Relieving the toxic burden? Race, hazardous wastes, and the politics of the environmental justice movement

The central question guiding this dissertation is under what circumstances, and how, do seemingly ‘powerless’ and/or disadvantaged communities respond politically to relieve their disadvantaged, or threatened status, and with what rates of relative success. To answer this question, I developed two original data sets concerning federally regulated hazardous waste and the community-level political action that often accompanies it. The Toxic Burden List is a comprehensive statewide data set composed from Environmental Protection Agency reports on the amount of toxic waste generated and received by every zip code in the state of California from 1989 to 1999. The Political Activity Data Set is a race-neutral compilation of newspaper content analysis of all the anti-toxic waste political activity reported by mainstream California print media from 1988 to 1999, capturing hence protest and other action in both majority minority and majority white communities.; The study uses simple descriptive statistics techniques, as well as linear regression analysis to argue that race is a stronger predictor of a community's toxic burden than poverty or education. It then tests three models of political participation—an SES model, a resource mobilization model, and a racial homogeneity model—using ordinary least squares logistic regression analysis to determine that racial homogeneity exerts an independent positive effect upon political activity, unlike the SES and resource model variables. However, the study finds that the increased activity of racially homogenous communities does not translate to better success rates than mixed communities.; Rather, with a few exceptions to the rule, the outcome of struggles appears to be largely a function not of community control, but of the nature and character of the target, i.e., whether or not the community action is aimed at an existing, or proposed hazardous waste facility. Existing facilities prove very difficult for a community to defeat, while community struggles against proposed facilities meet with considerably more success.