Race-oriented environmental scholars (Pellow 2016; Pulido 2016) have recently called for more research to examine how the state’s mediation of processes of environmental racism contributes to local and global environmental problems. This paper responds to this call by comparing and contrasting the racial state (Omi and Winant 1987), a foundational concept in the sociology of race, with the environmental state (Mol and Spaargaren 2002; Schaniberg, Pellow, and Weinberg 2002), a dominant framework in environmental sociology. While the environmental state’s two main theories – ecological modernization and treadmill of production – have been useful for investigating environmental problems and policy, they tend to obscure how race and racism shape environmental change. In contrast, the racial state, with its emphasis on understanding how and why the state enshrines racial inequalities across society, offers an ideal framework for understanding the mechanisms and logics through which race and racism impede environmentalism.
This paper is comprised of three major sections. In the first section, I review the debate on the environmental state, with an orientation toward showing how ecological modernization’s optimistic vision and treadmill of production’s pessimistic perspective overlook the influence of race on the state, markets, and the environment. This section will show that race is not a peripheral feature of environmental governance, but rather is central for how the state and market determine the people and places that bear toxic burdens. The second section examines how the racial state sustains racial disparities, with the objective of illustrating the state’s central role in creating and operationalizing racialized logics in economic and environmental activities. I argue that racial formation and racial projects are relational processes in which white communities enjoy environmental privileges, such as clean and safe amenities, at the expense of racial minority communities who disproportionately endure toxic conditions. In the third section, I present three examples to show the anti-environmentalist dimensions of the race discrimination system in the United States. These examples reveal: 1) how systemic racism has long impeded the creation of public goods, 2) the racialized patterns in hazardous and toxic siting, and 3) the role that race plays in electoral politics and the election of anti-environmental politicians. Overall, this paper seeks to advance theory on the interaction between race and environment, while offering brief empirical examples to bolster claims.
