Chapter three describes the history of the California agricultural industry and its labor system, which one scholar declared a “sordid business of race exploitation.” The authors explain how certain aspects of the state’s history of land and workplace discrimination led to this exploitation and subsequent environmental injustice wrought by immigrants and people of color. For instance, the Alien Land Act of 1913 prohibited non-citizens from purchasing land for farming, limiting their opportunities for self-employment and restricting people of color from passing on land as a commodity to their children, thereby ensuring that future generations are similarly deprived of this valuable resource. Such legislation forced immigrants to seek employment elsewhere, usually at the agricultural industry’s dangerous canneries. Most of chapter three is about the occupational hazards present in canneries, which I will summarize as follows: dangerous machines, child labor, pesticides, and chemical hazards. All of which are bad. You get the idea.
Chapter four describes the area’s transition into a post-agricultural economy as the electronic industry eventually displaced canneries as the largest industry in Santa Clara County. The first part of this chapter, about the military-industrial-university complex, was very interesting. The authors point out that the U.S. military is the “largest producer of toxic waste in the nation” and that the use of toxics in the high-tech industry of Silicon Valley “emerged from ‘advances’ made in the military, chemical, and agricultural industries.” During the Cold War, military demand took national priority and shaped technological and economic development in Santa Clara County. For instance, The Food Machinery and Chemical Corporation (FMC), which once manufactured the equipment used on canneries, undertook construction of an armament in San Jose. This reminded me of Dow Chemical’s role in the Vietnam War, solidified with their production of Agent Orange. Under any other circumstances, Dow Chemical would’ve been doing exactly what it claims to do (produce effective pesticides). In this case, it produced a weapon of war. This reflects the authors’ caveat at the end of chapter two about the role of transnational corporations in global environmental injustice and Pellow’s interests in the topics leading to Resisting Global Toxics.
The discussion and analyses in chapter five are very compelling. In this chapter, the authors challenge the claim that Silicon Valley represents a “land of opportunity” in which immigrants, people of color and women workers can increase their wages and climb the career ladder. The same “clean image” is presented by the 1965 Immigration Act, which allowed a massive influx of immigrants on work visas to seek employment in California, although the only jobs they could get were low-wage positions in the high-tech industry. As a result, the industry benefited from this cheap labor and the immigrants, people of color and women they hire suffer as a result of income inequity and the absurd cost of living in Silicon Valley.
The topic of selective recruitment was one of the more interesting topics discussed in this book thus far, probably because it’s one of the few topics we haven’t already read about at length. I was pretty astounded to discover that 70-80% of production workers in Silicon Valley are immigrants, people of color and women. This pattern is highly suspect, especially for an industrial area producing such incredible wealth. Silicon Valley was clearly built on the backs of immigrants, people of color and women. An ethically upstanding community, one striving for a “clean image,” ought to enforce more equitable legislation in light of this fact.
