| Notes | 'Laura Pulido (2016) calls for EJ scholars to bring theories of racial capitalism\n\"In order to build my argument I first briefly demonstrate the limited gains of the EJ movement. I then consider how racial capitalism produces environmental racism by elaborating on three points. First, I emphasize the centrality of the production of social difference in creating value. Second, I review how the devaluation of nonwhite bodies has been incorporated into economic processes and advocate for extending such frameworks to include pollution. And lastly, I turn to the state. If environmental racism is indeed a function of racial capitalism, then the state immediately becomes problematic in new ways. This is crucial because in the US most activists and researchers are steeped in a liberal politics in which they work with the state. Instead, the state must become a site of opposition, as it sanctions racial violence. In order to move forward both as a movement and scholarly field, we must rethink environmental justice.\"\n\"ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM GAP\"\nHow EJ activists appeal to the state:\n1) thru lawsuits- but you must prove \"discriminatory intent\" followng Alexander v Sandoval in 2001\n2) Title IV complaints with the EPA -- only .3% upheld\n3) EO 12898\n4) regulatory enforcement -- cites evidence of discriminatory enforcement along racial lines\nRacial capitalism is being taken up increasingly in critical ehtnic studies\nWoods on capitalism as racial\n \n\"A focus on racial capitalism requires greater attention to the essential processes that shaped the modern world, such as colonization, primitive 526 Progress in Human Geography 41(4) accumulation, slavery, and imperialism. As McKittrick notes, ‘the geographic management of blackness, race, and racial difference (and thus nonblackness) hinges on a longstanding but unacknowledged plantation past’ (2011: 953). By insisting that we are still living with the legacy of these processes, racial capitalism requires that we place contemporary forms of racial inequality in a materialist, ideological and historical framework.\" (526-527)\nHOW THIS SHAPES MY RESEARCH QUESTIONS A: Historical shaping of space and racial inequality\n \n\"Just as uneven space is essential to the unfolding of capitalism (Harvey, 2001), human difference is essential to the production of differential value.\" (527)\n\"Instead, most of us examine racial outcomes without considering racial production. Analyzing racial production is not merely a theoretical exercise however. Rather, it informs how a problem is conceptualized, and thus shapes political strategy. Indeed, focusing on a particular racial/ethnic group, rather than racial capitalism, per se, may lead to improved conditions for some, while overlooking capitalism’s incessant need to actively produce difference somewhere.\" (528)\n \nB: looking at how capitalism produces social difference\n \nOPERATIONALIZING NONWHITE DEVALUATION: Pulido names land and labor, and extends analysis to pollution\n\"Once land was severed from native peoples and commodified, the question of access arose, which is deeply racialized. Numerous laws and practices reserved land ownership for whites. Indeed some groups, such as Asians, actually lost land they once owned\" (Ruiz, 2015; Curry, 1921). -- SIGNAL HILL\n\"Differential value is also produced and extracted via racialized labor systems – black chattel slavery being one of the most profound examples....Racialized economic policy has amplified these effects, as seen in the 1935 National Labor Relations Act’s limited protections for occupations dominated by African American, Mexican, and Asian workers. More recently, Gilmore (2007) has shown how the problem of surplus labor, which is disproportionately nonwhite, has been ‘solved’ by the rise of the prison industrial complex\" (52*)\n \n \n2. How pollution operationalizes the devaluation of nonwhite bodies\nIndustry and manufacturing require sinks – places where pollution can be deposited. Sinks typically are land, air, or water, but racially devalued bodies can also function as ‘sinks’. Taking this a step further, Moore (2015) has argued that capitalism is a way of organizing nature. Specifically, capitalism functions by restructuring nature. And since humans are nature, we must recognize that capitalism is reproducing itself by restructuring humans on a cellular level. This has nothing to do with malicious intent (Pulido, 2000)\n \n3. Environmental racism as state-sanctioned racial violence\n\"Indeed, the state is deeplyinvested in not solving the environmental racism gap because it would be too costly and disruptive to industry, the larger political system, and the state itself. Instead, the state has developed numerous initiatives in which it goes through the motions, or, ‘performs’ regulatory activity, especially participation (London, Sze, and Lievanos, 2008; Kohl, 2015), without producing meaningful change.\"\n\"The fact that it is disproportionately people of color who are bearing the burden of industrial pollution enables industry to continue despite a mounting death toll. Ma´rquez calls this devaluation of people of color a ‘racial state of expendability’, which he describes as ‘[a] fundamental and existential life devaluation, a perpetual susceptibility to obliteration with legal impunity’ (2013: 44)\"\n\"When we put together these two facts – the devaluation of people of color, plus capital acting with legal impunity – environmental racism must be understood as state-sanctioned racial violence.\" (529-530)\nCOMPARE: the 710 freeway expansion (devaluation of people of color) and capital acting with legal impunity (Tesoro expansion)\nRole of environmental monitoring in these processes??\n\"For researchers, our task is not only to develop a research agenda that recognizes the degree to which environmental racism is a function of racial capitalism, but one that is also linked to the needs of vulnerable communities. Environmental racism will not be solved by a research agenda that reaffirms the boundaries and frameworks established by the Environmental Protection Agency. Indeed, we should help expose the fraudulent nature of the state, how it has sought to co-opt EJ communities, its support of racial capitalism and its willingness to forsake poisoned communities.\" (530)\n \n - kecox'
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