Following up on numerous reports of racially biased distributions of risk during Texas' February blackouts, this study provides empirical evidence of the degree to which people of color were disadvantaged. The authors identify a general lack of publicly available data on the locations of blackouts, especially at a granularity that would allow scholars, activists, and other interested persons to make correlations to the racial makeup of these communities, or other important demographic factors. This lack of data and lack of access to data plays an important role in mystifying--and therefore reproducing--the material conditions that underwrite structural racism in the United States. The authors of this study generated a brilliant method of producing their own data on this topic.
Using satellite imagery, these scholars were able to compare the distributions of lighted areas before, during, and after the storm to pinpoint blackout locations and durations. They then used the EPA's Environmental Justice Screening tool to combine this data with the demographic data collected at the level of Census Block Groups. Controlling for both income level and the presence/absence of critical infrastructure, they discovered that communities of color were four times as likely to experience an outage than predominantly white communities. Current rationales for explaining the locations and distributions of blackouts cannot account for this finding, suggesting the need for further research into how and where racial bias has been baked into the energy system and its methods and strategies of emergency response.
JP Carvallo, Feng Chi Hsu, Zeal Shah and Jay Taneja, "Frozen Out in Texas: Blackouts and Inequity", contributed by James Adams, The Energy Rights Project, Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography, last modified 27 May 2021, accessed 2 May 2024. https://energyrights.info/content/frozen-out-texas-blackouts-and-inequity
Critical Commentary
Following up on numerous reports of racially biased distributions of risk during Texas' February blackouts, this study provides empirical evidence of the degree to which people of color were disadvantaged. The authors identify a general lack of publicly available data on the locations of blackouts, especially at a granularity that would allow scholars, activists, and other interested persons to make correlations to the racial makeup of these communities, or other important demographic factors. This lack of data and lack of access to data plays an important role in mystifying--and therefore reproducing--the material conditions that underwrite structural racism in the United States. The authors of this study generated a brilliant method of producing their own data on this topic.
Using satellite imagery, these scholars were able to compare the distributions of lighted areas before, during, and after the storm to pinpoint blackout locations and durations. They then used the EPA's Environmental Justice Screening tool to combine this data with the demographic data collected at the level of Census Block Groups. Controlling for both income level and the presence/absence of critical infrastructure, they discovered that communities of color were four times as likely to experience an outage than predominantly white communities. Current rationales for explaining the locations and distributions of blackouts cannot account for this finding, suggesting the need for further research into how and where racial bias has been baked into the energy system and its methods and strategies of emergency response.