In this paper I expand upon the recent use of the term “Critical Environmental Justice Studies.” This concept is meant to capture new developments in Environmental Justice (EJ) Studies that question assumptions and gaps in earlier work in the field. Because this direction in scholarship is still in its formative stages, I take this opportunity to offer some guidance on what Critical Environmental Justice (CEJ) Studies might look like and what it could mean for theorizing the relationship between race (along with multiple additional social categories) and the environment. I do so by (1) adopting a multi-disciplinary approach that draws on several bodies of literature, including critical race theory, political ecology, ecofeminist theory, and anarchist theory, and (2) focusing on the case of Black Lives Matter and the problem of state violence.

Research examining racial/ethnic disparities in pollution exposure often relies on cross-sectional data. These analyses are largely insensitive to exposure trends and rarely account for broader contextual dynamics. To provide a more comprehensive assessment of racial-environmental inequality over time, we combine the 1990 to 2009 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) with spatially- and temporally-resolved measures of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) in respondents’ neighborhoods, as well as census data on the characteristics of respondents’ metropolitan areas. Results based on multilevel repeated measures models indicate that Blacks and Latinos are, on average, more likely to be exposed to higher levels of NO2, PM2.5, and PM10 than Whites. Despite nationwide declines in levels of pollution over time, racial and ethnic disparities persist and cannot be fully explained by individual-, household-, or metropolitan-level factors.

This paper examines the racial ecology of lead exposure as a form of environmental inequity, one with both historical and contemporary significance. Drawing on comprehensive data from over one million blood tests administered to Chicago children from 1995-2013 and matched to over 2300 geographic block groups, we address two major questions: (1) What is the nature of the relationship between neighborhood-level racial composition and variability in children’s elevated lead prevalence levels? And (2) what is the nature of the relationship between neighborhood-level racial composition and rates of change in children’s prevalence levels over time within neighborhoods? We further assess an array of structural explanations for observed racial disparities, including socioeconomic status, type and age of housing, proximity to freeways and smelting plants, and systematic observations of housing decay and neighborhood disorder. Overall, our theoretical framework posits lead toxicity as a major environmental pathway through which racial segregation has contributed to the legacy of Black disadvantage in the United States. Our findings support this hypothesis and show alarming racial disparities in toxic exposure, even after accounting for possible structural explanations. At the same time, however, our longitudinal results show the power of public health policies to reduce racial inequities.

Since W. E. B. Du Bois documented the physical and social environments of Philadelphia’s predominantly African American Seventh Ward over a century ago, there has been continued interest in understanding the distribution of social and physical environments by racial make-up of communities. Characterization of these environments allows for documentation of inequities, identifies communities which encounter heightened risk, and can inform action to promote health equity. In this paper, we apply and extend Du Bois’s approach to examine the contemporary distribution of physical environmental exposures, health risks, and social vulnerabilities in the Detroit metropolitan area, one of the most racially-segregated areas in the United States. We begin by mapping the proximity of sensitive populations to hazardous land uses, their exposure to air pollutants and associated health risks, and social vulnerabilities, as well as cumulative risk (combined proximity, exposure, and vulnerability), across Census tracts. Next, we assess, quantitatively, the extent to which communities of color experience excess burdens of environmental exposures and associated health risks, economic and age-related vulnerabilities, and cumulative risk. The results, depicted in maps presented in the paper, suggest that Census tracts with greater proportions of people of color disproportionately encounter physical environmental exposures, socioeconomic vulnerabilities, and combined risk. Quantitative tests of inequality confirm these distributions, with statistically greater exposures, vulnerabilities, and cumulative risk in Census tracts with larger proportions of people of color. Together, these findings identify communities that experience disproportionate cumulative risk in the Detroit metropolitan area and quantify the inequitable distribution of risk by Census tract relative to the proportion of people of color. They identify clear opportunities for prioritizing communities for legislative, regulatory, policy, and local actions to promote environmental justice and health equity.

In light of 2014–2016 media coverage about the inadequate water and sanitation services for households in places like Flint and Detroit, Michigan and the Central Valley of California, this paper asks whether places with majority non-White residents in the United States disproportionately lack access to these most basic of services. Investigating this issue through the combined lenses of structural racism, environmental justice, and the human right to water and sanitation, we analyze U.S. Census American Community Survey household data at the county level. Our findings indicate strong White versus non-White racial effects at the national and county levels (R2 = 0.0462, P < 0.05). When the non-White population is broken down into racial categories, places with higher percentages of American Indians and Alaska Native households are significantly associated with lack of access to complete plumbing facilities. Lacking access to complete plumbing does correlate with lower educational attainment and higher percentages of unemployment, and less robustly, it also correlates positively with median household income. The implication is the existence of a pattern of structural environmental racism in terms of the practical accessibility of water and sanitation infrastructure. We suspect, however, that the U.S. Census, while considered the most comprehensive national data source on this issue right now, significantly undercounts those lacking access to water and sanitation services. We argue that better data will be essential in order to carry out a more in-depth analysis of water access conditions and to develop strategies that address this issue of growing importance.

Extractive industries have long been a topic of study in environmental social science. These studies have focused on how extractive industries, as linked to global capitalism, degrade local communities and their environments, but have failed to consider their racialized effects. At the same time, when scholars have examined the intersection of race and the environment, their analyses tend towards the quantification and mapping of the disproportionate environmental burdens that weigh upon communities of color. Both literatures neglect to examine the intersection of race and the environment from a phenomenological perspective. Our research intervenes in the literature by asking: (1) How is the environment implicated in conditioning racialized subjectivities? And (2) How do landscapes and environment impact the formation of collective identity and sense of belonging for African Americans? In this article, we focus on the lived experience of a generation of Black coal miners and their families, who migrated throughout the central Appalachian region during the twentieth century Great Migration. This study offers an empirical investigation into the “landscapes of meaning” that can emerge from the experience of racialized displacement from land and environment. Further, in documenting the lived experience of this group of African Americans, this study also counters the otherwise dominant narrative that portrays Appalachian people as hopeless, helpless, and homeless; and White. Data for this study are drawn from the EKAAMP collection, a community-driven participatory archive aimed at documenting the lives of African American coal miners and their families. This work offers three contributions: It (1) reinserts agency into the analysis of communities affected by extractive economies; (2) invigorates the productive tensions that underlie considerations of the inextricable linkages between environment and the phenomenological experience of racialization; and (3) reconsiders the long-standing historical intersections between environment, community, and race.

As our nation and our neighborhoods increasingly diversify, we should understand how to sustain integrated communities that are equally beneficial for all residents. Though our policies encourage diversity as a theoretical social good, we actually know little about what happens on the ground in multiethnic neighborhoods. We conduct a comparative case study of the only two Boston neighborhoods to have maintained at least 10% representation of four racial and ethnic groups over the past two decades. Using survey data and ethnographic field observations, we examine residents’ experiences in these two consistently multiethnic, yet very different, neighborhoods. We find that neighborhood socioeconomic and racial inequality and disadvantage matter for residents’ access to neighborhood resources and constraints, and their perceptions of sense of community. Notably, in the highly unequal South End, Whites and homeowners have greater access to amenities and have higher perceptions of sense of community in comparison to racial and ethnic minorities and renters. Socioeconomic disadvantage matters in Fields Corner, as evidenced by lower overall perceptions of sense of community and greater exposure to safety concerns among all groups in this neighborhood compared to residents of the South End. In the end, we argue that having multiple groups simply sharing neighborhood space over a stable period is not enough to overcome the social problems associated with residential segregation and isolation. In order to support equitable neighborhood integration amid the changing face of diversity, we should take cues from “diverse by direction” neighborhood models that include active organization and coalition building among dissimilar racial and ethnic groups.

Waves of migration to and flight from Atlanta by both White and Black residents and businesses have constantly imagined and re-imagined the city as both politically regressive and racially progressive, and from an environmental health perspective, as both a riskscape and a safe haven. We argue that the persistent racial, social, environmental, and health inequities in Atlanta have been fostered and exacerbated by the exponential growth of the city and the persistent rhetoric of it being “the city too busy to hate.” This paper is informed by extant research on housing and transportation policies and processes at work in Atlanta since the end of the Civil War, and in particular, the predatory and subprime lending practices during the past thirty years. This paper examines how young people, living in a neighborhood where over 50% of the houses are currently vacant and contending with threats of school closures, experience the contemporary foreclosure crisis. Using qualitative data from focus groups with middle school youth, this paper offers youth-informed perspectives and local knowledge by offering responses of marginalized populations in Atlanta who inhabit, rather than flee, their built and social environments.

W. E. B. Du Bois’s perspective on education was that the social and physical environments outside of schools matter to the learning that takes place inside schools. Existing research shows that due to environmental disparities in school and neighborhood contexts, Black and low-income children spend less time in activities that promote physical, cognitive, and social capabilities. These outside environmental factors influence the academic achievement gap. School gardens are noted as resources that capture the fluid environments between schools and neighborhoods. Little research, however, has quantitatively examined whether school gardens actually help to attenuate race and class inequality in academic achievement. We aim to determine how school gardens serve as gateways to help close the achievement gap. We analyze quantitative data on fifth graders’ math, reading, and science standardized test scores in Washington, DC with two main aims: (1) To compare differences between traditional schools and garden-based learning schools to determine whether students who have a school garden perform academically better than their counterparts; and (2) to examine whether the presence of a school garden plays a role in reducing race and social class disparities in academic achievement. We find that the presence of a school garden is associated with higher test scores and persists even when controlling for the race and class composition of students for reading and science. We conclude by discussing how school gardens can be used as a policy tool to create more environmental equity in urban areas.

The present-day location of public parks should be understood in the proper social and historical context of residential segregation and urban development. In Los Angeles, discriminatory practices such as restrictive covenants were used not only for housing, but also to maintain segregated recreational spaces. In addition, the economic changes that came as a result of White flight, suburbanization, and inner city job loss brought with it a reduction in local government resources, including funds for public parks. These changes to the urban landscape disproportionately impacted low-income immigrant communities, including Latino neighborhoods. Health disparities researchers are concerned with the inequitable distribution of parks and recreation facilities because it may contribute to disparities in physical inactivity and obesity, health risks that disproportionately impact Latinos. However, much of the literature investigating disparities in the built environment fails to include a racial analysis. The current study uses a Critical Race Theory framework to examine disparities in park availability in Los Angeles. We used a unique park dataset created in ArcGIS to carry out a county-wide assessment of the availability of park features at the neighborhood level. Data come from two sources, the Los Angeles County Location Management System, which includes information on specific park features (e.g., swimming pools, parks and gardens, recreation centers) and the American Community Survey, which includes neighborhood-level sociodemographic information. A zero-inflated negative binomial regression model was used to test whether Latino immigrant neighborhood characteristics are associated with the availability of park features in Los Angeles. Results indicate that Latino immigrant neighborhoods have limited park availability. The discussion situates these findings of inequitable distribution of park resources in the appropriate social and historical context of Latinos living in Los Angeles.