Cameron Diaz & Kerry Washington on Environmental Racism

by Leigh Graham · 2009-06-15 12:00:00 UTC
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A minor but daily reminder for me about the inextricable link between race/ethnicity and poverty is that in my Google reader, the blogs I read that focus on race consistently address issues of poverty, compared to my general political blogs, mostly written by white activists, which rarely bring up the topic.

Last week, Racialicious compares environmental activist Cameron Diaz's avoidance of issues of environmental racism and environmental justice with actress Kerry Washington's recognition of the issue.  Diaz returns to her hometown of Long Beach, CA to rally residents around environmental action.  From what I understand, Long Beach is a town long polluted by refineries and its port, and its low-income, communities of color are living directly in harm's way by the siting of these toxic facilities.  This locating of toxic and dangerous entities in low-income, often minority communities that its earned its own moniker - environmental racism.  Latoya Peterson at Racialicious shows how Diaz totally sidesteps this corporate- and government-driven pollution in her urging residents to change their lifestyle habits to improve the environment.

Washington, in contrast, in a video included here, urges environmental activists to expand their notions of "community" and recognize that their pollution-free neighborhoods necessarily mean that pollution exists somewhere else, perhaps just across "the tracks" from where they live.  This is a compelling frame to broaden activists'  mindsets in fighting climate change, etc.  A sustained critique of the enviromental movement is its classist and racist assumptions.  It's refreshing to see  Washington's efforts to change that.  Let's hope her words reach Diaz, or that she garners as big a platform as Diaz.

For those of you who are environmental activists, how do you address the disproportionate exposure to environmental toxins that low-income and communities of color face?

Leigh Graham
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