Discrimination and the Political Economy of Environmental Inequality

Over the last decade there has been a surge in academic and scientific inquiry into disparities in environmental hazards among diverse communities. Much of the evidence points to a general pattern of disproportionate exposures to toxics among communities of color and the poor, with racial differences often persisting across economic strata. Although results have implications for the politics of environmental decisionmaking, most of these analyses are limited to illustrating how inequities in exposures and health risks are spread across the landscape, while shedding little light on their origins or the reasons for their persistence. Previous attempts to theorize the causes of environmental inequality have focused on procedural justice in the regulatory arena, emphasizing civil rights jurisprudence and social theories on individual and institutional discrimination. Although these approaches offer insights into the epistemology of environmental inequality, they fail adequately to account for the political economy of discrimination relating to industrial location behavior and racialized labor markets. By integrating relevant social and legal theories with a spatialized economic critique, this paper formulates a more supple theory of environmental discrimination. How the political economy of place shapes distributions of people and pollution and ultimately gives rise to environmental inequality are revealed by exploring the following factors: historical patterns of industrial development and racialized labor markets; suburbanization and segregation; and economic restructuring. This multidisciplinary approach to theorizing the dynamic of environmental discrimination provides a new framework for future policymaking and community organizing to address environmental and economic justice. Implications of this broader framework for policy and politics are discussed in the conclusion.