"A Minority Perspective is Limited": Environmental Privilege and Surface Water Hazards in an Impaired Estuary
Keywords:
environmental privilege, whiteness, racialization of space, GIS, hazards
Type:
Paper
Abstract:
Literature on environmental inequality has paid relatively little attention to the related but under-examined phenomenon of "environmental privilege." It is defined here as the taken-for-granted structures, practices, and ideologies that give a social group disproportionately high level of access to environmental benefits. This understanding builds upon critical examinations of white privilege, the racialization of space, and environmental inequality. The goal of this paper is to explore environmental privilege in a case: the unequal geographic proximity to surface water hazards in the environmentally impaired and politically contentious San Francisco Bay—Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta region of California. Using a multi-method research strategy, this study provides three general contributions towards understanding environmental privilege in this case. First, it examines the historical association between relatively cleaner environments and white space in the region. Second, it links this development to contemporary patterns of negative associations between proximity to surface water hazards and census tracts with relatively high levels of income, non-Hispanic whites, and college educated individuals while controlling for other tract attributes. Finally, it uses local statistical analysis to examine spaces in the region where environmental privilege is the highest and where survey research has found non-white racial groups may be disproportionately exposed to surface water hazards through subsistence fishing practices. Theoretical and practical insights from this study are reviewed in its conclusion.
Authors:
Raoul S. Lievanos, M.A., University of California, Davis
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