Laura Pulido, "Environmental Deregulation, Spectacular Racism and White Nationalism in the Trump Era"
In this talk I share research which compares the environmental and racist agendas of the first year of the Trump administration. We found that the racist agenda unfolded in a far more chaotic and “noisy” manner, including relatively few policy actions, in comparison to the environmental agenda. The push for environmental deregulation was extremely well-orchestrated on multiple levels and consisted of far more policy actions rather than rhetoric. The findings indicate the multiple purposes of spectacular racism: Not only does it nurture a white-nationalist base but it also serves to obscure profound regulatory changes.
Laura Pulido is Professor of Ethnic Studies and Geography at the University of Oregon where she studies race, environmental justice, critical human geography and popular education. She is the author of numerous books, including Environmentalism and Economic Justice; Black, Brown, Yellow and Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles, as well as A People’s Guide to Los Angeles (with Laura Barraclough and Wendy Cheng). Her current research focuses on cultural memory, landscape and the erasure of white supremacy.