TY - JOUR
T1 - Extending environmental justice research to religious minorities
AU - Al-Kohlani, Sumaia A.
AU - Campbell, Heather E.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors acknowledge research assistance from Nicholas Stowell, MAP, Jovana Morales Martinez, MAPP, and Shaikha A. Alnasri in collecting data on houses of worship; Shirley Thomas in collecting research articles; Kristoffer Wikstrom, PhD, who provided assistance on the literature review section; and Michael K. Tschudi, MSCS, MASGIS, who produced the maps from our data.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Policy Studies Organization
PY - 2022/1
Y1 - 2022/1
N2 - For more than 30 years, significant research in the United States has found that racial and ethnic minorities suffer disproportionately from nearness to environmental disamenities compared with white non-Hispanics and that these results persist even controlling for poverty and “which came first,” the minorities or the disamenities. The engrained discriminatory findings of this environmental justice (EJ) research have led some to argue that we observe “systemic racism,” built into our social systems in ways that may be difficult to perceive. Yet, within the history of the United States, racial and ethnic minorities are not the only groups that have been systematically discriminated against; various religious groups also have histories of discrimination. Here we consider whether, holding constant race and ethnicity, some religious groups may also suffer from “EJ syndrome.” Since the US Census does not collect data on religion, to measure the presence of some religious groups that may be discriminated against, we use an original dataset on the presence of Jewish, Muslim, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS, aka Mormon), and Roman Catholic houses of worship within California's Census tracts. Our results indicate that even controlling for race/ethnicity and income, the presence of Jewish or Muslim houses of worship in a California Census tract increases the likelihood of environmental burden as measured by the CalEnviroScreen 3.0 index of pollution and community vulnerability.
AB - For more than 30 years, significant research in the United States has found that racial and ethnic minorities suffer disproportionately from nearness to environmental disamenities compared with white non-Hispanics and that these results persist even controlling for poverty and “which came first,” the minorities or the disamenities. The engrained discriminatory findings of this environmental justice (EJ) research have led some to argue that we observe “systemic racism,” built into our social systems in ways that may be difficult to perceive. Yet, within the history of the United States, racial and ethnic minorities are not the only groups that have been systematically discriminated against; various religious groups also have histories of discrimination. Here we consider whether, holding constant race and ethnicity, some religious groups may also suffer from “EJ syndrome.” Since the US Census does not collect data on religion, to measure the presence of some religious groups that may be discriminated against, we use an original dataset on the presence of Jewish, Muslim, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS, aka Mormon), and Roman Catholic houses of worship within California's Census tracts. Our results indicate that even controlling for race/ethnicity and income, the presence of Jewish or Muslim houses of worship in a California Census tract increases the likelihood of environmental burden as measured by the CalEnviroScreen 3.0 index of pollution and community vulnerability.
KW - justicia ambiental
KW - minorías religiosas
KW - racismo sistémico
KW - 宗教少数派
KW - 环境正义
KW - 系统性种族主义
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U2 - 10.1111/ropr.12451
DO - 10.1111/ropr.12451
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85117275194
SN - 1541-132X
VL - 39
SP - 90
EP - 112
JO - Review of Policy Research
JF - Review of Policy Research
IS - 1
ER -