Week 4: Property, Privilege, and Envi'al Racism

(On Harris' "Whiteness as Property"
and Pulido's "Rethinking Environmental Racism: White Privilege and Urban Development in Southern California")

Both Harris and Pulido focus on racism rooted in what they refer to as 'whiteness as property' and 'white privilege,' respectively. These concepts are alternative ideas that can replace racism, which is easily negated in today's society. Harris especially makes this point clear as she opens up her paper with her analysis of the study of racial inequality. She points out the study's literature lacks "substantive discussion of racism" or "rarely explicitly discussed" (12). This made me relate this week's readings with Week 3's readings, in which writer's argued that limited citizenship reflected racism. While reading the text and during in-class discussion, I kept thinking that a government of any state has the right and authority to make it difficult for one to acquire citizenship. Citizenship is definitely a privilege that should not be given out to anybody easily. My thought process ultimately concluded with the notion that it only becomes a problem when the government limits citizenship based on race, which is what the readings were maintaining. Similarly, Harris and Pulido are underlining the consequences of racism in the context of property and housing. It was interesting for me to note that the existence of racism is even questioned. The problematic nature of the ideology has definitely been revamped over the past centuries, but it is still part of our society. As one mentioned during our in-class discussion last week, it is becoming easier for people to deny the existence of racism, let alone inequality, and justify themselves for various reasons, including having Obama as the President of the United States. (This is a really long ramble before I actually talk about this week's readings)

Pulido's research is based on the environmental racism in Los Angeles, California. After developing and establishing her concepts, she reflects on the situation in the city of LA and its surrounding suburban areas. By doing so, she reaches the conclusion that "the emphasis on siting, intentionality and scale have contributed to conceptualizing both racism and space as discrete objects, rather than as social relations" (33). Such emphasis on those three things result in "erroneous understanding of urban dynamics," racism "reduced to an aberration," and production of "a narrow conception of racism" (18-9). In one of Professor Brenner's lectures on Introduction to Metropolitan Studies, we discussed the process of suburbanization and decentralization in reference to Engel's "The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844," which accounted for the situation in Manchester. This gave insight to what Pulido called "instances of white privilege [...that] have contributed to contemporary patterns of environmental racism" (12). Reading Pulido allowed me to connect more dots and put ideas together.

On the other hand, Harris had a more thorough and general argument. She went beyond the production of space, to property. After a brief (but relatively long) overview of the construction and historical background of 'whiteness as property,' she explains the current situation with her focus on affirmative action. As Schein has pointed out in his text that was part of Week 2's readings, the legacy of racial housing and ownership continues today as "real power and wealth never has been accessible to more than a narrowly defined ruling elite" (1758). Affirmative action doctrine was established with the intention to amend this problem, but Harris introduces the doctrine as nurturing the idea of whiteness as property (1766). She spends the rest of her paper writing about the consequences and course of development of affirmative action. I look forward to focusing and discussing about affirmative action during class.