SOCI 142gm Lecture Notes - Lecture 30: Environmental Racism, Asthma, Dolores Huerta
SOCI 142 Week 15 (Thursday)
● Pulido - Rethinking Environmental Racism
○ How racism is defined?
■ Locating hazardous projects and industries inhabited by low-
income and racial minority residents
● Results = exposure to hazardous material which results in
health risk outcomes
■ Based on malicious individual acts
■ When you focus on the acts of the individuals, it misses the role of
structural forms of racism
■ Individual v. Structural Explanations
■ Framing the Issue
● Framed because of a limited perspective of race
● Creating a definition that people accept as true
● Half of the battle
● Boyle Heights was portrayed as a slum v. portrayed as a
neighborhood where people live
■ Sociospatial Process: Power → Geography
● Missing this when looking at individual acts
● Shows how power is exercised through geography
○ Individual factors: facility siting and malicious intent
○ Misses: Whiteness
○ Sociospatial process of inequality → environmental racism
○ Racism: practices and ideologies → institutions and
individuals → produce racial inequality
● In the middle of California, the middle part is the most polluted due to the
agriculture that exists there
○ Los Angeles
■ Overall pretty bad
■ There’s a high percentage of asthma, poverty
■ There’s a huge overlap between where the latinos live v. where
there’s a big concentration of pollution
● Intent: hostile motive necessary?
● Hegemony
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Locating hazardous projects and industries inhabited by low- income and racial minority residents. Results = exposure to hazardous material which results in health risk outcomes. When you focus on the acts of the individuals, it misses the role of structural forms of racism. Framed because of a limited perspective of race. Creating a definition that people accept as true. Boyle heights was portrayed as a slum v. portrayed as a neighborhood where people live. Missing this when looking at individual acts. Shows how power is exercised through geography. Individual factors: facility siting and malicious intent. Sociospatial process of inequality environmental racism. Racism: practices and ideologies institutions and individuals produce racial inequality. In the middle of california, the middle part is the most polluted due to the agriculture that exists there. There"s a high percentage of asthma, poverty. There"s a huge overlap between where the latinos live v. where there"s a big concentration of pollution.