Sanitation Inequity and the Cumulative Effects of Racism in Colorblind Public Health Policies

摘要

A majority of Lowndes County, Alabama, residents live without properly functioning, legal, basic sanitation infrastructure. We describe the contemporary racialization of sanitation inequality in the county. We trace structural dimensions of race in land tenure through the heir property system, housing availability, and public health enforcement. Our analysis shows how cumulative effects of colorblind policies overlain on explicitly racist foundations operate to establish public health sanitation law as a persistent mechanism of producing racial stratification.