Intersections of disability justice, racial justice and environmental justice

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that environmental justice (EJ) scholarship, activism and policy that aims to ‘be intersectional’ by definition needs to include disability and ableism and, moreover, will benefit from specifically considering disability as a category of analysis. Incorporating intersectionality into EJ work means considering the implications of intersectional theory for collective liberation, for explanations of the sources and consequences of multiple systems of oppression and for theorizing connections among related justice struggles. This paper first takes each of these in turn, providing an explanation of what constitutes an intersectional approach. It then demonstrates how a disability justice approach further enriches ongoing work at the intersections of EJ and racial justice.

KEYWORDS:

• Intersectionality
• ableism
• racial capitalism
• lead poisoning

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Joni Seager, Jody Emel and Alison Kafer for making the development of this paper possible. The author also thanks three anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The ethico-onto-epistemology underpinning these paragraphs comes from Karen Barad (2007), a feminist physicist who resists myriad binaries (e.g. structural vs. post-structural) and describes material-discursive intra-actions. For the sake of simplicity, I use ‘interactions’ in this paper.

2. For an account of how uncritical attention to disability can distract from a materialist analysis of the root causes of preventable deaths such as Freddie Gray’s, see Erevelles (2016, 112–115). Sexism in particular also shaped Korryn Gaines’ life and death; little has been written on this, but see Jones (2016).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF Award No. 1447166) and by participation in ‘Environmental Justice: Global to Local Contexts’, the 2016–2017 Humanities Research Seminar at The Jeanne & Dan Valente Center for Arts & Sciences, Bentley University, funded with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Notes on contributors

Catherine Jampel

Catherine Jampel is a PhD candidate in Geography at Clark University.