Housing Inequality in AmericaMain MenuThe Generational Illusion: An EssayAn Essay by Collin AndrewsEnvironmental Racism: How Residential Segregation Shapes Environmental InequalityHistoric Preservation Coast to CoastTitle PageNative American Housing: How Poor Housing Harms Indigenous HealthHow Poor Housing Harms Indigenous HealthPets & Housing: It's "Ruff" by Katie ClineHow NIMBYism Exacerbates Housing InequalityWhere's the Wealth!How Housing Discrimination has led to racial wealth inequality in the United StatesImmigrant Housing Inequality in AmericaIswat JinadSurveillance InequalityAn investigation into how poor communities are oversurveilled creating a cycle of more targeted and aggressive forms of surveillance for them and those around them.Post-WWII Urban Flight and the Birth of the SuburbsHousing Discrimination in Suburban AmericaRace, Repressive State Apparatus, and Homelessness: From Colonialism to COVID-19Tina NandiHousing Inequality and Access to Quality EducationMQ: Title PageVisualizing racial housing discriminationSplash page for path that includes interactive resources regarding racial housing discriminationProject information and creditsAndy Schocket278555063cc66428c8eadf42f48d412091c5aaf9Melissa Laddab8653014603439710b65435181f2130cee53400Andrew Bartelc9a57442f34fea7858b734ce98f4ec79bd5565b0Collin Andrewsf69afa6ae7fb0f33058b9e0cb476f7451a667cefTina Nandi6e38643c2c1510534cce4e954f0eeb8108bce699Iswat Jinad196dd805bf51f7a46fbf2d94ab069e97fc004d75Marcus Harris7e23857364c2363b25872718aea81323bdd37773James Cousinoe9398a1542d344c824ddaaf967819ae589cd2b61Katie Cline512add1943f75cbd770d4788dcdea90b706922c4Trisha A Bonham7fa13b399c9331700d719225b96f3bf9e54c4570Rene Oswald Ayalac01cc7385c24c3926f2f03a40860f6a4f703f410Kristine Ketel826fdfc33a24cff2c1e0ab79396dd2ae2bae3ed9Morgan Quinleyc8a47798c223cced64347bc9a7d80f6a64402e45
RA: Citation 18
12022-12-05T21:49:59-08:00Rene Oswald Ayalac01cc7385c24c3926f2f03a40860f6a4f703f410412371plain2022-12-05T21:49:59-08:00Rene Oswald Ayalac01cc7385c24c3926f2f03a40860f6a4f703f410Juliana Maantay, “Zoning Law, Health, and Environmental Justice: What’s the Connection?,” Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 30, no. 4 (ed 2002): 572–593.
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12022-12-05T19:42:02-08:00Explanations for Environmental Racism: The Racialization of Space and Economic Disinvestment4plain2022-12-06T17:47:37-08:00Some 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.”