Environmental Inequality

The statistics presented in the second article we are reading for Thursday, Toxic Substances and Their Impacts on Human Health in the Hudson River Watershed are appalling. Many of the areas specified as target sights under Superfund are quite close to where I live and directly affect myself and people I know. What struck me most profoundly, however, were multiple statements throughout the paper emphasizing that minority groups are at greater risk for contamination by the chemical pollutants in the surrounding area. I found myself asking, why is this? Why are Hispanic and African American populations found to have greater concentrations of PCBs in their bodies? This is an issue that was briefly addressed in the movie we watched earlier in the semester, and it has been mentioned in class a couple of times off-handedly, but I want to get to the root of this issue.

There are a few main schools of thought related to this issue. Many of the arguments involving this issue very obviously link minority status to class status. The most obvious contributor to environmental inequality is the fact that poorer residential areas (often populated by minorities) tend to have poor air quality and a disproportionate number of factories and other factors that contribute to pollution. The lower real estate prices in these areas contribute to the high number of minorities. Also, companies are reported to choose these neighborhoods because they will be met with the least opposition because the population is less educated, less informed, less powerful politically, and more dependent on local job development efforts.

There is another argument that minority peoples do not have the political clout to affect change in the environment. Because of their minority and economic status, government organizations are less apt to address the grievances. Also, because minority groups tend to be less involved in their government, they are reported to be less educated on issues about the environment. This can also be linked to inequality in the education system, which is a separate monster.

This a very complicated issue, and I have only scratched the surface with this information. It becomes apparent that a plan needs to be set in motion to educate minority populations on the dangers of environmental inequality and what they can do to use the government to their advantage. There also need to be changes with in governmental structure and American society, but that is a very nebulous issue.

If anyone is a sociology major, please weigh in on this topic.

I received the information in this blog from a very interesting scholarly article:

The Impact of Race on Environmental Quality: An Empirical and Theoretical Discussion

Raquel Pinderhughes

Sociological Perspectives, Vol. 39, No. 2, Environmental Conflict. (Summer, 1996), pp. 231-248.

Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0731-1214%28199622%2939%3A2%3C231%3ATIOROE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B