Environmental justice emerged from fusing civil rights racial critique with anti-toxics economic analysis

Evidence

It was when, in the 1980s, civil rights leaders began to embrace the anti-toxics movement’s economic analysis and the anti-toxics leaders embraced the civil rights activists’ racial critique that the conceptual fusion took place that helped create the Environmental Justice Movement. — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up, 141

Categorization

• DEFINE: Offers the cleanest statement of what distinguishes EJ: the marriage of a race analysis and a corporate-structure analysis.
• XREF: connects to: Both mainstream environmentalism and civil rights ignored poor communities of color — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental…, 112; Civil rights veterans supplied the structural lens on environmental racism — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental…, 130; Church-based civil rights leaders led early environmental justice protests — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental…, 126 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Environmental-justice demands originated partly as critique of mainstream environmental groups #corroborates (0.80) — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 550