Embedded and Embodied: How State Neglect of Lead Poisoning Contributes to Women’s Green Victimization and Perpetuates Intersectional Inequalities

Abstract

Due to weak regulations and state neglect, lead poisoning remains endemic in low-income neighborhoods and threatens children's health. Lead exposure plays a crucial but understudied role in most issues facing Black and Brown communities, as minorities face exposure to environmental dangers such as lead at greater rates than White residents. Caregiving for exposure falls on impoverished families, particularly mothers. However, Lynch notes how criminology makes “only passing reference to women's green victimization” (WGV). To further understanding of WGV, this study draws on 35 open-ended, semi-structured interviews with mostly minority women living in concentrated disadvantage and whose lives were further complicated by the threat of lead exposure. Charting this experience proves crucial to explaining the relationship between structural racism and WGV. By drawing on the Foucauldian notion of responsibilization, findings illustrate how these mothers become overly responsible for overcoming environmental harms caused by state neglect. The individualization of lead exposure as a social problem results in it significantly hampering low-income families well-being and upward mobility, and forms a subtle but crucial component of the urban deprivation caused by America's history of structural racism.