By now most of us have heard of “environmental racism,” which involves actions like putting toxic facilities in minority neighborhoods. The opposite, “environmental privilege” is explored in a book due out this month, The Slums of Aspen, Immigrants vs. the Environment in America’s Eden by David Pellow and Lisa Sun-Hee Park, both professors of sociology at the University of Minnesota.
The victims of environmental racism, they say, are “the great majority of immigrants and people of color in the valley” who are “there to work and make a living so that the wealthy of the world can play, relax, unwind, and enjoy nature, unsullied by hordes of brown folks who remain off the social radar but always be available for a good housecleaning, a hot meal, condo construction, or a landscaping touch-up.”
On the other side is “environmental privilege” which “results from the exercise of economic, political, and cultural power that some groups enjoy, which enables them exclusive access to coveted environmental amenities such as forests, parks, mountains, rivers, coastal property, open lands, and elite neighborhoods.”
That strikes me as a stretch. I’m as “economically challenged” as most freelance writers and I live in what has, in the past 20 years, become a resort town increasingly attractive to People of Money. But the forests, parks, mountains, rivers and open lands hereabouts seem as accessible as ever. I haven’t noticed anything exclusive about them. We don’t have “coastal property” in the Rocky Mountains, and “elite neighborhoods,” no matter where they sit, have always been defined by “exclusive access.”
It also seems odd to call Aspen “America’s Eden.” It may be beautiful, but it’s certainly not a haven of innocence like the biblical garden.
The upcoming book has already inspired a long and interesting essay/review on the Aspen Journalism web site, and doubtless you’ll be hearing more about it after it appears in bookstores.
Essays in the Range blog are not written by High Country News. The authors are solely responsible for the content.
Ed Quillen is a freelance writer in Salida, Colo.
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