ABSTRACT
This chapter develops the concept of white privilege. It reviews how racism and space have been conceptualized in the literature and the geography of urban environmental racism. The chapter examines the historical processes and their racist underpinnings that have contributed to the environmental racism in Los Angeles. In any attempt to understand racism, scale is an important analytical tool in that it is both defined by racism and transcends it. Consider the various scales at which racism exists: the individual, the group, the institution, society, the global. White privilege is a form of racism that both underlies and is distinct from institutional and overt racism. Subsequent scholarship, however, has not only challenged the existence of environmental racism, but has produced an overly restrictive conception of racism. Due to 150 years of racism as well as recent social and economic shifts, southern California remains highly segregated, despite a reduction in overt forms of racism.
