There’s Something in the Water

Summary, part 2

Colonialism and the Racialization of Space

“Environmental racism is violence — one of several forms of state-sanctioned racial violence perpetrated upon the lands, bodies, and minds of Indigenous and Black communities through decision-making processes and policies that have their roots in a legacy of colonial violence in Canada and other white settler nations” (p. 52).

To begin our discussion on the roots of environmental racism, we should look into the types of colonialism Waldron bases her arguments on colonialism and settler colonialism. 

Colonialism: Describes the conquest and colonization of Africa and Asia by the Europeans and as “characterized by uneven structural power between areas of a nation-state as well as unequal social relations, exploitation, and enslavement for the purposes of creating technological progress and improved infrastructure, among other factors” (p. 53).

Settler colonialism: “Describes contemporary forms of colonialism in British-descended ‘settler colonies’ such as Canada, the United States, and Australia, focusing specifically on the elimination of Indigenous peoples and their relationships from and with the land” (p. 53).

“Both forms of colonialism share a common feature: uneven power relations between the indigenous people and the settlers shaped by hierarchies of race, culture, gender, class, and the subordination of the less powerful group through domination and exploitation” (p. 53). 

The key difference here is that in colonial states, the colonizers go home. However, in ‘settler colonial’ states, the colonizers stay.

Colonial Structures

Within colonial states, we can see the persistence of the heteropatriarchy, or “a colonial construct and concept that defines both masculinity and femininity in narrow and limiting ways to maintain a binary distinction between male and female, dominant and subordinate” (AVP, 2021). The heteropatriarchy operates in tandem with racism as a driver of the settler-colonialist mindset. Though the heteropatriarchy denotes the power of white men, white women also play an essential role in upholding settler colonialism: “Although white men were responsible for the creation of slavery, white women helped foster racial hostility, encouraging hierarchical relations between the colonizers and the colonized” (p. 58).

So, how does this relate to the environment? The short answer is that most environmental issues that result from disproportionality can be linked back to colonialism. 

Environmental colonialism (EC) is an “ideological system of exploitation that operates with the consent and participation of the national elites” (p. 54). One example of EC that Waldron observed in Nova Scotia is the act of plundering, which is a common practice of control. Plundering is the historical process of colonization by extracting and exploiting resources and the destruction of life. 

Something important to note is that in the case of the Mi'Kmaq (and many other historical cases), the elites will promise rewards in exchange for putting into place a system of natural and mineral resource management. Therefore at its core, EC is when colonists exercise biopower over the colonial territory. This is compounded by a legal structure that allows for exploitation with the consent of the elites (note: that does not mean the Indigenous groups in the colonized territory) (p. 54).

Capitalism, Postcolonialism, and the Racialization of Space

Cases like the ones previously mentioned are still alive and well today under the guise of capitalism. “Colonialism is by its very nature capitalist because it dispossesses Indigenous peoples of their land and resources and subjugates their communities” (p. 60).

Racialization of Space

“Space can never be divorced from past and present-day processes and ideologies, even when those processes and ideologies are not apparent because they have become taken for granted within each socio-historical moment” (p. 71).

Environmental justice literature typically attributes nature (or space) as fixed, neutral, ahistorical, and physical, but Waldron argues that space is an embodiment of power that evolves with time. Waldron also asserts that “Differences such as race and gender are spatially organized in ways that create hierarchies and relations of domination and subordination among various groups within the home, the workplace, and the city” (p. 70).

There are two different types of produced space:

• Social (material) space – everyday spaces that are formed by citizens’ lived experiences.

• Abstract (symbolic) space – imagined spaces by industry owners, planners, and other elite whose primary goal is economic gain.

Before we further discuss the relationship between racism, capitalism, and space, it's important to ground this information in the concept of race laid out by Waldron. “Race” came about around the same time as colonialism. We developed racial “others'' as a means of creating unequal relationships (it is worth noting that anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Negrophobia, and other European xenophobic traditions started much earlier). 

Capitalism thrives in a racist society because it is built on the distinction and categorization of groups of people and then exploiting those distinctive groups.

Today, we tie race to social inequalities (such as the characterization of Black neighborhoods as having high unemployment rates, income insecurity, etc.) instead of addressing conflicts emerging from racial hierarchies that cause and uphold inequalities. With this in mind, Waldron introduces the idea of the racialization of space.

The racialization of space manifests in ways such as the expropriation of Indigenous lands, creating income-segregated neighborhoods, “neighborhood revitalization projects” (which are just forms of gentrification that work to push out long-term residents by bringing business and housing), and placement of polluting industries in racialized communities.

Moreover, state-sanctioned racial and gendered violence such as labor market inequalities, poverty, and over-policing is known as spatial violence. There are ample cases of spatial violence in Nova Scotia, which we can see extending into the material and symbolic space through the placement of environmentally hazardous activities.

Waldron cautiously questions causation and asks if these activities were purposefully placed in racialized communities or if race and economic status had no bearing on the decisions. Instead, the disproportionality is a result of other factors. These factors include white flight, land depreciation, depressed housing prices, and other social problems. However, Waldron does make the point that questions of causation can fail to consider the larger and more critical issues of racial differences and spatial organization.