What is it about?

Documents the spatial and demographic distribution of who reports not having access to complete plumbing facilities in the United States as of the 2014 US Census American Community Survey, specifying the significant impacts of structural racism on the services we consider most basic.

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Why is it important?

More than 540,000 households report lacking access to complete plumbing in the USA. But those impacted by this condition are not evening distributed across space or across racial and ethnic groups. Our research demonstrates not only which counties and boroughs are most significantly impacted, but which racial groups are most represented in those spaces. This specifies the significant impacts of longterm structural racism and environment inequality in the USA.

Perspectives

This publication builds on reports done based on 1990 and 2000 Census data, and in so doing provides a context for the environmental justice movements that have come out of water infrastructure crises that have emerged in the Central Valley of California, Detroit and Flint, Michigan, and in the Black Belt region of Alabama. As society grapples with a growing problem of failing infrastructure, this paper demonstrates that inequality is embedded in access to water and sanitation -- to the detriment, in particular of extremely marginalized populations such as American Indians and Alaska Natives.

Stephen Gasteyer
Michigan State University

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This page is a summary of: BASICS INEQUALITY, Du Bois Review Social Science Research on Race, January 2016, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1017/s1742058x16000242.
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