Environmental Racism

Environmental Racism in Los Angeles and its Formation The siting of a $500 million railyard project backed by BNSF Railroad Company, which recently won the approval from Los Angeles Harbor Commissioners and Los Angeles City Council, has been a highly debated issue in Long Beach, Los Angeles. According to a report from Pacific Swell, ‘The BNSF railway’s project would serve as a transfer point between the harbor complex and rail. Short-haul trucks would travel four miles up the freeway to move containers of cargo onto trans.’ (Molley Peterson, 2013) The siting is regarded by environmentalists as a malicious act towards minorities and until June 8th, three complaints about the siting of railyard has been filed by environmentalists. As attorney
A research by Boer, who uses both univariate and multivariate regression models, provides solid evidence for the existence of environmental racism in Los Angeles. Boer collects data from all eighty-two Los Angeles County hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal facilities(TSDF) sites listed by the California State Department and uses exposure of TSDF as a measurement of his study since TSDFs poses a potentially significant health hazard to nearby residents and TSDFs siting usually require an extensive government permission,. Boer first compared simple regression model with and without TSDFs and finds statistically different result caused by race. According to Boer, even control the variables such as income, industrial land use and manufacturing employment, race still correlates with the locations of TSDFs. He then uses a multivariate model which includes the same factor, by controlling both race and income level, he finds out that income has a complex relation to TSDF locations, as both high and low income neighborhoods are less correlated with TSDF locations which also testify that communities most likely to have TSDFs are industrial areas with a large concentration of working-class people of color. Boer’s research clearly proves minorities’ disproportionately exposure to hazardous environment. (Boer et al,
In the United States, upward mobility and social status are predicated on living apart from racial and economic groups considered inferior.’(Sharp and Wallock 1949:9) Although individual acts of resistance may be malicious, some may simply be due to concerns about depreciation of property value, resulting in the strengthen of the color line through de facto residential segregation. Nowadays, as a result of long-going white privilege in housing, blacks are exposed to hazardous environment due to historic restriction to mobility. Latinos are exposed to the same environment mainly because of their working class and immigration status since most Latino immigrants are blue collar labor with merely no economic advantage and even they are able to afford the price of houses in suburban areas they are often diverted from neighborhood free of industrial pollution (mainly white neighborhood) by real estate agents due to discrimination in housing market. What’s more, with the development of suburbs area, well-financed factory, which uses advance technology and has relatively low level of pollution, chose to move out of central Los Angeles, leaving the areas, which were mainly occupied by blacks and