The question of environmental racism has been widely debated in environmental humanities, with scholars such as Angela Hume and Stephanie Latty arguing there’s a systematic inequality of appropriate resources distributed among minority communities which is unjust. However, these works have not adequately addressed the issue of physically lacking infrastructure in a response to Rankine’s Citizen. Moreover, pollution and lack of appropriate monitoring and planning in minority communities has a detrimental effect. My paper will address the issue of environmental racism with special attention to community infrastructure and resources as well as metaphorical environmental racism. In my project, I will examine Citizen and Claudia Rankine’s interview in order to show how her poetry responding to racism in America, opens up the idea to a systematic hegemonic form of environmental injustice. I argue through Rankine’s texts, we discover a lack of resources and environmental disadvantages that create obstacles for minorities which white America needs to address. By closely examining specific examples of degradation in minority communities, this project sheds new light on the neglected issue of social injustice induced by systemic white privilege.
Hume, Angela. “Toward an Antiracist Ecopoetics: Waste and Wasting in the Poetry of Claudia Rankine.” Contemporary Literature, vol. 57 no. 1, 2016, p. 79-110. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/article/619448.
This literature by Angela Hume is a direct response to Claudia Rankine’s Citizen. In it, she makes a direct stance how ecopoetics serves as a way to express environmental factors that negatively affect minority communities. She often refers to the phrase “ wasting of life” as a way to describe the turmoil minorities have to face on a regular basis. She uses Hurricane Katrina as a prime example from Citizen how the government didn’t properly plan for majority black areas. Even more, this area was frequently exposed to petrochemicals from nearby factories. She makes the notion that environmental injustices are influenced by corrupted politics. To be black is to be a person that will be affected by your environment and poetry allows us to understand this.
Hudson, Jenise, et al. “Interview with Claudia Rankine.” CLA Journal, vol. 60, no. 1, 2016, pp. 10–14. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/44325513. Accessed 12 Mar. 2020.
This literature is an interview with Claudia Rankine talking about her book Citizen. She recognizes that blacks face microaggressions on a daily basis and aren’t capable of grieving it all. Even though blacks don’t grieve, it is important not to stay quiet. By witnessing racism and being quiet about it, the nature of racism continues to flourish. Rankine explains that this book provides people with situations where it is important to speak out. She also discusses the concept of John Henrynism where a group of people have to work twice as hard for something but it ultimately works them to death. The notion of “putting things away” in order to not be seen as radical or proving your being.
Stephanie Latty, et al. “Not Enough Human: At the Scenes of Indigenous and Black Dispossession.” Critical Ethnic Studies, vol. 2, no. 2, 2016, pp. 129–158. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/jcritethnstud.2.2.0129. Accessed 12 Mar. 2020.
This literature by Stephanie Latty, Megan Scribe, Alena Peters, and Anthony Morgan describes the Flint Water crisis and how black and indigenous bodies are withheld from justice. With a year of community complaints of bad tap water, their concerns weren’t addressed promptly. By the time solutions started to be discussed, three schools were discovered to have deadly amounts of lead in their water system. In this Flint area, 40% of citizens live under the poverty line, and 60% of the citizens are black. The initial problem started when the water source was switched from Lake Huron to Flint River due to them being “unable to negotiate a financially attractive enough deal.” The Governor had a knowledge of the problem, but referred to it as aesthetics and deemed it not a big problem.
Laura Pulido (2000) Rethinking Environmental Racism: White Privilege and Urban Development in Southern California, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 90:1, 12-40,
This literature by Laura Polido discusses the relationship between environmental hazards and the demographic that faces them. She states how racism is plentiful in poetry, but it isn’t directly stated most of the time. Without a definity of racism, it allows room for speculation of what is and isn’t racist. Her focus area is Los Angeles and she describes how white privilege allows white America to live in cleaner environments while blacks are subjected to industrial cores. There is a clear divide between suburban life and industrial life.
McIntyre-Brewer, M. (2019). Environmental racism throughout the history of economic globalization. AUC Geographica, 54(1), 105-113.
This literature by The Lancet Planetary Health tackles the racial injustices within minority communities. The injustices vary between direct prejudices and institutional biases which causes the majority to live in green spaces while the minority live in polluted areas. This article highlights problems along Uniontown, Alabamama and Cancer Alley in Louisiana, both affected by a deal of pollution in minority communities. It goes on to say pollution isn’t the only factor, and minorities often live in floodplains or areas open to extreme weather. There is a counter argument to environmental racism and the claim of it just being poverty. The lines of poverty and minorities shouldn’t be separated since many minorities live in poverty inevitably.