November 14, 2015 - 17:08
Last Thursday, I attended University of Oregon Professor David J. Vasquez's public lecture, "Fueling the Agribusiness Engine: Helena Maria Viramontes's Under the Feet of Jesus and the Cross-Currents of U.S. Environmentalism". This talk was interesting to me because it highlighted discrimination in places that I didn't clearly see discrimination before. I was fascinated by the subtleties of environmental racism that are never at the forefront of our minds, such as how there is much less funding available to have clean air in low-income, minority neighborhoods. Vasquez intrduced the idea of ecocriticism, which imagines people of color as too busy/unconcerned with environmental harm. Ecocriticism believes that people of color are more concerned with survival/making a living than the enviroment. But this argument is under the false assumption that a person cannot simply do both -- care for the good of our environment, while also working and surviving. Vasquez even suggested that low-income people of color are actually better equipped to help the environment, because these people are used to the idea of conservation. People of color are also damaged much more directly by environmental harm. As Vasquez stated, 91 percent of Latina/os live in large metropolitan cities where exposure to air pollution is exponentially higher than comparable Anglo communities. Also, Navajo teens in the Southwest experience rates of reproductive cancer 17 percent higher due to uranium exposure. I like talks and discussions where I am presented with information and ideas that are very new to me, because I feel like I'm truly expanding my learning experience and it feels fresh. I like to see the sides I am not seeing, and I really enjoyed the themes of Vasquez's lecture.