Whiteness in Education: A Barrier to the Environmental Justice Education Movement

Abstract

In this article, we articulate a praxis of environmental justice education (EJE). Formal and informal environmental educators have been slow to join the EJ movement and to consider their roles and responsibilities with educating for EJ. We interrogate the role of whiteness in environmental education and attest that whiteness is a significant stumbling block that impedes the EJ movement in education. We describe whiteness as a historical, social, and political construct and consider how whiteness impacts environmental education through the exclusion of explicitly racial and class-based environmental concerns and through the shaping of the ideology of individualism that structures systemic injustices. Ultimately, we articulate an EJE praxis as a teaching paradigm that operates from the premise; we must both understand and disrupt the unfair distribution of resources and pollution on communities of color, poor communities, and other living beings.