Social Values and the Environment; Environmental Justice

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Dillon Searcy, Social Values and the Environment 465, Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots. 1993 “Environmental regulations have not uniformly benefited all segments of society” (Bullard, 15). Non-white races such as “African American, Latinos, Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans” must contend with environmental pollution from “byproducts of municipal landfills, incinerators, polluting industries, hazardous waste treatment, storage, and disposal facilities” (Bullard, 15). “How can environmental justice be incorporated into the campaign for environmental protection? What industrial changes would enable the United States to become a just and sustainable society? What community organizing strategies are effective against environmental racism?” Bullard writes that “the history of the United States has long been grounded in white racism” and was founded on the “principles of free land, free labor, and free men”(Bullard, 16). “Free Land” was taken from the Native Americans, ‘free labor” from enslaved Africans, and “free men” as the white settlers who claimed to own everything (Bullard, 16). From this perspective, the economy, politics, and ecological landscape are results of “institutionalized racism” (Bullard, 16). Forced into this society, non-whites are subject to cultural destruction, bureaucratic restrictions based on race, and a split labor market. While the environmental movement is finally making some progress, the process remains racially stratified. The white population preserves their hierarchical need for health as it relates to the environment. All levels of government (the EPA for example) have failed to protect communities of color from “the ravages of pollution and industrial encroachment” (Bullard, 17). America has been extremely influential on a global scale. The way America establishes sustainable

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