All things being equal: The politics of environmental (in)-justice

In this investigation I explicate the degree to which class influences the allocation of organizational resources by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Urban League (NUL) to locally based environmental justice organizations in economically disadvantaged African American communities. Because policy issues are mediated through decision-making processes that are skewed by class, environmental crises in lower-income African American communities are ignored by national civil rights organizations (NCROs). This contributes to a perpetual cycle of political marginalization whereby lower-income African Americans are locked out of traditional political processes. Since these institutions are commingled with black political life, it is then only reasonable that we dissect the way in which policy issues are developed, addressed, and prioritized on "the" black public agenda. Thus, the NAACP and the NUL become sites of contestation over the redistribution of limited political resources within African American communities; a topic that remains understudied by Environmental Justice (EJ), Environmental Policy, and African American Politics scholars.; The questions that propel the inquiry in this dissertation project are the following: Were locally based environmental justice organizations marginalized by both mainstream environmental groups (MEGs) and NCROs? If so, how? Did the formation of the environmental justice movement influence mainstream environmental and civil rights groups to broaden their organizations platforms to include environmental justice? If so, has this translated to these national organizational entities extending their organizational resources to locally based environmental justice organizations?; The research strategy is varied, relying on case study, elite interviewing, content analysis, and participant observation techniques. Most of the case-specific data derives from oral interviews with environmental justice activists of the ReGenesis Revitalization Project (N=10) and government officials (Environmental Protection Agency, Region IV). The ReGenesis Revitalization Project is featured in this research project because it was established by lower-income African Americans in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and it is the only existing locally based environmental justice organization that developed a cleanup program for abandoned hazardous waste sites that is community-based in its decision-making power. This study examines the degree to which NCROs provide support to locally based environmental justice organizations. Content analysis was conducted on past publications (1968 to the present) of the NAACP's Crisis and the NUL's State of Black America in order to determine the degree of coverage concerning environmental quality in lower-income African American communities. These organization's national policy agendas were also analyzed to determine the degree to which environmental quality was prioritized.; In chapter 1 I employ Cathy Cohen's (1999) secondary marginalization typology to interrogate the unidimensional framework purported by environmental justice scholars. In chapter 2 I explore the historical trajectory MEGs in this country. I pay close attention to MEG's evolution into one of the most powerful interest groups involved in elite processes of environmental policy making. Additionally, I explicate the degree to which lower-income African Americans have been historically marginalized by these powerful environmental organizations. As we will discover, processes of marginalization significantly impact the way in which environmental policy is constructed in this country. In chapter 3 I examine the impact of class bias on the construction of national policy agenda setting for the NAACP and the NUL. In chapter 4 I describe how the Love Canal disaster led to the enactment of the Superfund Act (1980). Finally, in chapter 5 I present the evolution of a model community-based...