Abstract
In this report I compare two forms of racism: white privilege and white supremacy. I examine how they are distinct and can be seen in the environmental racism arena. I argue that within US geographic scholarship white privilege has become so widespread that more aggressive forms of racism, such as white supremacy, are often overlooked. It is essential that we understand the precise dynamics that produce environmental injustice so that we can accurately target the responsible parties via strategic social movements and campaigns. Using the case of Exide Technologies in Vernon, California, I argue that the hazards generated by its longstanding regulatory noncompliance are a form of white supremacy.
References
|
Baker, S (2007) Sustainable development as symbolic commitment: Declaratory politics and the seductive appeal of ecological modernisation in the European Union. Environmental Politics 16(2): 297–317. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Bonilla-Silva, E (2001) White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era. Boulder: Lynne Rienner. Google Scholar | |
|
Bonilla-Silva, E (2006) Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Google Scholar | |
|
Boone, CG, Fragkias, M, Buckley, GL, Grove, JM (2014) A long view of polluting industry and environmental justice in Baltimore. Cities 36: 41–49. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Chomsky, A (2014) Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal. Boston: Beacon Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Christensen, K, Garrison, J (2013) Firm’s troubles not just local. Los Angeles Times, 30 May: A1, A10. Google Scholar | |
|
Crenshaw, K (1989) Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory, and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum: 139–167. Google Scholar | |
|
Environ International Corporation (2013) Revised AB2588 Health Risk Assessment. Prepared for Exide Technologies, Irvine and Los Angeles. Available at: http://www.aqmd.gov/docs/default-source/planning/risk-assessment/exide-hra.pdf?20sfvrsn=0 (accessed 28 November 2014). Google Scholar | |
|
Ferguson, R (2012) On the specificities of racial formation: Gender and sexuality in historiographies of race. In: HoSang, D, LaBennett, O, Pulido, L (eds) Racial Formation in the 21st Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 44–56. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Forgiarini, M, Marcello, G, Maravita, A (2011) Racism and the empathy for pain on our skin. Frontiers in Psychology 2. Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108582/ (accessed 28 November 2014). Google Scholar | |
|
Fredrickson, A (2013) The California coastal act and ports: The unintended environmental justice implications of preserving California’s coastline. Coastal Management 41(3): 258–271. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Garrison, J (2013a) Exide plant ordered to clean up lead. Los Angeles Times, 19 December: AA1, AA4. Google Scholar | |
|
Garrison, J (2013b) Vernon plant put on notice. Los Angeles Times, 24 March: A27, A30. Google Scholar | |
|
Garrison, J, Christensen, K (2013) Uproar swells over toxic sites. Los Angeles Times, 3 July: AA1, AA2. Google Scholar | |
|
Garrison, J, Christensen, K, Poston, B (2013) State is slow to act against toxic waste. Los Angeles Times, 27 December: A1, A18, A19. Google Scholar | |
|
Gerber, B (2002) Administering environmental justice: Examining the impact of Executive Order 12898. Policy and Management Review 2(1): 41–61. Google Scholar | |
|
Gilmore, RW (2007) Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, And Opposition In Globalizing California. Berkeley: University of California. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Gordon, H, Harley, K (2005) Environmental justice and the legal system. In: Pellow, D, Brulle, R (eds) Power, Justice and the Environment: A Critical Appraisal of the Environmental Justice Movement. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 153–170. Google Scholar | |
|
Hagan, J, Scheppele, KL, Tyker, TR (2010) Environmental Law and Native American Law. Review Of Law And Social Science 6: 359–386. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Harris, C (1993) Whiteness as property. Harvard Law Review 106: 1709–1791. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Holifield, R, Heynen, N (2007) Neoliberalism and environmental justice policy. In: Heynen, N, McCarthy, J, Robbins, P (eds) Neoliberal Environments: False Promises and Unnatural Consequences. New York: Routledge, pp. 202–216. Google Scholar | |
|
Huntington, S (2000) Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity. New York: Simon & Schuster. Google Scholar | |
|
Jones, R (2014) Hidden racial anxiety in an age of waning racism. The Atlantic. 12 May. Available at: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/05/unspoken-racial-tensions/362023/ (accessed 28 November 2014). Google Scholar | |
|
Kates, G (2014) Environmental crime: The prosecution gap. The Crime Report, 14 July. Available at: http://www.thecrimereport.org/news/inside-criminal-justice/2014-07-environmental-crime-the-prosecution-gap (accessed 28 November 2014). Google Scholar | |
|
Keister, L (2004) Race, family structure and wealth: The effect of childhood family on adult asset ownership. Sociological Perspectives 47(2): 161–187. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Kohl, E (2014) Surviving Unregulatable Places: Race, Gender, and Environmental Justice in Gainesville, Georgia. PhD dissertation, University of Georgia, Athens. Google Scholar | |
|
Kurtz, H (2009) Acknowledging the racial state: An agenda for environmental justice research. Antipode 41(4): 684–704. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Leonardo, Z (2004) The color of supremacy: Beyond the discourse of ‘white privilege’. Educational Philosophy and Theory 36(2): 137–152. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Lipsitz, G (1998) The Possessive Investment in Whiteness. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Los Angeles Collaborative for Environmental Health and Justice (2010) Hidden Hazards: A Call To Action For Healthy, Livable Communities. Los Angeles: Liberty Hill Foundation. Google Scholar | |
|
Marquez, J (2013) Black-Brown Solidarity: Racial Politics in the New Gulf South. Austin: University of Texas. Google Scholar | |
|
Mascaro, L (2014) Democrats may lose hope in Arkansas. Los Angeles Times, 16 July: A1, A12. Google Scholar | |
|
McIntosh, P (1988) White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies. Working Paper #189. Wellesley College: Center for Research on Women. Google Scholar | |
|
Melamed, J (2011) Represent and Destroy: Rationalizing Violence in the New Racial Contract. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Mendez, M, Grose, C (2014) Revealing Discriminatory Intent: Legislator Preferences, Voter Identification, and Responsiveness Bias. USC Class Research Paper No. 14-14. May 1. Social Science Research Network. Available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2422596 (accessed 5 December 2014). Google Scholar | |
|
Nazemi, M (2013) Letter to John Hogarth. 24 October. Available at: http://www.aqmd.gov/docs/default-source/planning/Exide/1025-exideletter.pdf?sfvrsn=0 (accessed 28 November 2014). Google Scholar | |
|
Ngai, M (2004) Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Immigrant America. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Nickols, S, Nielsen, R (2011) So many people are struggling: Developing social empathy through a poverty simulation. Journal of Poverty 15: 22–42. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Ochoa, G (2004) Becoming Neighbors in a Mexican American Community: Power, Conflict, and Solidarity. Austin: University of Texas Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Oliver, M, Shapiro, T (1995) Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality. New York: Routledge. Google Scholar | |
|
Parker, C (2010) 2010 Multi-State Survey of Race & Politics. Seattle: Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race, and Sexuality, University of Washington. Available at: http://depts.washington.edu/uwiser/racepolitics.html (accessed 28 November 2014). Google Scholar | |
|
Preston, J (2013) Neoliberal Settler Colonialism, Canada and the Tar Sands. Race & Class 55(2): 42–59. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Pulido, L (2000) Rethinking environmental racism: White privilege and urban development in southern California. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 90(1): 12–40. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Pulido, L (2014) Environmental racism as state-sanctioned violence. Keynote address, Dimensions of Political Ecology Conference, University of Kentucky, February. Google Scholar | |
|
Pulido, L, Sidawi, S, Vos, B (1996) An archaeology of environmental racism in Los Angeles. Urban Geography 17(5): 419–439. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Rattan, A, Eberhardt, J (2010) The role of social meaning in inattentional blindness: When the gorillas in our midst do not go unseen. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 46: 1085–1088. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Robinson, W (2006) Aqui estamos y no nos vamos! Global capital and immigrant rights. Race & Class 48(2): 77–91. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Sadd, J, Pastor, M, Morello-Frosch, R, Scoggins, J, Jesdale, B (2011) Playing it safe: Assessing cumulative impact and social vulnerability through an environmental justice screening method in the south coast air basin, California. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 8(5): 1441–1459. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | |
|
SCAQMD (South Coast Air Quality Management District) (2008) AQMD orders Vernon battery recycling plant to reduce lead emissions. 18 June. Available at: http://www.aqmd.gov/home/library/public-information/2008-news-archives/exide-ordered-to-reduce-emissions (accessed 28 November 2014). Google Scholar | |
|
SCAQMD (South Coast Air Quality Management District) (2013) SCAQMD rejects Exide technologies risk reduction plan. 25 October. Available at: http://www.aqmd.gov/home/library/public-information/2013-news-archives/scaqmd-rejects-exide-rrp (accessed 28 November 2014). Google Scholar | |
|
Smith, A (2012) Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy. In: HoSang, D, LaBennett, O, Pulido, L (eds) Racial Formation in the 21st century. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 66–90. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Strong, D, Hobbs, KA (2002) Administrative responses to environmental racism. International Journal of Public Administration 25(2): 391–417. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Walker, G (2009) Beyond distribution and proximity: Exploring the multiple spatialities of environmental justice. Antipode 41(1): 614–636. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Wilson, WJ (1978) The Declining Significance of Race. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Winant, H (2001) The World Is A Ghetto: Race And Democracy Since World War Two. New York: Basic Books. Google Scholar |
