Skip to main content
SWStudyWalks Search

Sociology / Unit 10   Soc 1770 short lesson, about 20 seconds

Environmental Racism

Captions available

The idea

Environmental racism is the disproportionate burdening of minority and low-income neighborhoods with hazards: toxic waste facilities, landfills, industrial pollution.

In practice

The 1987 UCC Commission for Racial Justice found race a stronger predictor than income of hazardous-waste-facility siting; Robert Bullard's later work extended that finding.

Where people slip

Environmental racism names a documented distributional pattern; it requires no individual siting decision be made with explicit racial intent.

Your place on the trail

Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.

Something wrong in this lesson? Flag it  ·  Sources for Sociology