Question

1. define environmental racism.

2. One of the key themes behind the idea of environmental racism is the idea of what Rob Nixon calls “slow violence:” because the individual and public health effects of environmental damage are temporally dispersed, the violence of environmental racism is not immediately felt by victims, and instead extends over months, years, decades, and includes impacts generations. Environmental damages have slow-moving effects that complicate our typical legal and ethical understandings of responsibility, which focus on direct and immediate effects caused by an intentionally-taken action. Drawing on examples from Mittman’s 2017 article, explain how open-air nuclear testing at Maralinga is an example of the “slow violence” of environmental racism against Aboriginal peoples.

Answer 1

Environmental racism refers to a type of racism where communities of colour are left to bear the effects of the nature and environment due to goverment policies and practices. These communities are burdened with health hazards as they are forced to live in situations where they cant think of the basic requrements of life, even clean drinking water also. They are also forced to work in situations which are just non human and are related with various health hazards such as working in toxic waste in sewage works, working in power plants emitting harmful radiations without any safety measures given and more. That's the reason these communities of colour are more prone to deadly diseases which can cost their lives.

One reason why these people are forced to work and live in such conditions is that they earn very less. So they have no other option. But race is a more indicating factors due to which these peope are forced to do such works.

# Jan dirk mittman, in his article of 2017 throws light on the devastating effects of open air nuclear testing at Maralinga and how it detroyed the lives of aboriginal people. This incident can be easily taken to be as the example of " Slow violence" where the impact of the environmental damage is not felt by the people immediately but with a course of time the damages starts getting clear and the intensity of the damages too increase with the soan of time.

Mittman in his article how open air nuclear test devasted the lives of people in Maralinga. Mittman writes in his article that there was a time when Aborigines were considered flora and fauna. But all that changed when the liberal prime minister Robert Menzies allowed to test the nuclear bombs in these regions as according to them these traditional, open big lands were suitable for these type of testing. The goverment did'nt even once thought about the Aboriginal people before taking this big decision. Mittman in his article reflected that how people were affected from diarrhoea and skin rashes, to stillbirth to blindness. The soil was also so harmed that even the drinking water became so contaminated and the fruit trees were poisioned. This all affected the community people so badly. With the span of time the affects got more devastating as the new generations were getting affected by what happened in past.

Hence this is called as a example of " Slow violation" where the goverment didi'nt even once thought about the community in maralinga, and granted permission for open air nuclear testing. And how this all affected the community and there generations not immediately but with a span of time as a worst nightmare for the Aboriginal people.