Environmental sociologists have noted that environmental toxicity is most concentrated in communities that include a disproportionate proportion of poor, working class, and non-white people. The map below compares the locations of toxic release facilities (green) with the percentage of people of color in neighborhoods in and near Los Angeles (yellow = 0-40 percent people of color; red = 80-100 percent of color).  The overlap is striking.

Hat tip to Jose at Thick Culture.

Also in race and the environment, check out our post on the anti-immigrant/pro-environment movement, our post on lead poisoning and poor children, and our post on the use of American Indians as environment mascots.

NEW! Katherine O. sent us a link to a Canadian study showing how poverty and pollutants overlap in the city of Toronto. A map of air pollutants released from pollutant inventory facilities in Toronto in 2005, in kilograms:

The green dots show where releasing facilities that must take part in the inventory are located; not surprisingly, there are more pollutants in areas with facilities. Of course, the siting of polluting facilities is often fraught with class and race issues, as we saw above.

There are three different measures of air pollution in the report, so you might check the others out too–this one is apparently conservative. While we can see here where there are higher levels of air pollutants, I couldn’t find in the report (which, granted, I didn’t read word-for-word) an absolute level above which pollution is considered harmful to human health, so this graph could be more helpful there.

Poverty rates in Toronto Census tracts, from 2001:

From lightest to darkest, the ranges are 0.1 to 4.4%, 4.5 to 12.0%, 12.1 to 21.3%, and 21.4 to 72.8%. The overall Canadian poverty rate at the time was 11.8%.

Finally, neighborhoods defined as high in both poverty and pollutants (in 2005):

Again, there are other maps showing overlaps of poverty and pollution when pollution is measured somewhat differently–I chose a more conservative one.

Katherine says,

I would add that these areas are also ones with a high proportion of recent immigrants and racialized individuals/families, although this is not shown.

Ryan sent in a story about the video game Border Patrol, in which you try to keep three types of Mexicans from crossing the border: drug dealers, Mexican nationalists, and “breeders,” who are of course pregnant women on their way to the welfare office:

According to Kotaku,  a city representative in Georgia emailed it to colleagues with the following note:

THIS IS WAY TOO MUCH FUN!!!!!!!!!!!! Makes you feel better anyway, I did my part today, I kept a few from coming over!!! GET READY —- THEY ARE FAAAST! ! !

Classy.

And the Star of David on the American flag is a nice touch.

NOTE: A number of commenters have made various suggestions about what the Star of David might mean–support for Israel, a conflation of Jewish and Christian values as “American,” etc. I don’t know for sure, but my best guess is that it’s an added little bit of racism. If a few of my relatives are any indication, anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic sentiments often seem to go well together. One of my relatives who is virulently anti-immigrant also once gave my mom a video to watch and when she turned it on she realized it was this anti-Semitic thing about how Jews are trying to institute a New World Order. So I tend to think it’s supposed to indicate, as one commenter said, that the U.S. has been weakened and taken over by ineffectual liberalized Jews who are letting all the immigrants in as part of their master plan to….well, I don’t really know what the master plan is. I will see if I can find out when I visit my family members and let you know so we can all prepare. Or, for our Jewish readers, take part, I guess. Oh, wait, duh. Our Jewish readers already know. I forgot. One of my long-lost relatives from Arkansas explained to my mom how Jews communicate through all the symbols on packaging (you know, like TM, (R), and so on) to spread instructions for…well, again, since I don’t know the Mysterious Master Plan, I don’t know what the instructions are about. My poor mother has asked me on multiple occasions why people seem to think she’d want to hear bad things about Jewish people. My mother has her faults, but anti-Semitism isn’t one of them, so I’m going to have to chalk it up to the bad luck of being related to a lot of crazy racist people.

Anyway, that was my rambling way of saying I don’t think the Star of David on the flag is a pro-Israel thing.

NEW! (Oct. ’09) Katie J. sent us a link to the video game El Emigrante, in which you (in sombrero) ride a bike and try to avoid the police after you jump the border wall:

In this ad, the National Organization for Marriage appears to be trying to capitalize on the idea that people of color do not support gay marriage.  Wait till the end for the direct appeal:

Found at Feminocracy.

These screenshots of the anti-gay marriage, Californian “Yes on 8” website also appeal to a multicultural (if segregated) constituency.  See also this post challenging the idea that Black people and gay people are always at odds or even, of course, categorically different groups.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

The documentary, Hearts Suspended, points to one way that immigration policy disadvantages women.  When a non-U.S. citizen is granted the permission to live and work in the U.S., their spouses are often given permission to accompany their spouse, but not to work.  These spouses, wives more often than husbands, find themselves completely dependent on their husbands.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/Nj34k6fLpf4[/youtube]

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

I recently posted about how the economic downturn isn’t affecting all of us equally.  We can say the same for the rash of home foreclosures.  Some people, of course, are losing their homes and other’s aren’t.  But, in addition to that, some people are seeing the value of their homes go down more than others due to the housing crisis.  For example, if you don’t lose your house, but lots of other people in your neighborhood do, the value of your house will fall moreso than the values of homes in neighborhoods with little to no foreclosure.  Photographer Camilo Jose Vergara draws our attention to yet another unequal casualty of the housing crisis: owners of duplexes who are, disproportionately, working class and urban. 

How are owners of duplexes uniquely affected by foreclosure?  First, if the other half of your duplex is abandoned or under foreclosure, your half is significantly devalued.  And, second, as Vergara writes:

Those living in the occupied home often have their lives made more difficult by what happens on the other side of a shared wall…  people throw trash in the front and back yards of the vacant unit, causing foul smells and attracting rats. Physical problems in the empty shell cause accelerated decay in the occupied house. Water may be left running in the unoccupied unit, causing moisture to migrate next door. In cold weather, pipes burst. Joists rot and collapse, tearing bricks out of the shared wall. And if the empty dwelling is not properly sealed, prostitutes and drug addicts may break in and start fires.

The images:

Via the Daily Dish.

Chris S. sent in a link to a post at Korea Beat about a town in South Korea that now has parking spots designated for women only. My first thought was that maybe they were for pregnant women–when I lived in Utah I’d sometimes see parking spots that were reserved for expectant mothers. But no. These are just for women in general. Here’s a photo:

Part of the English translation of the original article, from Korea Beat:

The “pink lines”, painted pink, are 2.5 meters wide rather than the standard 2.3, offering aid to women drivers unskilled at parking.

This in a city chosen by a South Korean official as “the first woman-friendly city.”

I wonder if there’s any evidence that female drivers in South Korea are involved in more accidents or have a harder time parking than men. What, exactly, led to this? I don’t know a ton about South Korean culture; for those of you who do, is there a good reason we’d expect women to be less skilled at driving/parking than men? Are women generally discouraged from driving or something? Insights will be greatly appreciated.

NEW! (July ’10): Majd Al-Shihabi sent us a photo of similar parking spaces in Croatia. They are next to the parking spaces for those with disabilities and are about 50% wider than standard spaces:

Erin S. sent in this ad suggesting that the quickest way to rekindling a romance is to take an epic vacation. 

Text:

Drift together rather than apart.  Their quest led them here.

Whether it is dinner at the world’s most romantic table or strolling the cobblestone streets of the world’s oldest cities, the perfect setting begins with The Leading Hotels of the World.

According to the ad, a strong relationship is built on the expensive and exceptional moments in a marriage.  Data on marital satisfaction, however, suggests that it is the daily, mundane tasks that make or break a marriage (who does the dishes, who puts the kids to bed, whether the bills get paid on time, and so on). 

Arlie Hochschild’s The Second Shift is the classic book on the topic.

Toban B. wrote in with an observation about Facebook avatars. The default avatar is “white” and appears to be male:

In contrast to the individual avatar, Facebook’s illustration of global connection uses orange avatars of both sexes:

“Evidently,” Toban writes, “the orange is supposed to be a sort of compromise skin colour.”

So when Facebook wants to represent global humanity, the avatars are orange and of mixed sex; when Facebook is charged with representing an individual, the avatar is white and male.  This is not random or accidental.  Globally, as Facebook, ironically, reminds us, people are not “white.”  Representing people in this way centers men, Western countries, and whiteness (because there are non-white people in Western countries, too) and marginalizes women, non-Western countries, and non-whites (though one might argue that at least ALL of the avatars aren’t white and male).

UPDATE: I write this update in August of 2010.  Since then it appears that Facebook has added a generic female avatar.  This one was sent in by Amber F. (it’s her mom, Ginger’s, profile):

See our other posts on how whiteness and maleness are the characteristics we attribute to “person,” unless there are reasons to do otherwise, here, here, and here.