Environmental Racism

I’m currently taking an environmental history class this semester that I have referenced before to how some of the material relates to race and ethnicity. I just read an article for this class that actually covered the topic of race and environmental history. The relation between race and the environment has recently become a more commonly studied subject than in previous years. The main reason I am referencing it though is because I found a lot of what the article covered to be very intriguing information that I was previously unaware of. The article discussed how Native Americans were removed from their homelands because they were seen to be unclean and to wild for the wilderness. National parks were created on the lands of the Native Americans for white tourists to be able to experience the wilderness without having to be threatened by the dangerous and negative Indians. The article also discussed the locations of toxic waste dumps, landfills, pollution, etc. and how they are all located in impoverished minority areas (Niagara Falls can be seen as a perfect example of this, being the location of a landfill and toxic waste dump). The article went into detail discussing these main ideas and that’s just the basics, but I thought it was an interesting article that gave a different look at environmental racism.

-Ryan Fleming blog post# 24