November 21, 2024 • 41 mins
We are talking about infrastructure apartheid. Infrastructure can play an important role in social inclusion and economic growth. However, when infrastructure is inadequate, it can lead to social exclusion, poverty, and poor health. The fact that some people in some places have more better, more resilient, more effective infrastructure than others is not an accident. Decisions are being made that keep people from enjoying the quality of infrastructure that would allow them to live healthy, whole lives, while others have an overabundance of high-quality systems and infrastructure. It’s not right.
So let’s talk about it on this episode of the Environmental Justice Lab.
Resources:
How infrastructure has historically promoted inequality - PBS News
‘Infrastructure apartheid’: Africatown’s fight against toxins, new toll bridge
Green Apartheid: Urban green infrastructure remains unequally distributed across income and race geographies in South Africa - Journal of Landscape and Urban Planning
Israel's Apartheid against Palestinians - Amnesty International
Connect with our Environmental Justice Lab community:
Instagram: @envjusticelab
YouTube: @envjusticelab
Email: theenvironmentaljusticelab@gmail.com
Don’t forget to subscribe and rate the podcast wherever you listen! Support our work by joining the Supporters Club: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-environmental-justice-lab--5583745/support
So let’s talk about it on this episode of the Environmental Justice Lab.
Resources:
How infrastructure has historically promoted inequality - PBS News
‘Infrastructure apartheid’: Africatown’s fight against toxins, new toll bridge
Green Apartheid: Urban green infrastructure remains unequally distributed across income and race geographies in South Africa - Journal of Landscape and Urban Planning
Israel's Apartheid against Palestinians - Amnesty International
Connect with our Environmental Justice Lab community:
Instagram: @envjusticelab
YouTube: @envjusticelab
Email: theenvironmentaljusticelab@gmail.com
Don’t forget to subscribe and rate the podcast wherever you listen! Support our work by joining the Supporters Club: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-environmental-justice-lab--5583745/support
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Environmental Justice Lab. I am your host,
doctor Leslie Joseph. Thank you so much for joining me.
And we are still talking about environmental apartheid. I don't
know if you've been keeping up with the episodes. If
you've been listening, I hope you have been. But we
have been going through different aspects of environmental apartheid, first
(00:24):
starting with climbing apartheid, moving to the last few episodes
on food apartheide, and now we are talking about infrastructure apartheid.
Infrastructure apartheid. It is something that is starting to gain
some momentum and some understanding, but I think it's important
to really highlight and just bring to the surface what
(00:48):
is really going on here when it comes to infrastructure
and how things are built, how resources are distributed, how
we as a society decide who gets what and what
access is made of available to which residents wherever they live.
And it all starts with infrastructure. It's the kind of
thing that everybody wants to talk about. All the politicians,
(01:11):
all of the business people, all of the corporation's industry
always talking about infrastructure. We need more infrastructure, better infrastructure,
more access to high quality infrastructure, and you know what,
I agree with them wholeheartedly. We need better infrastructure. Every
(01:34):
couple of years, the American Society of Civil Engineers releases
an infrastructure report card, and it's never good. It's never
something that you'd want to have for your report card
if you were in school. Lots of c's, lots of d's,
d minuses, maybe a couple of bees. But it's very
rare because everybody understands that we need better infrastructure. We
(01:59):
just needed. It needs to be improved, needs to be maintained,
and it needs to be accessible to everyone. But what
people don't mention is that there are very distinct, very
deliberate disparities in the infrastructure that is currently available. So
(02:22):
when people talk about the fact that we need better
infrastructure or that our grades are failing on the infrastructure front,
they would have you to believe that it's consistently bad
across the board, that it's consistently a problem everywhere you look,
and that we need to improve all of our infrastructure
(02:44):
everywhere in order to maximize what's possible. But as you
might know from the series we've been doing, there are
very specific, deliberate, intentional differences in the quality of infrastructure
thats available depending on who you are and where you live.
(03:05):
It's very clear certain residents have higher quality infrastructure and
certain residents don't. Even the way we talk about infrastructure,
you can tell the difference. Right, So you might live
on the quote unquote wrong side of the tracks, right,
(03:26):
the idea that this railroad track divides your community and
you can live on the good side or the bad side, right.
I mean, that's how we talk about it. We can
talk about whether or not you can actually get to
one part of town or the other. Is there access
to transportation, access to decent roads, a rail system, a
(03:50):
subway system, anything that can help you travel from one
place to another. You know, you might live on that
side of town that doesn't have a subway station, a
bus stop, a railway depot, nothing like that. And so
these differences are not coincidental. These differences are not an accident.
(04:16):
These are deliberate, systemic disparities as it relates to infrastructure,
and we are going to talk about it on this
episode today. So I'm glad you're here. Please stay tuned.
This is the Environmental Justice Lab. Welcome to the Environmental
(04:59):
Justice Lab. I am doctor Joseph, thank you for listening.
And today we are all about infrastructure and infrastructure. Apartheid,
that's what we're talking about. And before we get into
the discussion about apartheid and how it looks and how
it's manifesting itself, let's just talk a little bit about
infrastructure because we all need it, We all rely on it,
(05:23):
and we all depend on it for our well being,
for our ability to be productive citizens, to participate in society.
We need infrastructure. A lot of people think about infrastructure
only as a certain type of building or a certain
type of piece of equipment, but infrastructure is everything that
(05:44):
helps make a society function and operate. It's from the
buildings to the roads, to the bridges, to the water
and sewer systems, to the electrical grid, to internet broadband access,
to the ability to go to a park, to a library,
(06:04):
your schools. These are all elements of infrastructure that are
necessary for communities and for cities and states to thrive
and to be productive and to be recognized as places
where you want to live and raise a family. You
(06:26):
need infrastructure to do that. Right. I got this quote
and it's a very important quote because it really encapsulates
what infrastructure is and what it does. It says infrastructure
can play an important role in social inclusion and economic growth. However,
(06:48):
when it's inadequate, it can lead to social exclusion, poverty,
and poor health. And so that is how important infrastructure
is to any society. The first thing you do if
you want to build a city, to have a place
(07:08):
to live, have a community, is you have to put
in infrastructure. You have to put in place systems that
allow people to meet and greet one another, engage their services,
their skills, and use them to improve and uplift wherever
they are. It takes infrastructure to do that. And when
(07:29):
you have, like we have in our country and in
our world, infrastructure apartheid, you have a system where they're
different tiers depending on who you are and where you live,
that dictate the type and availability of infrastructure which would
allow you to have that community to be engaged socially
(07:54):
and economically and politically and academically and intellectual. You need
infrastructure to do that, and depending on where you live,
you might not have it, and hence the term infrastructure apartheid.
Now that term I didn't come up with it, so
don't it's not my term. The first time I heard
(08:16):
this term, it was in a lecture by doctor Maya
Caraskillo from the University of California, Berkeley. She is an
environmental engineering professor there. She gave an amazing talk about
infrastructure apartheid, and from that moment I said, Oh, this
(08:37):
is something that's been happening all over for a very
long time. And so she defines infrastructure apartheid this way.
She calls it the systemic dehumanization through material and social
entities that are observed, felt, and lived across racial, economic,
(09:03):
and geographic specialization. It's a long definition, but what she's
essentially saying is infrastructure apartheid is when you dehumanize certain
groups of people using material things, social entities, elements of
(09:27):
a society that you can feel, see and experience, and
you're dehumanizing along racial lines, economic lines, and geographic lines.
So it's not just that some people have it and
some people don't, but it's the reality that the people
(09:49):
who have it are specifically a certain type of people.
They're usually urban, they're usually wealthier, higher income, and they're
usual white. These are the people who have access to
the infrastructure and the high quality systems necessary to be
(10:10):
highly productive, highly engaged in their societies in their cities.
Whereas if your lower income, if your rural, black, brown,
different ethnic groups, you will experience your infrastructure differently, lower quality,
(10:34):
less availability, limited access, and that, as doctor Kreskill would say,
is a form of systemic dehumanization. It's not just that
you don't have what you need, that you're being treated
less than a human by not being provided that, because
it's something that's given and set up by the people
(10:56):
who make decisions and the people who are in power.
It is not situation where you just found yourself in
a place that happened to lack certain amenities in certain services.
You are being systemically dehumanized because of it, because people
can provide those services if they so choose. Your elected
(11:19):
officials can create avenues for you to have those services
if they so choose. But they chose otherwise. They said,
you know what, we're going to invest and spend our
time and money over there and not over here. And
it was deliberate, it was very intentional. It was not
(11:40):
an accident. And so that's when you have infrastructure apartheid,
when you have quite literally tiers levels of quality and
access based on your racial identity based on your income
statf is based on your geographic location. That is infrastructure apartheid.
(12:08):
That is what's happening. And we see it, you feel it,
you know it. Everybody, whether they want to acknowledge it
or not, understands wherever you live that there are certain
places you can go where everything is really nice. The
(12:28):
water tastes better, the roads are smoother and cleaner, the
parks are bigger and better. The school system, the supermarkets
that we talked about last time, supermarkets, grocery stores are better, nicer,
the air is cleaner, everything is better over there. And
(12:52):
then when you come over here to where we live,
to where we grew up, why are there so many
potholes in the road, Why is the air so dirty?
Why are our parks run down? The basketball goals are
bent and leaning over. The tennis courts have big cracks
and the nets are broken and torn to pieces. The
(13:14):
play sets that they were built in the eighties, why
is that. Well, it's apartheid. It's infrastructure apartheid. That's what
it is. That's how you identify and understand that situation.
Because I promise you that if you look different, if
(13:37):
you had a different income status, made a little more money,
had a white collar job, lived closer in the city,
you would have much better infrastructure. But you don't because
decisions were made to not provide that for you and
(14:01):
to provide it for others in other places. Infrastructure apartheid.
That's what it is, and that's how it needs to
be understood. I read this amazing essay called Infrastructure Inequality
(14:22):
and the Neo Apartheid City. So these writers are talking
about an apartheid city where the city is just set up,
just set up, with this apartheid system fully in place,
and they go through it. They say, look, water and
sewer and access to services like healthcare are essential to
(14:46):
the health and wellbeing of the residents. Right. They acknowledge
that they continue. Housing and transportation affect everyday relationships, mobility,
and exchanges between neighborhoods correspond to a hierarchy of identities
(15:08):
which determine your political and social rights and your access
to basic political channels. Their argument is the way that
your homes and your transportation systems are set up affect
how you live from day to day and how you
relate to people, and they are directly related to how
(15:28):
you would identify yourself or how the situations identify you
when they put those things in place, and those identities
will determine the degree of rights that you have and
access to systems that you could enjoy in that city.
And so they talk about in apartheid city, right, an
(15:52):
urban system of division which divides communities, and it is built,
built on inequity, and built on a dehumanization of others
in this apartheid city that they're describing in this essay.
(16:15):
That's what's happening. That's the reality. And so I don't
want anyone to think that for some reason you were
just delt a bad hand, or that you were just
unlucky in where you live and what you're experiencing. The
(16:40):
truth is, I see Okay, So now I'm a Christian. Now,
so I have to tell you why I think this way.
It's because I know for a fact that we're all
created in God's image, and that God has not created
any hierarchies or any levels based on your identity or
(17:03):
your social status. We're all equal, We're all made in
His image according to His likeness. And so as a
result of that, the fact that your skin looks different
than mine, you make more money than me, I make
less money than you, has no bearing on what we
should enjoy as people living on this planet. And so
(17:27):
the reason that we have these divisions, that we have
this inequity, we have this apartheid system, is because people
have decided that you're not going to be worth the investment,
You're not going to be worth the time that it
takes to build up a community that you would find
(17:50):
joy and pleasure in. People have decided that, and they've
chosen other people to provide that too, based on how
they look and what their status is. That's what's happened.
And in this apartheid city, you have the different elements
(18:12):
to different people living in this city experiencing in frustual
different ways because of how that city was built up
and planned and developed. That's what it is, and that
is how you should understand that. And so the question,
the question that I have is Okay, we're we're talking
(18:39):
about it. So we're talking about it in theory. We're
talking about it, you know, in the abstract. Are there
any examples of this on the ground. Well, yes, there are.
There are plenty of examples. I'll give you just a
few for United States and a couple other countries just
(19:02):
to get you to feel what this is like when
it actually occurs in real life. So in the United States,
we have this huge, interconnected interstate system. We have forty
eight states on the continental US and there's two others outside,
(19:22):
and we have interstates that connect all the states together.
It was a huge deal when they started in the fifties.
The nineteen fifty six National Interstate Highway Act, it passed
and it authorized the construction of all of these major
interstates across the country, forty one thousand miles of them.
(19:46):
But guess what they started building them. Where they put
these roads, where they actually build these interstates, No surprise,
they put them straight through black communities, straight through underserved areas,
straight through the marginalized in America at that time. And
(20:12):
so these communities had to get up and move or
they were split in two with three ways to make
room for these interstates to be built. You know, an
estimate from the Center of American Progress says that in
the first two decades, the construction of this interstate system
displaced four hundred and seventy five thousand families and displaced
(20:37):
over a million people of color. To make these interstates
a reality. It's apartheid. Why are they the ones who
have to bear the brunt of the construction of this
system that is meant to bring states together and facilitate
(20:58):
more economic activity, more travel, more development. Why Because of
what the definition says at the beginning of the episode
systemic dehumanization, dehumanization, you are not viewed the same as
someone else when you are subjected to these types of
(21:25):
discriminatory practices and activities. You're not valued when this happens.
And of course that's just one element right there. When
we built all the airports throughout the country, where were
they placed? You might think, oh, they were placed out
in the field where nobody was living. Well, that's not true.
(21:47):
And even if it were true, the rural parts of
America are just as important as the urban ones. So
why would you build stuff there disproportionately? It's infrastructure apartheid,
Communities of color, all these places were the ones where
airports were placed, versus displacing wealthier, wider residents. Why not
(22:12):
go there. It's apartheid. It's apartheid, that's all. It is,
plain and simple, right, Think about the quality of the
roads and the bridges, even in America very different depending
on where you live. And there have been numerous studies
done to show the impact of the condition of roads
(22:37):
on communities of color, black neighborhoods versus more affluent white neighborhoods.
I have an amazing collaborator at the University of Massachusetts
and Amherst, and she did a study of the road condition,
the pavement condition across Massachusetts. And she looked at the
(23:01):
quality of the roads in what she called environmental justice communities,
which is what we're talking about in the podcast, and
non EJ communities, the richer, wider ones. And she found
clear disparities in the condition of the roads in these
EJ communities versus the non EJ communities. Why is that?
(23:27):
Is it just a coincidence that they just happen to
have the majority of the poor roads in their neighborhoods.
Is not a coincidence. It's infrastructure apartheid. It's a deliberate
attempt to disparage one community and uplift another. It happens
all the time. The same thing with the water system,
(23:49):
same thing with the sewer systems. So many studies have
gone out and looked at where flooding happens when it rains.
That's an infrastructure issue. People look at sanitary sewer overflows
if you don't know what that is. That's when during
a rainstorm, water can get into your sewer system, and
(24:11):
because sewerisms aren't designed to carry rain water, they overflow
because it's too much water in the system. It's only
meant to cover sewer in wastewater, not wastewater and rain water,
but because it gets in because the pipes are such
poor quality or not maintained, the rainwater gets in, fills
(24:33):
up the pipes and then you run out of room
and water comes out of manholes and you have sewage
going in the streets in these low income communities, in
these communities of color. It's not a coincidence, that is
the case. This is infrastructure apartheid at its finest. This
(24:56):
is how it looks. And there's plenty of other examples
in the US of infrastructure apartheid. So many let's let's
move out. You know, South Africa is always the country
that is pointed to when the word apartheid comes up, right,
(25:19):
They famously had a government sanctioned apartheid system, and apartheid
is an Afrikaans word for separateness and division like that
is what it is. And you could say they are
the ones who pioneered the systemic apartheid regimes that people
(25:46):
don't want to see replicated across the world. And so
even as recently a couple of years ago in South Africa,
even though the apartheid system was dismantled, even though there's
more integration, there are more unified groups working for equality,
(26:07):
there's still these elements of apartheid existing. And in this study,
the researchers identify what they called green apartheid, which was
the idea that the green infrastructure was distributed in discriminatory
ways across South Africa. Right, they're talking about parks and
(26:31):
green spaces, trees having more trees in more affluent neighborhoods,
fewer trees and less affluent neighborhoods, or no trees at all. Right,
that there's a big difference between what you would find
in these richer, wider neighborhoods than which you would find
(26:53):
in these black neighborhoods. And they're calling it green apartheide.
And so even now we have in South Africa, at
least according to these researchers, elements of apartheid still present,
(27:14):
and in this case, it's infrastructure apartheid that is still
present in South Africa. Right, So if you do what
I did and you look up infrastructure apartheid, you'll get
lots of examples from the United States, lots of examples
from actual apartheid regimes that occurred, and you have to
(27:37):
keep digging and you'll find that there's still some present today.
It's still a problem today. And so that's in South Africa.
Another place where infrastructure apartheid is clear, its present and
(27:58):
it's damaging. It's in the occupied Palestinian territories right the
West Bank Gaza. There's a war going on there, so
everybody's kind of paying a little bit more attention. But
for decades, discriminatory practices, subjugation, dehumanization has been what's occurred
(28:22):
in these territories. And there was a very comprehensive, very
thorough investigation done by Amnesty International and the title was
very simply just says Israel's apartheid of Palestinians. It doesn't
say anything about who should have what state, or what
(28:43):
kind of arrangement should we have, And they don't care
about that. I don't care about it either, to be honest, like,
I'm not worried about any political settlements in the Middle
East in terms of how land's distributed or managed or maintained.
Concern is, are we all being treated equally with whatever situation,
(29:05):
whatever set up we choose to have, whatever you choose
to have, does it result in everyone being treated fairly
and equally? And right now it's just not the case.
It's just not the case. And so in this report,
MC International says that millions of Palestinians live in densely
(29:29):
populated areas that are underdeveloped and lack essential services garbage collection, electricity,
water sanitation, public transportation. They just don't have it. It's
just not there at all in these areas in the
(29:49):
West Bank, in East Jerusalem, definitely not in God's not
at this point, there's almost nothing there. And so what
would you call it? What would you call a situation
where a certain group of people have and a certain
group of people don't have, Well, you would call it
(30:13):
infrastructure apartheid. That's just what you would have to call it,
because that's what it is. And it's been like that
for decades and decades. I don't know the full history
I wish I did. Hopefully one day I'll do the
research and really learn more about how we got to
this point. But right now, twenty twenty four, this is
where we are, this is what we have. We have
(30:36):
Palestinian territories that are occupied by the nation of Israel.
That's just a fact. No one can dispute it under
international law. The Palestinian territories or where the Palestinians live,
but it's being occupied by a foreign government Israel. Okay,
(31:03):
how are they being treated? That's the question. Well, we
know now and we've known for a long time that
they're treated differently. Here's another statement from the report from
MC International. It says that Palestinians across all the areas
under Issue's control have fewer opportunities to earn a living
wage and engage in business when compared to Jewish Israelis.
(31:30):
They experienced discriminatory limitations on access access to farmland, water,
natural resources like gas and oil reserves, and restrictions on
health care services and education. These are all infrastructure components
that lead to thriving communities, and this report clearly says
(31:55):
that they are not able to have full access to them. Meanwhile,
people who are Israeli who are Jewish do have access
to them. There's no other way to describe it, but
infrastructure apartheid. And you know what's even worse. This is
what's really interesting. So you might want to say, well,
(32:19):
the Palestinian territories need to be governed better. The Israeli
government is taking care of its people, and that's what
they should do. Palestinian should take care of their people
and have governance that works for all the people that
live there, and then we can resolve this. It's not
really it is true that's responsible for getting Palestinians access
(32:47):
to these kinds of infrastructure systems that help. And you
might think that, you might believe that, but if you're occupied,
the person doing, not occupying, is responsible for the well
being of those under its occupation. That's just a law.
(33:08):
You have to be mindful of the fact that if
you're going to occupy a land, no matter who you
are or where you are, you have to take care
of the people under your occupation, especially if it's a
military occupation and a civilian population, you have to take
care of them. That's the first thing. Second thing is
we haven't talked about this yet, but there are people
(33:30):
who are Israeli Jewish Israelis settling in the occupied territories,
building homes. They have settlements, different neighborhoods that are exclusively
for Israeli citizens that are in the occupied territories. And
(33:52):
so you would say, well, why would you want to
live there? They don't have access to anything, no access
to water, sanitation, trash collection, nothing. You're going to live there,
why go live somewhere else where there is access. Live
in a nicer neighborhood inside Israel so you can get
what you really want. The truth is the Israeli government
(34:13):
builds the settlements in these occupied territories, They build the
infrastructure for those settlements in the occupied territories, and they
facilitate the travel between those territories in the Nation of
Israel for its citizens as they live in those occupied territories.
(34:36):
The same infrastructure that is not made available to Palestinians
that live there, not made available to those under its occupation.
And so there's no other way to describe it but
infrastructure apartheid. There's no other way to describe it except
that the people who are governing the activities and who
(34:59):
are responsible for distributing resources across Israel and across the
occupied territories have decided we're going to provide those resources
for these types of people and not those types of people.
For whatever reason. The reason is clear that if you're Palestinian,
(35:20):
you will not have access, but if you are Israeli
you will have access. I'm saying everyone should have access.
Everyone should have the opportunity to enjoy clean water, to
(35:40):
have sanitation services, to have their trash picked up and
disposed of, to have high quality education, to have high
quality roads, and to be able to move from place
to place. Everyone should have that. I don't believe in
(36:02):
any kind of two tiered system of operating, and so
when it comes to this idea of infrastructure apartheid, I
have to tell you that it's damaging to everyone. It
dehumanizes one group, It cuts off the other group from
(36:27):
accessing the talent and resources and the skill that comes
from that dehumanized group, and it divides communities, that divides societies.
It creates conflict, it creates instability, and it creates insecurity
among all the people everywhere. It's a really bad situation
(36:50):
when you have these apartheid systems continuing, especially in these
developed countries where you know that there's resources available to
bring equity and to bring justice and to bring equality
to everyone that lives there. It shouldn't happen anywhere. It
shouldn't happen in Israel. It shouldn't happen in occupied territories.
(37:13):
It shouldn't happen in South Africa. It shouldn't happen in
the United States. It shouldn't happen anywhere in Europe, anywhere
in Eastern Europe, anywhere in Africa. It shouldn't happen anywhere where.
We have situations where certain higher class people have more
access and have all their needs made available to them,
(37:33):
while the rest just don't. You just don't. That can't happen,
And so it's frustrating to think about the fact that
these situations could be easily resolved in the US. We
could easily spend the money to fix the infrastructure in
(37:55):
these areas that have poor quality, low access infrastructure. We
could easily build up these neighborhoods and avoid having apartheid cities.
Across the world. We can easily avoid that, but it
(38:16):
takes an understanding and a view of people that looks
at them not just as commodities or objects to be
exploited or extracted from, or to be neglected and demeaned
and dehumanized. But it takes a view that we're all equal,
(38:40):
we're all created equal, we all have equal rights and
equal access and equal opportunities because of who we are,
because of what we want to have in our societies,
because of what we imagine our city could become. If
(39:01):
everyone participated, if everyone was involved, if everyone had same access,
we could be so much better, so much further along.
It could be a lot less conflict, a lot less war,
health issues, economic issues, all these issues. They're coming out
of these infrastructure apartheid systems. And when we close those gaps,
(39:27):
we remove those disparities, everyone benefits, everyone wins in the
end when we all have access and we all have
opportunities to do what we were put here to do.
And so all I'm saying is we need to dismantle,
(39:50):
dismantle these apartheid systems, these infrastructure apartheid systems that would
privilege certain communities over others. We need to dismantle the
apartheid system that would choose to disintegrate a community of
(40:11):
color to put in place infrastructure to benefit a wealthier,
wider community. We need to dismantle those things, because until
we do, we're going to continue to have all of
these disproportionate issues that bring everyone down and that continue
(40:37):
to advance and promote an entrench division among all of us.
We don't need that, nobody needs that. What we need
is justice and liberty for all. That's what our Pledge
of Allegiance says in America at least, that we want
(41:00):
freedom and justice for all, and it starts with making
sure our infrastructure is consistently capable of serving everyone and
not just some of us. End the infrastructure apartheid that
(41:20):
is running rampant across this world. We need to end it.
And that's our episode for today. Thank you so much
for listening to the Environmental Justice Lab. Where we are
for the people and for the planet. I will see
you next time.
Welcome to the Environmental Justice Lab. I am your host,
doctor Leslie Joseph. Thank you so much for joining me.
And we are still talking about environmental apartheid. I don't
know if you've been keeping up with the episodes. If
you've been listening, I hope you have been. But we
have been going through different aspects of environmental apartheid, first
(00:24):
starting with climbing apartheid, moving to the last few episodes
on food apartheide, and now we are talking about infrastructure apartheid.
Infrastructure apartheid. It is something that is starting to gain
some momentum and some understanding, but I think it's important
to really highlight and just bring to the surface what
(00:48):
is really going on here when it comes to infrastructure
and how things are built, how resources are distributed, how
we as a society decide who gets what and what
access is made of available to which residents wherever they live.
And it all starts with infrastructure. It's the kind of
thing that everybody wants to talk about. All the politicians,
(01:11):
all of the business people, all of the corporation's industry
always talking about infrastructure. We need more infrastructure, better infrastructure,
more access to high quality infrastructure, and you know what,
I agree with them wholeheartedly. We need better infrastructure. Every
(01:34):
couple of years, the American Society of Civil Engineers releases
an infrastructure report card, and it's never good. It's never
something that you'd want to have for your report card
if you were in school. Lots of c's, lots of d's,
d minuses, maybe a couple of bees. But it's very
rare because everybody understands that we need better infrastructure. We
(01:59):
just needed. It needs to be improved, needs to be maintained,
and it needs to be accessible to everyone. But what
people don't mention is that there are very distinct, very
deliberate disparities in the infrastructure that is currently available. So
(02:22):
when people talk about the fact that we need better
infrastructure or that our grades are failing on the infrastructure front,
they would have you to believe that it's consistently bad
across the board, that it's consistently a problem everywhere you look,
and that we need to improve all of our infrastructure
(02:44):
everywhere in order to maximize what's possible. But as you
might know from the series we've been doing, there are
very specific, deliberate, intentional differences in the quality of infrastructure
thats available depending on who you are and where you live.
(03:05):
It's very clear certain residents have higher quality infrastructure and
certain residents don't. Even the way we talk about infrastructure,
you can tell the difference. Right, So you might live
on the quote unquote wrong side of the tracks, right,
(03:26):
the idea that this railroad track divides your community and
you can live on the good side or the bad side, right.
I mean, that's how we talk about it. We can
talk about whether or not you can actually get to
one part of town or the other. Is there access
to transportation, access to decent roads, a rail system, a
(03:50):
subway system, anything that can help you travel from one
place to another. You know, you might live on that
side of town that doesn't have a subway station, a
bus stop, a railway depot, nothing like that. And so
these differences are not coincidental. These differences are not an accident.
(04:16):
These are deliberate, systemic disparities as it relates to infrastructure,
and we are going to talk about it on this
episode today. So I'm glad you're here. Please stay tuned.
This is the Environmental Justice Lab. Welcome to the Environmental
(04:59):
Justice Lab. I am doctor Joseph, thank you for listening.
And today we are all about infrastructure and infrastructure. Apartheid,
that's what we're talking about. And before we get into
the discussion about apartheid and how it looks and how
it's manifesting itself, let's just talk a little bit about
infrastructure because we all need it, We all rely on it,
(05:23):
and we all depend on it for our well being,
for our ability to be productive citizens, to participate in society.
We need infrastructure. A lot of people think about infrastructure
only as a certain type of building or a certain
type of piece of equipment, but infrastructure is everything that
(05:44):
helps make a society function and operate. It's from the
buildings to the roads, to the bridges, to the water
and sewer systems, to the electrical grid, to internet broadband access,
to the ability to go to a park, to a library,
(06:04):
your schools. These are all elements of infrastructure that are
necessary for communities and for cities and states to thrive
and to be productive and to be recognized as places
where you want to live and raise a family. You
(06:26):
need infrastructure to do that. Right. I got this quote
and it's a very important quote because it really encapsulates
what infrastructure is and what it does. It says infrastructure
can play an important role in social inclusion and economic growth. However,
(06:48):
when it's inadequate, it can lead to social exclusion, poverty,
and poor health. And so that is how important infrastructure
is to any society. The first thing you do if
you want to build a city, to have a place
(07:08):
to live, have a community, is you have to put
in infrastructure. You have to put in place systems that
allow people to meet and greet one another, engage their services,
their skills, and use them to improve and uplift wherever
they are. It takes infrastructure to do that. And when
(07:29):
you have, like we have in our country and in
our world, infrastructure apartheid, you have a system where they're
different tiers depending on who you are and where you live,
that dictate the type and availability of infrastructure which would
allow you to have that community to be engaged socially
(07:54):
and economically and politically and academically and intellectual. You need
infrastructure to do that, and depending on where you live,
you might not have it, and hence the term infrastructure apartheid.
Now that term I didn't come up with it, so
don't it's not my term. The first time I heard
(08:16):
this term, it was in a lecture by doctor Maya
Caraskillo from the University of California, Berkeley. She is an
environmental engineering professor there. She gave an amazing talk about
infrastructure apartheid, and from that moment I said, Oh, this
(08:37):
is something that's been happening all over for a very
long time. And so she defines infrastructure apartheid this way.
She calls it the systemic dehumanization through material and social
entities that are observed, felt, and lived across racial, economic,
(09:03):
and geographic specialization. It's a long definition, but what she's
essentially saying is infrastructure apartheid is when you dehumanize certain
groups of people using material things, social entities, elements of
(09:27):
a society that you can feel, see and experience, and
you're dehumanizing along racial lines, economic lines, and geographic lines.
So it's not just that some people have it and
some people don't, but it's the reality that the people
(09:49):
who have it are specifically a certain type of people.
They're usually urban, they're usually wealthier, higher income, and they're
usual white. These are the people who have access to
the infrastructure and the high quality systems necessary to be
(10:10):
highly productive, highly engaged in their societies in their cities.
Whereas if your lower income, if your rural, black, brown,
different ethnic groups, you will experience your infrastructure differently, lower quality,
(10:34):
less availability, limited access, and that, as doctor Kreskill would say,
is a form of systemic dehumanization. It's not just that
you don't have what you need, that you're being treated
less than a human by not being provided that, because
it's something that's given and set up by the people
(10:56):
who make decisions and the people who are in power.
It is not situation where you just found yourself in
a place that happened to lack certain amenities in certain services.
You are being systemically dehumanized because of it, because people
can provide those services if they so choose. Your elected
(11:19):
officials can create avenues for you to have those services
if they so choose. But they chose otherwise. They said,
you know what, we're going to invest and spend our
time and money over there and not over here. And
it was deliberate, it was very intentional. It was not
(11:40):
an accident. And so that's when you have infrastructure apartheid,
when you have quite literally tiers levels of quality and
access based on your racial identity based on your income
statf is based on your geographic location. That is infrastructure apartheid.
(12:08):
That is what's happening. And we see it, you feel it,
you know it. Everybody, whether they want to acknowledge it
or not, understands wherever you live that there are certain
places you can go where everything is really nice. The
(12:28):
water tastes better, the roads are smoother and cleaner, the
parks are bigger and better. The school system, the supermarkets
that we talked about last time, supermarkets, grocery stores are better, nicer,
the air is cleaner, everything is better over there. And
(12:52):
then when you come over here to where we live,
to where we grew up, why are there so many
potholes in the road, Why is the air so dirty?
Why are our parks run down? The basketball goals are
bent and leaning over. The tennis courts have big cracks
and the nets are broken and torn to pieces. The
(13:14):
play sets that they were built in the eighties, why
is that. Well, it's apartheid. It's infrastructure apartheid. That's what
it is. That's how you identify and understand that situation.
Because I promise you that if you look different, if
(13:37):
you had a different income status, made a little more money,
had a white collar job, lived closer in the city,
you would have much better infrastructure. But you don't because
decisions were made to not provide that for you and
(14:01):
to provide it for others in other places. Infrastructure apartheid.
That's what it is, and that's how it needs to
be understood. I read this amazing essay called Infrastructure Inequality
(14:22):
and the Neo Apartheid City. So these writers are talking
about an apartheid city where the city is just set up,
just set up, with this apartheid system fully in place,
and they go through it. They say, look, water and
sewer and access to services like healthcare are essential to
(14:46):
the health and wellbeing of the residents. Right. They acknowledge
that they continue. Housing and transportation affect everyday relationships, mobility,
and exchanges between neighborhoods correspond to a hierarchy of identities
(15:08):
which determine your political and social rights and your access
to basic political channels. Their argument is the way that
your homes and your transportation systems are set up affect
how you live from day to day and how you
relate to people, and they are directly related to how
(15:28):
you would identify yourself or how the situations identify you
when they put those things in place, and those identities
will determine the degree of rights that you have and
access to systems that you could enjoy in that city.
And so they talk about in apartheid city, right, an
(15:52):
urban system of division which divides communities, and it is built,
built on inequity, and built on a dehumanization of others
in this apartheid city that they're describing in this essay.
(16:15):
That's what's happening. That's the reality. And so I don't
want anyone to think that for some reason you were
just delt a bad hand, or that you were just
unlucky in where you live and what you're experiencing. The
(16:40):
truth is, I see Okay, So now I'm a Christian. Now,
so I have to tell you why I think this way.
It's because I know for a fact that we're all
created in God's image, and that God has not created
any hierarchies or any levels based on your identity or
(17:03):
your social status. We're all equal, We're all made in
His image according to His likeness. And so as a
result of that, the fact that your skin looks different
than mine, you make more money than me, I make
less money than you, has no bearing on what we
should enjoy as people living on this planet. And so
(17:27):
the reason that we have these divisions, that we have
this inequity, we have this apartheid system, is because people
have decided that you're not going to be worth the investment,
You're not going to be worth the time that it
takes to build up a community that you would find
(17:50):
joy and pleasure in. People have decided that, and they've
chosen other people to provide that too, based on how
they look and what their status is. That's what's happened.
And in this apartheid city, you have the different elements
(18:12):
to different people living in this city experiencing in frustual
different ways because of how that city was built up
and planned and developed. That's what it is, and that
is how you should understand that. And so the question,
the question that I have is Okay, we're we're talking
(18:39):
about it. So we're talking about it in theory. We're
talking about it, you know, in the abstract. Are there
any examples of this on the ground. Well, yes, there are.
There are plenty of examples. I'll give you just a
few for United States and a couple other countries just
(19:02):
to get you to feel what this is like when
it actually occurs in real life. So in the United States,
we have this huge, interconnected interstate system. We have forty
eight states on the continental US and there's two others outside,
(19:22):
and we have interstates that connect all the states together.
It was a huge deal when they started in the fifties.
The nineteen fifty six National Interstate Highway Act, it passed
and it authorized the construction of all of these major
interstates across the country, forty one thousand miles of them.
(19:46):
But guess what they started building them. Where they put
these roads, where they actually build these interstates, No surprise,
they put them straight through black communities, straight through underserved areas,
straight through the marginalized in America at that time. And
(20:12):
so these communities had to get up and move or
they were split in two with three ways to make
room for these interstates to be built. You know, an
estimate from the Center of American Progress says that in
the first two decades, the construction of this interstate system
displaced four hundred and seventy five thousand families and displaced
(20:37):
over a million people of color. To make these interstates
a reality. It's apartheid. Why are they the ones who
have to bear the brunt of the construction of this
system that is meant to bring states together and facilitate
(20:58):
more economic activity, more travel, more development. Why Because of
what the definition says at the beginning of the episode
systemic dehumanization, dehumanization, you are not viewed the same as
someone else when you are subjected to these types of
(21:25):
discriminatory practices and activities. You're not valued when this happens.
And of course that's just one element right there. When
we built all the airports throughout the country, where were
they placed? You might think, oh, they were placed out
in the field where nobody was living. Well, that's not true.
(21:47):
And even if it were true, the rural parts of
America are just as important as the urban ones. So
why would you build stuff there disproportionately? It's infrastructure apartheid,
Communities of color, all these places were the ones where
airports were placed, versus displacing wealthier, wider residents. Why not
(22:12):
go there. It's apartheid. It's apartheid, that's all. It is,
plain and simple, right, Think about the quality of the
roads and the bridges, even in America very different depending
on where you live. And there have been numerous studies
done to show the impact of the condition of roads
(22:37):
on communities of color, black neighborhoods versus more affluent white neighborhoods.
I have an amazing collaborator at the University of Massachusetts
and Amherst, and she did a study of the road condition,
the pavement condition across Massachusetts. And she looked at the
(23:01):
quality of the roads in what she called environmental justice communities,
which is what we're talking about in the podcast, and
non EJ communities, the richer, wider ones. And she found
clear disparities in the condition of the roads in these
EJ communities versus the non EJ communities. Why is that?
(23:27):
Is it just a coincidence that they just happen to
have the majority of the poor roads in their neighborhoods.
Is not a coincidence. It's infrastructure apartheid. It's a deliberate
attempt to disparage one community and uplift another. It happens
all the time. The same thing with the water system,
(23:49):
same thing with the sewer systems. So many studies have
gone out and looked at where flooding happens when it rains.
That's an infrastructure issue. People look at sanitary sewer overflows
if you don't know what that is. That's when during
a rainstorm, water can get into your sewer system, and
(24:11):
because sewerisms aren't designed to carry rain water, they overflow
because it's too much water in the system. It's only
meant to cover sewer in wastewater, not wastewater and rain water,
but because it gets in because the pipes are such
poor quality or not maintained, the rainwater gets in, fills
(24:33):
up the pipes and then you run out of room
and water comes out of manholes and you have sewage
going in the streets in these low income communities, in
these communities of color. It's not a coincidence, that is
the case. This is infrastructure apartheid at its finest. This
(24:56):
is how it looks. And there's plenty of other examples
in the US of infrastructure apartheid. So many let's let's
move out. You know, South Africa is always the country
that is pointed to when the word apartheid comes up, right,
(25:19):
They famously had a government sanctioned apartheid system, and apartheid
is an Afrikaans word for separateness and division like that
is what it is. And you could say they are
the ones who pioneered the systemic apartheid regimes that people
(25:46):
don't want to see replicated across the world. And so
even as recently a couple of years ago in South Africa,
even though the apartheid system was dismantled, even though there's
more integration, there are more unified groups working for equality,
(26:07):
there's still these elements of apartheid existing. And in this study,
the researchers identify what they called green apartheid, which was
the idea that the green infrastructure was distributed in discriminatory
ways across South Africa. Right, they're talking about parks and
(26:31):
green spaces, trees having more trees in more affluent neighborhoods,
fewer trees and less affluent neighborhoods, or no trees at all. Right,
that there's a big difference between what you would find
in these richer, wider neighborhoods than which you would find
(26:53):
in these black neighborhoods. And they're calling it green apartheide.
And so even now we have in South Africa, at
least according to these researchers, elements of apartheid still present,
(27:14):
and in this case, it's infrastructure apartheid that is still
present in South Africa. Right, So if you do what
I did and you look up infrastructure apartheid, you'll get
lots of examples from the United States, lots of examples
from actual apartheid regimes that occurred, and you have to
(27:37):
keep digging and you'll find that there's still some present today.
It's still a problem today. And so that's in South Africa.
Another place where infrastructure apartheid is clear, its present and
(27:58):
it's damaging. It's in the occupied Palestinian territories right the
West Bank Gaza. There's a war going on there, so
everybody's kind of paying a little bit more attention. But
for decades, discriminatory practices, subjugation, dehumanization has been what's occurred
(28:22):
in these territories. And there was a very comprehensive, very
thorough investigation done by Amnesty International and the title was
very simply just says Israel's apartheid of Palestinians. It doesn't
say anything about who should have what state, or what
(28:43):
kind of arrangement should we have, And they don't care
about that. I don't care about it either, to be honest, like,
I'm not worried about any political settlements in the Middle
East in terms of how land's distributed or managed or maintained.
Concern is, are we all being treated equally with whatever situation,
(29:05):
whatever set up we choose to have, whatever you choose
to have, does it result in everyone being treated fairly
and equally? And right now it's just not the case.
It's just not the case. And so in this report,
MC International says that millions of Palestinians live in densely
(29:29):
populated areas that are underdeveloped and lack essential services garbage collection, electricity,
water sanitation, public transportation. They just don't have it. It's
just not there at all in these areas in the
(29:49):
West Bank, in East Jerusalem, definitely not in God's not
at this point, there's almost nothing there. And so what
would you call it? What would you call a situation
where a certain group of people have and a certain
group of people don't have, Well, you would call it
(30:13):
infrastructure apartheid. That's just what you would have to call it,
because that's what it is. And it's been like that
for decades and decades. I don't know the full history
I wish I did. Hopefully one day I'll do the
research and really learn more about how we got to
this point. But right now, twenty twenty four, this is
where we are, this is what we have. We have
(30:36):
Palestinian territories that are occupied by the nation of Israel.
That's just a fact. No one can dispute it under
international law. The Palestinian territories or where the Palestinians live,
but it's being occupied by a foreign government Israel. Okay,
(31:03):
how are they being treated? That's the question. Well, we
know now and we've known for a long time that
they're treated differently. Here's another statement from the report from
MC International. It says that Palestinians across all the areas
under Issue's control have fewer opportunities to earn a living
wage and engage in business when compared to Jewish Israelis.
(31:30):
They experienced discriminatory limitations on access access to farmland, water,
natural resources like gas and oil reserves, and restrictions on
health care services and education. These are all infrastructure components
that lead to thriving communities, and this report clearly says
(31:55):
that they are not able to have full access to them. Meanwhile,
people who are Israeli who are Jewish do have access
to them. There's no other way to describe it, but
infrastructure apartheid. And you know what's even worse. This is
what's really interesting. So you might want to say, well,
(32:19):
the Palestinian territories need to be governed better. The Israeli
government is taking care of its people, and that's what
they should do. Palestinian should take care of their people
and have governance that works for all the people that
live there, and then we can resolve this. It's not
really it is true that's responsible for getting Palestinians access
(32:47):
to these kinds of infrastructure systems that help. And you
might think that, you might believe that, but if you're occupied,
the person doing, not occupying, is responsible for the well
being of those under its occupation. That's just a law.
(33:08):
You have to be mindful of the fact that if
you're going to occupy a land, no matter who you
are or where you are, you have to take care
of the people under your occupation, especially if it's a
military occupation and a civilian population, you have to take
care of them. That's the first thing. Second thing is
we haven't talked about this yet, but there are people
(33:30):
who are Israeli Jewish Israelis settling in the occupied territories,
building homes. They have settlements, different neighborhoods that are exclusively
for Israeli citizens that are in the occupied territories. And
(33:52):
so you would say, well, why would you want to
live there? They don't have access to anything, no access
to water, sanitation, trash collection, nothing. You're going to live there,
why go live somewhere else where there is access. Live
in a nicer neighborhood inside Israel so you can get
what you really want. The truth is the Israeli government
(34:13):
builds the settlements in these occupied territories, They build the
infrastructure for those settlements in the occupied territories, and they
facilitate the travel between those territories in the Nation of
Israel for its citizens as they live in those occupied territories.
(34:36):
The same infrastructure that is not made available to Palestinians
that live there, not made available to those under its occupation.
And so there's no other way to describe it but
infrastructure apartheid. There's no other way to describe it except
that the people who are governing the activities and who
(34:59):
are responsible for distributing resources across Israel and across the
occupied territories have decided we're going to provide those resources
for these types of people and not those types of people.
For whatever reason. The reason is clear that if you're Palestinian,
(35:20):
you will not have access, but if you are Israeli
you will have access. I'm saying everyone should have access.
Everyone should have the opportunity to enjoy clean water, to
(35:40):
have sanitation services, to have their trash picked up and
disposed of, to have high quality education, to have high
quality roads, and to be able to move from place
to place. Everyone should have that. I don't believe in
(36:02):
any kind of two tiered system of operating, and so
when it comes to this idea of infrastructure apartheid, I
have to tell you that it's damaging to everyone. It
dehumanizes one group, It cuts off the other group from
(36:27):
accessing the talent and resources and the skill that comes
from that dehumanized group, and it divides communities, that divides societies.
It creates conflict, it creates instability, and it creates insecurity
among all the people everywhere. It's a really bad situation
(36:50):
when you have these apartheid systems continuing, especially in these
developed countries where you know that there's resources available to
bring equity and to bring justice and to bring equality
to everyone that lives there. It shouldn't happen anywhere. It
shouldn't happen in Israel. It shouldn't happen in occupied territories.
(37:13):
It shouldn't happen in South Africa. It shouldn't happen in
the United States. It shouldn't happen anywhere in Europe, anywhere
in Eastern Europe, anywhere in Africa. It shouldn't happen anywhere where.
We have situations where certain higher class people have more
access and have all their needs made available to them,
(37:33):
while the rest just don't. You just don't. That can't happen,
And so it's frustrating to think about the fact that
these situations could be easily resolved in the US. We
could easily spend the money to fix the infrastructure in
(37:55):
these areas that have poor quality, low access infrastructure. We
could easily build up these neighborhoods and avoid having apartheid cities.
Across the world. We can easily avoid that, but it
(38:16):
takes an understanding and a view of people that looks
at them not just as commodities or objects to be
exploited or extracted from, or to be neglected and demeaned
and dehumanized. But it takes a view that we're all equal,
(38:40):
we're all created equal, we all have equal rights and
equal access and equal opportunities because of who we are,
because of what we want to have in our societies,
because of what we imagine our city could become. If
(39:01):
everyone participated, if everyone was involved, if everyone had same access,
we could be so much better, so much further along.
It could be a lot less conflict, a lot less war,
health issues, economic issues, all these issues. They're coming out
of these infrastructure apartheid systems. And when we close those gaps,
(39:27):
we remove those disparities, everyone benefits, everyone wins in the
end when we all have access and we all have
opportunities to do what we were put here to do.
And so all I'm saying is we need to dismantle,
(39:50):
dismantle these apartheid systems, these infrastructure apartheid systems that would
privilege certain communities over others. We need to dismantle the
apartheid system that would choose to disintegrate a community of
(40:11):
color to put in place infrastructure to benefit a wealthier,
wider community. We need to dismantle those things, because until
we do, we're going to continue to have all of
these disproportionate issues that bring everyone down and that continue
(40:37):
to advance and promote an entrench division among all of us.
We don't need that, nobody needs that. What we need
is justice and liberty for all. That's what our Pledge
of Allegiance says in America at least, that we want
(41:00):
freedom and justice for all, and it starts with making
sure our infrastructure is consistently capable of serving everyone and
not just some of us. End the infrastructure apartheid that
(41:20):
is running rampant across this world. We need to end it.
And that's our episode for today. Thank you so much
for listening to the Environmental Justice Lab. Where we are
for the people and for the planet. I will see
you next time.
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