Hist 197: Environmental Justice in California

Source: Masri, Shahir, Alana LeBrón, Michael Logue, Enrique Valencia, Abel Ruiz, Abigail Reyes, Jean M. Lawrence, and Jun Wu. “Social and Spatial Distribution of Soil Lead Concentrations in the City of Santa Ana, California: Implications for Health Inequities.” Science of The Total Environment 743 (November 15, 2020): 140764. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.140764.

This course connects current environmental justice issues in California to the history of capitalism and racism. It relates past and present forms of environmental harm to the evolution of corporate power, the uneven expansion of suburban development, and the incidence of racism in policymaking. It will also address how environmental struggles intersect with labor exploitation.

As a class, we will discuss several environmental-justice issues, such as soil contamination, access to water, and excessive heat. We will focus our analysis, however, on the history of lead contamination, its multiple sources, and the impact that it had in Southern California communities. We will discuss the history of lead as a commodity, how it was manufactured, distributed, and advertised. We will also talk about the many structural factors that shaped lead poisoning as an issue, including redlining and segregation, the rise of fossil-fuel cultures, and divestment in public health. 

As a student, you will gain conceptual and practical skills to frame environmental struggles as part of broader structures of exploitation and power. You will also have the opportunity to develop multimedia projects in collaboration with Orange County Environmental Justice (a non-governmental organization currently working on lead contamination and bioremediation in Southern California).

Dive in!

This audio series deals directly with our main case study, so if you are curious about the class, tune in using Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc.

Topics and Readings

REQUIRED TEXTS: All readings will be available online (either on canvas or through online library access)

Week 1 

Introduction

Lead in Southern California today.

  • Rubio, Juan Manuel. “Air, Metal, and Earth,” 2021. Episode one. http://historianrubio.com/airmetalandearth/. (Podcast)
  • Arablouei, Ramtin, Rund Abdelfatah, Julie Caine, Lawrence Wu, Laine Kaplan-Levenson, Schuyler Swenson, Kumari Devarajan, Victor Yvellez, and Mansee Khurana. “There Are No Utopias.” NPR, February 24, 2022, sec. Throughline. https://www.npr.org/2022/02/20/1082030426/there-are-no-utopias. (Podcast) 

Week 2 

Extraction

Lead mining and the integration of the industry.

Week 3

Commodities

Lead household products and marketing.

Week 4

Housing and Urban Development

Lead-paint, segregation, and housing justice. 

  • Housing Segregation and Redlining in America: A Short History, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5FBJyqfoLM. (Video) 
  • NPR. “‘The Color Of Law’ Details How U.S. Housing Policies Created Segregation,” May 17, 2017, sec. Author Interviews. https://www.npr.org/2017/05/17/528822128/the-color-of-law-details-how-u-s-h ousing-policies-created-segregation. (Interview) 

Supplemental material: 

Week 5 

Resistance

Social movements, civil rights, and lead poisoning.  

Week 6 

Infrastructure and Petrocultures

Post-war suburban development and the use of leaded gasoline. 

Week 7

Science 

Corporate science on lead research. 

  • Nielsen, Carrie. “Getting the Lead Out.” In Unleaded: How Changing Our Gasoline Changed Everything. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2021.

Week 8

Public Health

Lead prevention and the neoliberal reforms in public health of the 1980s 

  • Rosner, David, and Gerald Markowitz. “The Contentious Meaning of Low-Level Exposures.” In Lead Wars: The Politics of Science and the Fate of America’s Children. University of California Press, 2014. https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520283930/lead-wars.

Week 9

Environmental Justice in California

Struggles around lead today. 

Week 10

Student Presentations

  • (Final multimedia project due)
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