An Environmental History of the Albina District (1940-1975): The Prioritization of Green Over Black
| dc.contributor.author | Goldman, Alex | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2020-09-29T22:02:14Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2020-09-29T22:02:14Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2020 | |
| dc.description | 69 pages | |
| dc.description.abstract | This thesis situates decisions and projects carried out by Governor Tom McCall and Portland city officials within the broader context of the cities environmentally considerate ethos. I argue that environmental racism has been the most persistent and relentless form of racism that has affected the African American community in Portland. The allocation of pollution in Portland, following years of urban renewal and implications of the Willamette Greenway Plan, which sought to concentrate pollution so that the majority of the city could be beautified, was fundamentally guided by racialized stereotypes of the African American community in Portland. Racially restrictive housing measures throughout the 1940s, 1950s, which concentrated Portland’s entire African American community into one small area, Albina, allowed McCall to associate blight with race rather than infrastructural issues. In doing so, Albina was viewed as a necessary sacrifice for polluting industries, if the remainder of the city were to remain clean. The Columbia River Slough, bordering Albina, would ultimately become a toxic dumping ground for polluting industries. Citizens of Albina, as a result of decisions carried out by Portland’s city officials, were forced to live within a highly toxic environment. In this way, the environmental changes brought about by the Willamette Greenway Plan had a widely more negative effect on Portland’s African American community than the rest of the city’s residents. However, an important narrative, one that is often downplayed, is that African Americans living in Albina were active in their opposition to the urban renewal projects and the dumping of untreated waste, the combination of which resulted in an environment of toxicity. African Americans in Albina who were active within neighborhood environmental politics, although rarely considered environmentalists, were actually urban environmental pioneers in Portland. This thesis considers the differences between modes of environmentalism and culminates in questioning the cyclical nature of environmental racism. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1794/25751 | |
| dc.language.iso | en_US | |
| dc.publisher | University of Oregon | |
| dc.subject | Legal Studies | en_US |
| dc.subject | Oregon History | en_US |
| dc.subject | Environmental | en_US |
| dc.subject | Racism | en_US |
| dc.subject | Portland Oregon | en_US |
| dc.subject | Albina Oregon | en_US |
| dc.subject | Columbia River Slough | en_US |
| dc.subject | Tom McCall | en_US |
| dc.subject | Inside Out 201803-32546 | en_US |
| dc.title | An Environmental History of the Albina District (1940-1975): The Prioritization of Green Over Black | |
| dc.type | Thesis/Dissertation |