“Hey, I live there!”: Unpacking Environmental Justice Education and Whiteness in a Rust Belt City

This presentation explores Buffalo, New York, a gentrifying former rust belt city, where environmental racism impedes certain citizens from benefiting from its revitalization. Environmental justice education must be contextualized to ground concepts in a time and place relevant to learners. Guided by two frameworks, Environmental Justice and Critical Race Theory, we interrogated Whiteness in the local environmental movement, resulting in two major findings. Based on our website analysis, the face of the movement is White. Despite that, students of color in Buffalo are likely to consider themselves environmentalists and have a high probability of joining the movement. Implications from this work suggest contextualizing environmental and social justice issues within the community students reside in will best inform educational practice that interrogates Whiteness.

Dr. Monica L. Miles, PhD is a Visiting Assistant Professor of STEM education in the Mathematics, Science, and Technology Department at Teachers College, Columbia University. Dr. Miles received her doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction and the Science of Learning from the University of Buffalo, in 2017. Dr. Miles completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Vanderbilt University where she worked with the Explorations in Diversifying Engineering Faculty Initiative (EDEFI) research team. She is a critical STEM education trajectory scholar who seeks transformative solutions to cultivate liberated and environmentally justice environments for Black people, and other minoritized individuals. She believes in fostering racial solidarity and finding your own path in the movement.