Speaker links race with environmental and health risks
Joe Trombello
News Writer
By Joe Trombello
News Writer
Kristin Shrader-Frechette, O'Neill Family professor of philosophy and concurrent professor in biological sciences, spoke Monday in the Snite Museum of Art about the ways in which ethnic minorities face the brunt of public health and environmental risks because they lack the understanding or the resources necessary to fight against the threats.
"The poor deserve equal opportunity regarding financial treatment; they also deserve equal opportunity in public health treatment," Shrader-Frechette said.
The author of more than 300 articles and 14 books, she said that more than 60 percent of blacks and 50 percent of Hispanics in America live near at least one uncontrolled toxic dump. She also said that 80 percent of minorities live in an area that is "flagrantly hazardous" to their health.
Shrader-Frechette began her talk by discussing a few works of art in the Snite whose artists falsely romanticized science and technology as ways of controlling nature. She also illustrated how other pieces idealized depictions of natural wildlife and indigenous people, glorifying man's power and control over nature.
"It is not too difficult to see how we got into a problem of environmental injustice; we idealize what humans do to people on it [the land] and [what we do] to the land itself," she said.
After discussing examples of activists in Latin America and Africa who were killed for their attempts to prevent large corporations such as Shell Oil from polluting their environments and harming their citizens, Shrader-Frechette discussed how similar issues of environmental injustice exist within the United States.
"Many people know about environmental injustice, but you don't [always] realize that some of these threats happen in the U.S.," she said.
She discussed some case studies that she and her students have worked on, analyzing environmental impact statements published by companies seeking to build hazardous sites and pointing out faulty scientific reasoning and ethical concerns. Shrader-Frechette and her students were successful in preventing a large multinational corporation from subjecting a poor black community in Louisiana to environmental and health hazards.
"You don't need to be brilliant to see these problems [in environmental impact statements], you just need to care," she said.
Shrader-Frechette concluded the lecture by explaining why every person, especially non-minorities, should be concerned about the public health and environmental risks that ethnic minorities face.
"It is not our charity to stop environmental injustice," she said. "It is our duty because we are complicit in their [ethnic minorities'] harm."
Her lecture was the 11th annual talk presented in the Snite Museum, which uses the lecture series to advance the idea that scholarly thinking can take place outside the classroom.
Each Snite lecture takes place in the art gallery most relevant to the lecture topic's time period. Shrader-Frechette spoke in the 20th century gallery and included her analysis of paintings from this and other time periods.
Contact Joe Trombello at jtrombel@nd.edu
All News Stories for Tuesday, November 19, 2002
