{"id":113,"date":"2011-10-20T15:02:24","date_gmt":"2011-10-20T19:02:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2011\/10\/20\/bullard-health-equality-is-key-component-of-environmental-justice\/"},"modified":"2022-11-08T13:39:03","modified_gmt":"2022-11-08T18:39:03","slug":"bullard-health-equality-is-key-component-of-environmental-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/bullard-health-equality-is-key-component-of-environmental-justice\/","title":{"rendered":"Bullard: health equality is key component of environmental justice"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>OCTOBER 20, 2011
\nby Dan Smith \u201913, Contributing Writer<\/p>\n

\u201cHow many of you consider yourself environmentalists?\u201d This was the first question asked by Robert D. Bullard in his hour-long talk Tuesday in a packed Johns Hall 101.<\/p>\n

A few uncertain hands were raised.\u00a0 And there were more than a few wry smiles.<\/p>\n

In response to the underwhelming crowd reaction, the man widely known as the \u201cfather of environmental justice\u201d went on to ask three simple questions:<\/p>\n

Do you drink water?<\/p>\n

Do you eat food?<\/p>\n

Do you breathe air?<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you answered yes to two out of those three questions,\u201d he said, \u201cthen you\u2019re an environmentalist.\u201d<\/p>\n

The statement launched the environmental sociologist\u2019s lively and engaging discussion about environmental justice, which calls for a healthy environment and equal protection under the law for all citizens. A fundamental underpinning of environmental justice, Bullard said, is \u201cgrowing smarter and healthier.\u201d<\/p>\n

He spoke of the environment\u2019s hand in everything we do\u2014it\u2019s \u201cwhere we live, where we work, where we play, where we learn and where we worship\u201d.<\/p>\n

He also touched on various cities that had taken steps to \u201cgrow smarter\u201d, and \u201cgrow greener\u201d, whether it was through their use of renewable energy sources or transportation systems that reduced air pollution.<\/p>\n

Bullard, the author of 15 books and Dean of the Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University, also explored chinks in the armor of the environmental movement. He spent close to twenty minutes discussing \u201cfood deserts\u201d, which describe the plight of areas of New Orleans East. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, he said, a part of city where 80,000 African-Americans resided was served by a single grocery store.<\/p>\n

He also explored the \u201cgeography of vulnerability\u201d, one that found an individual\u2019s health to be primarily based on his street address and zip code. Through these examples and many others, Bullard sought to illustrate the numerous faults in environmental policy, which he found to be most evident in the South.<\/p>\n

He cited environmental racism frequently in his analyses of these various issues, pointing out the institutionalized influence of ethnicity on the decision-making process that often gave rise to these environmental inequities, primarily below the Mason-Dixon Line.<\/p>\n

Bullard said that key to environmental justice was health.\u00a0 A former professor at UCLA, UC-Berkeley, UC-Riverside and Clarke Atlanta University, he said \u201chealth was the central theme\u201d of his books.<\/p>\n

The lecture was sponsored by the David E. Shi Center for Sustainability.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OCTOBER 20, 2011
\nby Dan Smith \u201913, Contributing Writer<\/p>\n

\u201cHow many of you consider yourself environmentalists?\u201d This was the first question asked by Robert D. Bullard in his hour-long talk Tuesday in a packed Johns Hall 101.<\/p>\n

A few uncertain hands were raised. And there were more than a few wry smiles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,17,37,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-centers-and-institutes","category-earth-environmental-and-sustainability-sciences","category-shi-institute-for-sustainable-communities"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}