Assignment 4

West Oakland, California is the area affected by this environmental justice issue. “West Oakland experienced expansions during the two World Wars, as shipbuilding attracted residents from inside and outside the country, resulting in a diverse group of people living in the area. With the end of World War II, West Oakland suffered from severe job losses, and its economic decline continued through the 1980s. West Oakland today bears witness to its social and economic history. Its residents are 64% African Americans, 16% Latinos, and 9% Asian and Pacific Islanders. West Oakland also hosts numerous abandoned waste sites from its industrial past, contaminated with lead and vinyl chloride, among many other chemicals with multi-syllabic names, as well as a large port that attracts diesel truck traffic and polluting marine vessels. The leading causes of death in West Oakland during 1996 to 1998 were heart disease (27%) and cancer (22%), and respiratory illnesses like asthma are a big problem (Kang, Helen).”
The author suggests that the socioeconomic status along with the large ethnic minority population is the reason that the government is not acting in the best interest of the community. However, it is probably more likely that the socioeconomic status of the community has more of an effect on the governments’ inaction.
Those of lower socioeconomic status usually have less access to higher education. If the community is ignorant of the harmful effects of the environmental factors around it, then it is unlikely that they will petition for change. More highly educated and affluent communities are more likely to have access to information pertaining to their environment, and are more likely to have the resources to make changes within the community. The more affluent community would probably have more political influence, which is an idea outlined by David Konisky, who suggested that government behavior may be influenced by the political capacity of potentially affected populations. This idea is relevant because it takes a static characteristic, such as race, and removes it from the equation. Konisky believes that the government may be discriminating based on SES, not race. Low income communities have less political power because they lack the necessary capital, both educational and monetary. The fact that minorities are overrepresented in some low SES communities is more coincidental than an act of an oppressive, racist government. This is what Konisky found in his research, that there was a strong correlation between poverty and state enforcement, while racial compensation of a community (controlled for SES) did not seem to correlate with state enforcement.
In this article, a woman from the low SES area started a petition to solve an environmental problem, and she ended up winning her case. The woman saw an inequality, and stated that the current laws were not sufficient for dealing with the problem she was interested in. She created a petition, organized a campaign, and resolved the issue. This type of action may be atypical in a low SES community, but the article shows that the government will respond to the 'squeaky wheel'.

Link to article: http://lsnc.net/equity/2009/05/15/a-case-study-of-environmental-justice-work-in-west-oakland/