What is Green Racism? Explaining Green Racism Through American Environmentalism

• In Event: 2341 - Environment, Oppressions, and Justice I

Abstract

Green racism is racism that occurs via the ideologies and material practices surrounding environmental protection, conservation, management, remediation, and advocacy. It is the way environmental degradation is attributed to poor marginalized populations based on socially constituted biases. This article seeks to provide an explanation of green racism as a theoretical concept through an articulation of the development of environmentalism in the United States and its global implications. The article distinguishes green racism from environmental racism before unpacking how historical memory of environmentalism in the United States is tainted by green racism. I argue that green racism informs the way environmental concerns are addressed in that it erases environmental activism by people of color in favor of forms of activism that can easily be situated in a causal narrative where solutions to socio-environmental problems are found in education and policy rather than changes in social relations.

Author

• Samantha K. Fox, Michigan State University