Zoltan Grossman, Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 550 North Park Street, Madison WI 53706 USA. zoltan@geography.wisc.edu

Effects of White Privilege on Interracial Environmental Alliances.

The Environmental Justice movement is not only concerned with the placement of toxic wastes in "minority" communities, but with the wide array of advantages that U.S. white communities possess to avoid or mitigate environmental threats. In response to a growing interracial environmental alliance, companies and government agencies often use a social-spatial "shell game" to minimize environmental burdens on a white community, while keeping burdens on a "minority" community. The resulting division of the alliance is often justified or masked as the result of neutral geographic or scientific factors. The cases of Native American alliances with non-Indian agriculturalists against military flight and bombing ranges in Wisconsin and Nevada illustrate the choice that white alliance members had between their own short-term (racial) interest and the alliance's long-term (environmental) interest. Interracial unity strategies based solely on universalist commonalities (such as environmental protection) tend to fail without a concurrent process of equalization that respects particularist differences (racial/ethnic rights).

Key words: Environmental Justice, Native Americans, white privilege