ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the environmental justice movement has illuminated "black" to "urban," form of racism while arguing that the movement has been limited by its focus on an overly-narrow conception of environmental racism. It suggests a new paradigm for viewing anti-urbanism as one of the most significant forms of contemporary racism—a form of racism that can most effectively be challenged by an environmental justice movement capable of offering a new vision for black America in the twenty-first century. The collapse of an urban policy in the United States has been furthered by a general sentiment of anti-urbanism that has come to pervade the American landscape. This anti-urbanism has provided the ideological cover needed to justify and expand the assault on the cities. An expansive vision of environmental justice for the new millennium could encompass the combined force of the feminist, Civil Rights, and the environmental justice movements.
