EQUITY, UNNATURAL MAN-MADE DISASTERS, AND RACE: WHY ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE MATTERS.

The author focuses on his experiences growing up in the racially segregated southern United States, and discusses how these experiences affected his thinking about race, the environment, social equity, and government responsibility. Particular attention is given to the author's career as an environmental sociologist and activist, as well as his thoughts on the environmental justice paradigm. He argues that the environmental justice paradigm provides a useful framework for examining and explaining the spatial relation between the health of marginalized populations and their built and natural environment, and the government's response to their issues. Article topics include his assumptions on what contributes to and produces unequal protection.