to political decisions that prioritized profit and cost cutting over the lives and well-being of residents. Wright (2021) argues that environmental racism should be understood as one expression of Anti-Black violence in the United States.  Anti-Black violence already devalues Black lives, and the spaces Black people inhabit. Therefore, Black communities are conceptualized as suitable locations of environmental waste precisely because Black people are already “disposable.”

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