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22 Legal Stud. F. 501 (1998)
Race, Poverty, and Environment

handle is hein.journals/lstf22 and id is 511 raw text is: RACE, POVERTY, AND ENVIRONMENT
MICHAEL K. DORSEY*
I. INTRODUCTION
The movement for environmental justice in the United States
represents a multi-racial, multi-issue response to the failure of the
mainstream, predominantly white environmental movement to
adequately address issues of social and economic justice. As early as
1972 Herbert Marcuse warned that divorcing equity and social justice
concerns from the environmental agenda would leave environmentalists
vulnerable to effective, if unprincipled attack.1 The quest for environ-
mental justice has emerged as a consequence of environmental racism.
Environmental racism has been described as:
Racial discrimination in environmental policy making and the
enforcement of regulations and laws, the deliberate targeting of people
of color communities for toxic and hazardous waste facilities, the
official sanctioning of the life threatening presence of poisons and
pollutants in our communities, and the history of excluding people of
color from the leadership of the environmental movement.2
Environmental racism also concerns the simultaneous and deliberate
targeting of white communities for beneficial goods-parks, pools and
recreation areas; and the promotion of white members through the
ranks of the environmental movement.
In response to environmental racism, minorities and people of color
have created an environmental justice movement to provoke, not just
something new or additional, but something broader and more ideologi-
cally complex than traditional, white-dominated environmentalism.
Advocates of environmental justice argue that social, political, economic
and environmental issues are inextricably bound together and must be
analyzed and understood as a complex whole. These advocates argue
that the strong social and economic justice orientation of the environ-
* Graduate Student, Department of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University.
1 Peter Marcuse, Conservation for Whom, in James Noel Smith (ed.), ENVIRONMENTAL
QUALITY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE IN URBAN AMERICA 17-36 (Washington, DC: Conservation
Foundation, 1972).
2 Benjamin Chavis, The Historical Significance and Challenges of the First National
People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, in PROCEEDINGS OF THE FIRST NATIONAL
PEOPLE OF COLOR ENVIRONMENTAL LEADERSHIP SUMMIT (Washington, DC: United Church
of Christ Commission for Racial Justice, 1991).

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