Environmental racism involves placing the minority and low-income groups in the close proximity of degraded and environmentally dangerous environments, including urban disintegration, pollution, and toxic waste. Despite the presence of competing views regarding the exact definition, the interaction between social indicators and environmental problems are crucial to its comprehension. Environmental racism disproportionately imposes environmental hazards on individuals with different colors of skin. The paper seeks to explore environmental racism as one of the significant challenges of the modern times as well as discuss the ongoing struggle of individuals concerned. The essay as well tries to provide standpoints made by the renowned activists, advocates, and professors that have dedicated their studies to environmental racism and its elimination. More about it you can read at my customized essay .
Intention is the original contention in the definition. Some definitions indicate that deliberate discrimination against minority groups in challenges concerning the environment constitutes environmental racism. An essential factor in generating efficient environmental segregation is the following fact. Low-income groups have no political power and organization to resist the development of hazardous technologies on their land. Besides, they have no great mobility of wealthy residents away from the regions falling into environmental and industrial decay.
Historically, the term environmental racism is related to the environmental justice campaigns that occurred in the 1970-1980s in the USA. There are many views on environmental racism in North America. There are numerous cases that are documented in details. Despite the presence of competing views regarding the exact definition, the interaction between social indicators and environmental problems are crucial to its comprehension.
The Definition of Environmental Racism
The term environmental racism or environmental discrimination is applied to characterize and distinguish racial disparities in various processes and actions. It includes but not restricted to the high likelihood of being subjected to the environmental hazards, disproportionately negative effects of environmental policies, and processes. Besides, there is the different rate of cleanup of environmental contamination in the settlements composed of various racial communities. Some definitions emphasize the presence of intentional or unintentional adverse environmental conditions for the minority groups.
Forms of Environmental Discrimination
There are various forms of environmental discrimination. They include the considerable exposure to environmental hazards, uneven adverse effects of environmental procedures, inadequate environmental policies, and the intentional placement of toxic facilities in the communities, where minority groups live. Environmental racism implies offering hazardous jobs to minority employees. Moreover, these individuals have a disproportionate access to the environmental services and amenities, including parks, recreational facilities, and garbage removal. What is more, environmental discrimination implies the intentional placement of noxious facilities and harmful objects in certain communities. Environmental intimidation arises in such a case when employees are forced to choose between environmental standards and hazardous works, segregation of ethnic minority groups in dirty and dangerous jobs, and the lack of access or poor maintenance of the following environmental amenities. These ones include such: as playgrounds, parks, and inequalities in various environmental services including transportation and garbage removal.
Environmental Racism on the International Level
Environmental discrimination also exists on the world scale. Internationally, environmental racism lies between the groups in the developed nation-states world and the groups in the emerging countries. Moreover, environmental discrimination is between various ethnicities and races on different continents. The global corporations continue to produce hazardous chemicals and export them to the emerging countries. It happens despite the fact that the American laws ban this activity. Corporations can also deliver waste materials to the countries that have relaxed environmental legislation. On the international level, the famous giant corporations exhibit environmental racism exporting waste materials, hazardous chemicals, and dirty technologies. It is despite the fact that this activity is banned by safety practices, domestic laws, and environmental policies. As the significant conception, environmental racism provides a label for the environmental activism and vigorous campaigns, which take place in the low-income and minority groups. In particular, one may link racism with various adverse environmental experiences and actions causing irreversible effects. In the broadest sense, environmental racism is a process whereby environmental policies, actions, and decisions lead to the environmental racial discrimination and the generation of racial advantages. It emerges from the interaction of several factors including prejudicial behavior and beliefs, the institutional and personal power. It is done in order to enact actions and policies that reflect unfair advantages, privileges, own prejudices over other people as well as the abilities to promote a group over another one.
The Significance of Intention
The African American civil rights’ activist Benjamin Chavis underscores the significance of intention. He claims that environmental racism is the discrimination in environmental policymaking and enforcement of laws and regulations. Moreover, he emphasizes the intentional targeting of communities of different races for toxic waste facilities, the official permission to use life threatening pollutants, and poisons in these communities. Chavis also mentions the history of excluding individuals of different races from leadership positions in the environmental movement.
Individuals, who criticize this point of view, emphasize the following thing. It is restrictive because deliberate racism is one of the forms of racism. Even if it is not deliberate, many communities, due to some reasons, are more likely to settle in the polluted regions full of hazards than other groups. Therefore, the absence of intent does not necessarily mean that it is not the environmental racism. The difficulty to prove the individual and group intent is probably the main reason why intentionality requirements are regarded as limitative in some definitions.
The American Government Accountability Office mentions that there is an interrelation between the ethnic origin of the region’s residents and the location of dangerous waste facilities in the United States. In the areas, which are mainly populated by minority groups, education and voter registration are lower than average ones. In this case, residents are less likely to challenge the construction of particular objects and seek the financial compensation for the health damages causing environmental pollution. The implementation of necessary techniques that will finally eliminate dangerous waste sites requires support, political impact, money, and time.
Unequal Access to the Resources and Tools
The necessary resources such as an access to the public and private records, meeting places, and financing of technical assistance are also required. Since the minority communities have no direct access to these tools, they face some challenges when combating against the placement of toxic facilities. Furthermore, controversial sites are less likely to be located in the regions expected to carry out collective actions. Some studies also show that the lack of protests may be due to some fear of losing jobs. The majority communities have a better opportunity to succeed when opposing the placement of freeways, incinerators, dangerous sewage treatment facilities, and hazardous waste disposal in their regions. These people are more likely to access many resources and tools used to prevent siting of toxic objects and diminish adverse effects of environmental policy decisions.
Manifestation of Intentional Racism
Numerous scientists consider siting hazardous objects in the areas, where the minority groups live as a manifestation of intentional racism. These people are targeted for beliefs in racial inferiority, i.e. the wish to protect racial privileges of the particular group and prejudicial reasons. Other scholars point to the structural and institutional causes of environmental discrimination. Warf also adds that the traditional outlook of discrimination is episodic and individualistic in comparison with the institutional one. The ongoing processes of decentralization and suburbanization lead to environmental racism even in the absence of deliberately discriminative policy. For example, suburbanization consists of non-minority groups. They leave industrial regions for less costly, cleaner, and safer suburban places.
The minority groups live in the close proximity to the polluted industrial areas located near the city center. The unemployment rate is high. Business will never invest in the improvement of this region, thus generating poor economic conditions for people and reinforcing the racial inequality. Furthermore, the developers of hazardous waste facilities should take into consideration poverty of residents and property owners in the town. Depressed real estate values will reduce costs.
The Precautionary Principle
The conference conducted by the United Nations concerning the environment and development has pointed to one possible solution. It is a precautionary principle that declares the following fact. No one should use threats of irreversible, serious, adverse damages, absence of scientific certainty, and confidence as the reasons to postpone effective and adequate measures. These ones are aimed at preventing environmental destruction and degradation. Under the precautionary principle, the initiators of the potentially hazardous activities are charged with demonstrating safety of their activity. Every environmental justice activist also emphasizes the necessity for the significant waste reduction. It should, in the course of time, diminish the overall burden.
The Role of Activists and Scholars in Resolving the Issue of Environmental Racism
Activists have proposed many solutions to the issue of environmental discrimination and promoted participatory conceptions of justice centered on the citizens’ involvement. The dean and professor Robert Bullard is the academic, activist, and leader of environmental justice advocacy. Bullard is a foremost scholar and famous founder of environmental justice. He has been engaged in the campaign against the environmental discrimination since the 1980s, when the movement, dedicated to the environmental issues, started to develop. The academic promotes environmental justice and the following principle. All individuals are entitled to the fair treatment and equal protection of environmental legislation. Moreover, all human beings regardless of their origin, race, and gender are involved in realizing and enforcing policies and regulations concerning various environmental problems.
It is also significant to integrate and provide codification of environmental justice into the language and comprehension of fundamental human and civil rights. Nowadays, every state acknowledges and recognizes that environmental justice as a framework should be codified in the legislative order or law. It is also important to mention that it is recognized by many scientists as a legitimate subject for study. Numerous legal medical facilities and university-based programs pay the significant attention to environmental justice. The latter one has already transformed from the American domestic problem into the global environmental justice movement.
The eminent and well-known professor Martin Melosi also underscores the topic of environmental discrimination in his studies and works. It is true that the emergence of the environmental justice movement in the distant eighties has promoted some debates, disputes, and controversies. Thus, according to the, class and racial aspects should become the basic concerns of the present-day environmentalism. Leaders, activists, and individuals concerned in the environmental justice movement think as follows. By proposing the environmental initiatives, the main environmental organizations and groups have shown a great concern for safeguarding animal habitats and wilderness. It will help to address health hazards of human beings, in particular, those living in big cities. The Save the Earth initiatives should save lives of millions of people, protect their backyards and homes. Some proponents of environmental justice have decided to dissociate their movement from the United States’ environmentalism. They have identified themselves with a broad social justice legacy left by the civil rights movement and activities of the 1950- 1960s.
The concentrations of racial and ethnic minorities also promote solidarity and maintenance despite various challenges. They provide the social capital needed for grassroots activism. Residents, who are tired of being exposed to some dangers of contamination in their communities, have been confronting the authorities and power authorities for a long time. They organize various activities, civil disobedience, marches, demonstrations, legal actions, and protests. Public should be provided with more avenues to participate and consult in a decision-making process. Other strategies in fighting against giant corporations include meetings with organization’s representatives, public hearings, the election of proponents to the local and state offices, and other efforts. The latter ones are aimed at bringing awareness and accountability. In general, the participation of policymakers in the life of African American communities is correlated with a decline of mortality and health risks.
