The new book Clean and White offers a history of environmental racism in the U.S., focusing on constructions of race and hygiene. In the wake of the civil war as the nation encountered emancipation, mass immigration and the growth of an urbanized society, Americans began to conflate the ideas of race and waste.
Carl Zimring draws on historical evidence from statesmen, scholars, sanitarians, novelists, activists, advertisements and the U.S. census of population to reveal changing constructions of environmental racism. Carl Zimring is associate professor of sustainability studies in the department of social science and cultural studies at the Pratt Institute.
Originally aired in February 2016.
