Environmental Racism Research

The term was first in 1982 to establish the links that exist between environmental outcomes and race by Benjamin Chavis. A 1987 report by the Commission for Racial Justice inferred that there exists significant proximity between commercial hazardous waste facilities and the minority consequently exposing them to risk thus inequality. The background behind the conclusion is that economic theories create platforms for understanding how exposure to environmental risk cut across race. This is especially through: intended action by polluters or politicians in decision making; the varying capability and drive to pay for environmental or social amenities, usually due to differences income or levels of education; and differences in capabilities of communities to champion healthy environments. Similar links were thereafter realised in the 90s by the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

Since then, this perspective has been widely used to map racism as an injustice in numerous areas. However, intertwining aspects in methodology have proved complex to manipulate in regard to Pulido’s argument. Inconsistency in variable selection, inaccuracy and inadequacy in data sources, overlapping of variables spatially and the uncertainty as to whether proximity to environmental hazardous outcomes creates the capacity for exposure to risk remains incomplete. The institutionalisation of environmental justice in policy making renders historical perspectives aimed at addressing racism inappropriate considering that there are existing policies and bureaucracies, and budgetary allocation for the course of environmental justice. In this context, the federal government addresses environmental injustice as to which communities are more affected rather than assessing if the exposure to environmental risk really exists.

Book: Thompson, P. Environmental Justice: International Discourses in Political Economy. Routledge. This book is addressed by theoretical and survey models revolving around environmental justice and the forces of the international political economy. It matches global markets to the transformation of societies and the natural order. The article showed that African Americans related more to environmental injustice than the whites. This is after age, level of education, home ownership and race were using to arrive at the finding of the empirical study. Precisely, the article states that there exist significant racial gaps in addressing the scope of environmental justice. In regard to this paper, it essentially clarifies that achieving environmental justice requires an understanding of the racial related inequalities in our societies, hence the environment.

This is because most societal problems are environmental problems and most environmental problems are societal problems. In the article Pulido, concludes that this perspective at a global scale in today’s world is capable of extracting individual targets as pollution criminals. This is a further development to her previous work. Book: Zimring, C. A. Clean and white: A history of environmental racism in the The United States. ’ https://edition. cnn. com/2014/11/26/us/ferguson-racism-or-racial-bias/index. html November 27, 2014 This article from CNN argues that there is a need to view racism as what it has become rather than what racism used to be. It further stipulates that the white view of racism is absolutely different from that of the minorities. This is because the history of modernisation places different races at certain extremes that predisposes then as either perpetrators or victims of hazardous environmental outcomes.