environmental racism research paper

• Open access
• Published: 17 November 2021

Pervasive structural racism in environmental epidemiology

• Melissa J. Perry   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5905-8149 1 ,
• Suzanne Arrington 1 ,
• Marlaina S. Freisthler 1 ,
• Ifeoma N. Ibe 1 ,
• Nathan L. McCray 1 ,
• Laura M. Neumann 1 ,
• Patrick Tajanlangit 1 &
• Brenda M. Trejo Rosas 1  

Environmental Health volume  20 , Article number:  119 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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Epistemological biases in environmental epidemiology prevent the full understanding of how racism’s societal impacts directly influence health outcomes. With the ability to focus on “place” and the totality of environmental exposures, environmental epidemiologists have an important opportunity to advance the field by proactively investigating the structural racist forces that drive disparities in health.

This commentary illustrates how environmental epidemiology has ignored racism for too long. Some examples from environmental health and male infertility are used to illustrate how failing to address racism neglects the health of entire populations.

While research on environmental justice has attended to the structural sources of environmental racism, this work has not been fully integrated into the mainstream of environmental epidemiology. Epidemiology’s dominant paradigm that reduces race to a mere data point avoids the social dimensions of health and thus fails to improve population health for all. Failing to include populations who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) in health research means researchers actually know very little about the effect of environmental contaminants on a range of population health outcomes. This commentary offers different practical solutions, such as naming racism in research, including BIPOC in leadership positions, mandating requirements for discussing “race”, conducting far more holistic analyses, increasing community participation in research, and improving racism training, to address the myriad of ways in which structural racism permeates environmental epidemiology questions, methods, results and impacts.

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Introduction

Currently, epistemological biases in environmental epidemiology prevent the full understanding of how racism’s societal impacts directly influence health outcomes. The field continues to parameterize conditions of communities of color [ 1 ] without recognizing that these social forces are in fact root causes of many disease etiologies. If public health researchers seek to achieve health equity for persons of all backgrounds, the impact of racism on health outcomes needs to be acknowledged, quantified, and addressed. This will require advancing paradigms that identify how racism affects both population health and the health research enterprise. To address racism in public health, our own racist structures need to be examined and dismantled.

Leading medical and public health institutions have long recognized that racism perpetuates health disparities [ 2 , 3 ]; numerous calls have been made over the last several decades to reform how race and racism are examined in epidemiology [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ]. These calls have largely been ignored [ 8 , 9 ], populations of color continue to be underrepresented in research, and structural factors that drive racial disparities endure. The tendency to attribute racial health differences to biology or genetics persists in studies published in today’s top journals [ 10 , 11 ] and were seen in early explanations for the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities [ 12 , 13 ].

Structural racism, consisting of societal forces, policies and institutions that interact to produce and maintain racial and ethnic inequities [ 14 ] is insidious. In addition to public health, it permeates the criminal justice system, labor, credit and housing markets, academia, and the health care sector [ 7 ]. It is at the core of why vast racial health disparities persist despite promises from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Healthy People goals, announced in 2000, to eliminate them by 2010 [ 15 ]. Today, the life expectancy of Black men is 8 years lower than women of other races, 6 years lower than Black women, and lower than all groups of men [ 16 , 17 , 18 ]. The 82.7 year life expectancy of U.S. Hispanics’ is higher than Non-Hispanic Whites’ (80.6 years) [ 19 ], however disaggregating these data reveal that U.S.-born Black, American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN), Other, or Multiple Race Hispanic adults have considerably lower life expectancy than U.S.-born White Hispanic adults [ 20 ]. AI/AN men and women have an overall life expectancy of 78.4 years [ 17 ], whereas life expectancy among Non-Hispanic AI/AN in or adjacent to federally-recognized tribal areas, a demographic that is less subject to racial misclassification, is markedly lower, at 71.1 years [ 21 ]. Differences in health and health outcomes by race have been attributed in part to language and cultural barriers, lack of access to care, and lack of health insurance [ 22 ] and can persist despite accounting for socioeconomic status [ 7 ]. That many communities of color are burdened by adverse health outcomes such as cardiovascular disease, infant mortality, diabetes, and certain cancers at much higher rates than Whites has been documented for decades but these disparities have not been fully explained let alone eliminated [ 7 , 18 ].

It has long been recognized that the social construct of race is inextricably linked with environment [ 23 ] and that geography is central to the process of racialization [ 24 , 25 ]. Using geography to socially segment people is a fundamental implement of racism [ 26 ]. With the ability to focus on “place” and the totality of environmental exposures, environmental epidemiologists have an important opportunity to advance the field by proactively investigating the structural racist forces that drive disparities in health. Place matters; structural racism cannot be dismantled until the full effect of place on health is realized, and environmental health is inherently positioned to interrogate it. Therefore, the evaluation and dismantling of structural racism should be an environmental health research imperative.

The objective of this commentary is to provide a detailed evaluation of how structural racism affects environmental health and epidemiology, reviewing how it impacts public health education and its research pipeline; research subject matter, funding, methodology, and publication; and the translation of research into policy and practice. We use a few examples from our own research in male infertility to illustrate how failing to include diverse populations in epidemiologic research perpetuates systemic disparities in health. These examples are followed by recommended solutions to remove racist assumptions from public health research.

The problem in environmental health research

For over four decades environmental health scholars have documented how structural racism drives disproportionate siting of industrial pollution facilities near communities of color [ 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 ], however this dark legacy continues. Nationally, Black children are still more exposed to lead than children of other racial groups [ 31 ]. Native Americans bear increased environmental exposure burden from the impact of the mining industry in many western states [ 32 ]. Asian, Hispanic, and Black Americans bear a disproportionately high air pollution burden and are more likely to experience environmental exposures through drinking water compared to White Americans [ 33 , 34 ]. The combination of these and other disproportionate exposures have contributed to higher body burdens of many toxins in communities of color, including lead and other heavy metals, polychlorinated biphenyls, particulate matter, and phthalates [ 35 ]. Epidemiologic and toxicologic data have long documented the adverse impact of these toxins on neurological, endocrine, respiratory, and cardiovascular health, and multiple survey studies have reported that BIPOC populations are concerned about their high exposures to environmental pollution [ 36 , 37 , 38 ].

Environmental justice (EJ) literature is replete with examples depicting the burden of structural environmental racism on the exposures and health of people of color [ 33 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 ]. Morello-Frosch and colleagues [ 46 ] found that Southern California Asian, African American and Latino residents were significantly more likely to live near toxic facilities and had higher lifetime cancer risks than White residents. Longitudinal analyses revealed that these facilities were almost always sited in existing communities of color, disproving a “minority move in” hypothesis [ 46 ]. Tessum and colleagues [ 47 ] found that nationally, Blacks and Hispanics had a 56 and 63% average PM 2.5 pollution burden respectively, relative to their consumption of goods, whereas Whites had a minus 17% average PM 2.5 exposure burden relative to their consumption. Other leading environmental health researchers have documented the impact of neighborhood-based exposures on psychosocial stress, an important mediator for many health outcomes [ 49 ] and the contribution of urban revitalization and gentrification to environmental inequity [ 48 ].

Unfortunately, these and other EJ studies are the exceptions to the rule within the broader field of environmental health and epidemiology, possibly because EJ and environmental health originate from different movements. Though environmental health is a long and storied discipline, modern environmental health developed out of widespread environmental concern following the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962, which ushered in a new era of Western environmentalism that recognized critical connections between the environment and human health [ 50 ]. The environmental justice movement on the other hand originated out of the American Civil Rights movement when its leaders turned an eye toward environmental injustices. Civil rights leaders recognized that Black people were disproportionately affected by pollution but were never included in the modern environmentalism agenda [ 51 ]. Thus, the environmental justice movement was not an offshoot of the environmental movement but rather a response to how White and exclusionary mainstream environmentalism was at the time.

This history can in part explain why, outside of the environmental justice context, the term “racism” is scarcely mentioned in prominent environmental health journals and few studies in these journals have featured BIPOC. The studies that have featured majority-populations of color have been impactful. Rauh and colleagues’ longitudinal studies documenting the adverse neurological impacts of prenatal exposure to toxic chlorpyrifos among low-income Black and Dominican children received widespread attention and have contributed to regulatory action [ 52 , 53 ]; in 2020 a ban on sales in both California and the E.U. took effect [ 54 , 55 ]. This BIPOC cohort is one of the few regularly accessed in high impact environmental epidemiology journals.

Male infertility as an illustration

The impact of environmental exposures on male infertility is just one example of how structural racism can be found at the juncture of epidemiology and environmental health, and how it perpetuates health disparities. Human semen, in addition to being an indicator of fertility potential, is an informative marker of general health, and poor semen quality is related to comorbidity and mortality risk [ 56 , 57 , 58 ]. Major multi-decade declines in Western sperm counts [ 59 ] have received worldwide attention. However almost all that is known about population sperm health comes from White men only and a paucity of U.S. and other Western data exist on the basic semen parameters of men of color [ 60 , 61 ]. The few studies examining this question have reported lower semen values among Black men compared to other racial and ethnic groups [ 60 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 ]. Most of these studies have not ventured to hypothesize why such differences exist, while others have offered cursory genetic or cultural explanations [ 60 , 64 ]. Environmental toxins including lead, pesticides, air pollution and plasticizers [ 66 , 67 , 68 , 69 ] are suspected of affecting global sperm declines, yet very few men of color are recruited into reproductive health studies despite having higher body burdens of these chemicals [ 35 ] brought upon by decades of environmental racism. Such omissions foster a vast knowledge gap in which researchers know very little about the effect of contaminants on sperm profiles, and by extension the fertility experience of men of color.

The dearth of knowledge about the sperm health of men of color is the consequence of structural factors. In setting the current reference parameters for categorically “normal” sperm values, the World Health Organization (WHO) evaluated studies of men with proven fertility from Australia, France, Denmark, Finland, Scotland, Norway and the United States ( n  = 1953 [ 70 ]). Only one of these studies, conducted in the United States, reported on racial variation in its study population, mentioning that fertile non-White men had lower semen volume than fertile White men [ 71 ]. Although the WHO acknowledged that the studies it evaluated overlooked populations of color [ 70 ], the ramifications are important: current global standards for determining normal versus abnormal semen parameters are based almost entirely on White men and have been used for more than a decade in assisted reproduction treatment clinics worldwide.

Many sperm health studies sample from In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) clinics that are more likely to see men from higher socioeconomic backgrounds who also tend to be White. This phenomenon of “stratified reproduction” has hidden the infertility experiences of BIPOC, including of Black, Latinx, and Arab Americans [ 72 ]. The rare efforts that have been made to recruit racially diverse and community-based populations [ 65 , 71 , 73 , 74 ] need to be replicated so that study findings are more generalizable to diverse populations, which can increase opportunities to improve treatments and health outcomes for currently underserved populations [ 75 , 76 ].

Though they are rarely included in fertility studies, BIPOC communities are actively targeted for HIV and other sexually transmitted disease (STD) studies. While the HIV mortality rate among Black men is nine times that of White men [ 18 ], it isn’t known whether BIPOC men are at higher risk for infertility or non-infectious reproductive diseases. The disproportionate focus on recruiting BIPOC men as HIV/AIDS research participants while not including them in fertility studies is stigmatizing and demonstrates structural biases in the research process that will require purposeful efforts to deconstruct. The term “reproductive health” should not convey “STD/HIV” for populations of color and “fertility” for White populations.

The call for greater inclusion of BIPOC in male reproductive health studies comes while also acknowledging the long history of exploitation of these communities in medical research. The U.S. Public Health Service’s 40 year Tuskegee Syphilis Study conducted on Black American sharecroppers and the Indian Health Service’s efforts in the 1960s and 70s to sterilize Native Americans are two historical examples in a long legacy of egregious research misconduct [ 77 , 78 ]. Mistrust of clinical research among marginalized communities of color is well-documented, manifesting as beliefs that it may be conducted without knowledge or consent, on unwilling participants, or that it may increase risk of harm from medical treatments and procedures [ 79 , 80 , 81 , 82 ]. One study found that Black American mistrust in physicians and clinical research remained significant after accounting for sociodemographic variables such as income or education [ 79 ]. The origins of this mistrust are well documented [ 83 ], and are a major barrier to health research participation for BIPOC communities [ 84 ] largely due to centuries in which the biomedical enterprise took advantage of powerless people who were often of color and poor.

Male infertility is simply one illustration among many  health disparities that are poorly understood because of structural racism in epidemiology and environmental health. There are many examples of how environmental racism likewise affects populations of women of color, including Black women [ 85 , 86 , 87 ]. The environmental impacts on sperm health are highlighted here because of the years we have spent studying this issue. The next sections unpack how structural racism is manifest and how discriminatory beliefs, implicit or explicit, have framed public health.

Manifestation of the problem - White perspectives are centered

Structural racism emanates from systems that are homogenous and poorly diversified. In epidemiology, White identity is normative [ 88 ] while “the minority” is an afterthought. White normativity is so engrained in public health research that White is reflexively selected as the referent group in statistical analysis without consideration of the purpose or effect of the choice. This is not entirely surprising, given that students and faculty of color are woefully underrepresented in public health training [ 89 ], and accredited public health degrees have minimal requirements to educate about racism and the social determinants of health [ 90 ]. Several popular introductory epidemiology texts devote zero to only a few pages to discussing race or the social determinants of health [ 91 , 92 ], and the historical systems of oppression that underpin these determinants are often missing entirely.

White normativity results in a research culture in which the BIPOC American health experience is poorly understood and marginalized BIPOC populations are systematically neglected [ 88 ]. This neglect extends to research teams. A 2012 National Institutes of Health (NIH) working group report revealed that Black, Hispanic or Latino, AI/AN, and Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders made up 1.1, 3.5, 0.2, and 0.1% of NIH principal investigators on research project grants, despite encompassing 12.6, 16.3, 0.9 and 0.2% of the U.S. population, respectively [ 93 , 94 ]. NIH also found that four and 10 % fewer R01 applications were funded for Asian and Black applicants, respectively ( p  < 0.001), than for White applicants when all qualifications were equal. Trends were similar, though not as stark, for Hispanic applicants [ 95 ]. The NIH attributed the Black and White applicant award gap in part to reviewers disfavoring research at the community and population level [ 96 ]. International ethical standards for scholarly publication devote one sentence to diversity and inclusion [ 97 ]. White professionals serve as the primary gatekeepers to publication [ 98 , 99 ], the leading currency by which scholarly success is evaluated.

These underpinnings of White as normative contribute to the continued lack of inclusion of populations of color in large cohorts [ 94 ], the absence of their control in what and how research questions are posed, and the major deficits in knowledge about racial health disparities. Of the more than 10,000 cancer clinical trials funded by the National Cancer Institute in 2013, less than 2% specifically focused on minority patients despite higher cancer prevalence in these populations [ 75 ]. Less than 5% of all NIH-funded studies on respiratory disease reported the inclusion of minority participants [ 100 ]. Despite multifactorial barriers to participation in medical research, including mistrust [ 78 , 84 ], there is evidence that BIPOC express a willingness to participate in health studies at rates similar to non-Hispanic Whites [ 101 ]. Thus, the ultimate responsibility for persistent and vast knowledge gaps lies with researchers.

The lack of stable funding also presents a major barrier to enduring health disparity research. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) directed the Division of Extramural Research and Training to provide targeted EJ funding opportunities, primarily through R01, R25, and U45 grants, with a total of 155 grants awarded between 1994 to 2012 [ 102 ]. While NIEHS’ EJ funding has contributed substantially to the understanding of disproportionate exposures experienced by communities of color [ 1 , 103 , 104 , 105 ], funding and science agency priorities are subject to the political preferences of each federal administration [ 106 ] such that the investments in EJ research and its promotion have declined in recent years. The interests of marginalized communities are insufficiently integrated into mainstream science and academia and are continuously at risk of being curtailed by unsympathetic administrations [ 106 ].

Underlying factors – lack of focus on structural racism

White normativity is not the only structural barrier impeding a more comprehensive understanding of racial health disparities. In modern epidemiology, researchers utilize scientific examination and quantification of biological and environmental phenomena to explain specific disease states in individuals [ 107 ]. Although the race variable is often used in public health research, many researchers and journals fail or refuse to interrogate racism as a critical driver of health inequities [ 108 , 109 , 110 ] or address its effects on their findings [ 111 ]. The hyper positivist tradition that avoids the social dimensions of health has stifled epidemiology’s ability to improve population health for all, and it all too often relies myopically on empirical methods that reduce race to a data point [ 1 , 112 ]. Consequently, differences in health outcomes with discernible racial associations have been characterized, intentionally or through neglect, as biological distinctiveness [ 11 ].

Attempts in epidemiology to account for race statistically often do so ineffectively [ 113 , 114 , 115 ]. A 2004 review of all articles published in top epidemiological journals from 1996 to 1999 ( n  = 1198) found that 919 articles (77%) referred to race or ethnicity, but in studies identifying a race variable ( n  = 787), 57% did not state its purpose and 49% failed to state a statistical rationale for its inclusion [ 113 ]. Causal explanations for racial disparities are rarely examined [ 116 ]. Disparate exposure to environmental toxins is often discussed without being contextualized with respect to discriminatory origins, such as legally sanctioned segregated housing practices [ 117 , 118 ]. Other frameworks that have attempted to capture the effects of lifetime exposures on health, such as the exposome [ 119 ] and socio exposome [ 120 ], incorporate exposures that are byproducts of structural racism, yet rarely mention racism as a driver [ 121 ]. For decades numerous researchers have challenged epidemiology to reassess how race and racism are conceptualized, measured, and explained [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 114 , 122 , 123 ]. Although methods seeking the causal link between race and health and disease are evolving [ 124 , 125 ], the calls to name racism have not been realized [ 9 ].

Using biology alone to explain health disparities is an example of biological determinism [ 126 ], used historically to justify assertions of the mental inferiority of women [ 127 , 128 ], the intellectual inferiority of immigrants [ 129 ], and the genetic inferiority of non-Whites [ 130 ] and economically impoverished people [ 131 ]. When public health researchers and practitioners reduce disparate health outcomes between White and BIPOC populations to biology without interpreting why or how the social construction of race drives these differences, the implication is that BIPOC are biologically inferior. Whether a result of flawed methodology or conceptual barriers in the field that discourage comprehensive investigation [ 132 ], these shallow characterizations are detrimental. Many social scientists have demonstrated that race is a social construct that was formed to uphold White supremacy and justify the subjugation of non-White populations through colonialism and enslavement [ 108 , 133 ]. Racial categories were based on superficial phenotypic differences, and “race and racism recruited biology” to explain these differences [ 133 ]. Biological determinism has been refuted by modern scientists [ 126 ] but its pervasiveness in epidemiology is an important example of structural racism in public health. A limited focus on individual risk factors allows public health to justify the circumstances of those marginalized by inequity as “necessary and beyond our control” and disengages the field from social policy solutions aimed at advancing equity [ 131 ].

With researchers entrenched in a positivist approach [ 134 ] and lacking adequate training to analyze racism as a “cause of causes” [ 135 ], racism has been narrowly framed as an individual attribute rather than a structural barrier to health [ 112 ]. Analysis of racism as a health predictor is becoming more frequent but still often limited to “interpersonal acts of discrimination” [ 110 ] and discussions of structural racism are rare [ 9 ]. Hardeman’s 2018 systematic review of the 249 highest impact journals spanning six public health categories found 25 U.S. articles published between 2002 and 2015 that mentioned structural forms of racism in the title/abstract [ 9 ]. Rare attempts to elucidate structural racism as a root cause of environmental health disparities [ 136 ] have at times led to backlash [ 137 ], resulting in authors needing to divert their scholarship to address detractors and defend their work [ 138 ]. The bar for legitimizing the study of racism in health research remains simply too high.

Ramifications

Exclusion of BIPOC researchers and participants and lack of depth in considering race and racism in environmental health and epidemiology have harmful consequences on environmental health protections for all. Analyses supporting biological bases for racial health disparities still emerge in top journals [ 109 ] even where an environmental basis might be more probable [ 139 , 140 ]. Theories that poor health results from genetic differences have eugenic undertones and ramifications beyond only population health. For example, among White medical students and residents ( n  = 222), approximately 50% believed at least one false statement that Blacks were biologically different from Whites with respect to aging, nerve ending sensitivity, skin thickness, fertility, or other measures [ 8 , 141 ], which affected their ability to assign proper pain control treatments to Black patients in a hypothetical scenario [ 141 ]. These and other forms of bias, stereotypes, and prejudice in health care settings influence the experiences and care of patients of color and contribute, along with a myriad of other structural factors, to existing racial and ethnic health disparities [ 3 ]. Using biological explanations for racial differences based on the social construct of race is illogical, irresponsible, and misplaced in scientific discourse [ 109 ].

Because environmental health research informs health policy, the structures of racism also affect health policy translation and environmental health policy, which have long been hampered by overt and implicit racial injustices [ 142 , 143 ]. Failure to critically evaluate racism in environmental health research can result in deficient federal and state environmental protections for communities who are disproportionately affected [ 143 , 144 ]. Recent public health disasters such as the Flint, Michigan lead contamination crisis demonstrate the widespread impacts of regulatory inaction on environmental hazards largely affecting poor and BIPOC communities [ 144 , 145 ].

Redressing structural racism in environmental epidemiology will require implementation of systemic remedies at all levels of education and research. A variety of proposed solutions are considered herein. Implementation of these or similar countermeasures have the potential to shape the field into one that embraces antiracism as a cornerstone. While not exhaustive, this short list provides a practical starting point toward impactful change.

Acknowledge racism in public health research

As a matter of course, research in environmental health and epidemiology should address the manner in which pervasive, historical and entrenched discrimination affects multiple pathways across the life course and the lived realities of marginalized populations [ 146 ]. This requires a willingness to include racism as a factor in health outcomes and clearly recognize it in publications [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 122 ] even where it cannot be precisely explained or quantified [ 147 ]. Specifically in environmental health, structural racism, already established as a determinant of health [ 122 , 148 ], should be classified as an exposure.

Beyond simply interrogating racism, researchers should consider and name the way additional systems of oppression intersect to impact health outcomes. Intersectionality, which describes how the intersection of social identities at the micro level, such as race, class, gender, and disability interact with the macro-level structures of poverty, racism and sexism [ 149 ], is another prism to evaluate systems of oppression. Incorporating intersectionality into existing environmental health frameworks, like the exposome, to evaluate the impacts of exposures across the lifespan promises to enhance the field’s understanding of how systems of oppression cause health inequities [ 150 ]. Innovative work has focused on intersectionality and the exposome in the context of women’s reproductive health [ 150 ], and more work is needed in male reproductive health and in other health issues that affect disadvantaged populations at the intersections of race, gender, and class.

Include affected communities in decision-making

It is imperative that BIPOC scholars are in leadership positions such as service on scientific advisory boards, grant review panels, journal editorial boards and tenured professorships. BIPOC communities bear the legacy of structural environmental racism and are leading many efforts to rectify health disparities, yet significant representation is notably absent from the upper echelons of academia. A scholarship pipeline must be created to promote researchers from these communities. “Diversity and inclusion” statements must be more than just symbolic; they must represent a recruitment mindset that the inclusion of those with a vast array of lived experiences enriches an organization and its scholarship. One concrete solution to hold institutions accountable is to call for the publication of their leadership demographic data, which can ensure institutions recognize and reconcile existing inequities. Organizations should publicly commit to bold hiring targets that prioritize BIPOC inclusion into leadership spaces and create an inclusive rather than exclusive environment that encourages joint learning.

Develop requirements and standards for discussing “race” in research

Funding sources and journals should outline requirements on how race and ethnicity can be used to guide researchers in experimental design, data analysis, and manuscript preparation. Manuscripts that evaluate racial/ethnic differences or health inequities should explicitly define how race was measured and specify the rationale for including it in the study design. This solution will aid in removing the harmful use of race to explain biological differences [ 151 ]. Guidelines such as these have been adopted by the journal Psychology of Addictive Behaviors , which requires empirical manuscripts to report on sex/gender and race/ethnicity of the included samples [ 152 ]. Their guidelines specify that “examination of race and ethnicity should not be reified as a biological factor and authors should incorporate and explicitly discuss how race and ethnicity may be proxy measures for structural racism” [ 152 ]. To be effective, accountability for requirements such as these should apply to grant and manuscript authors and to reviewers [ 109 ]. Importantly, researchers need to rethink current statistical modeling approaches that reflexively assign White race as the reference value, a research method that distills White normativity, shifting the focus of research from the inherent advantages of Whiteness to perceived deficiencies in BIPOC communities and inviting an opportunity to amplify existing structural racism rather than elucidating and dismantling it.

Embrace a more holistic approach to analysis

Researchers need to incorporate structural racism as part of the exposome and should consider other frameworks, such as Life Course Health Development [ 153 ] which Gee and colleagues [ 154 , 155 ] have used to highlight the effect of racism and discrimination on health across life stages. Environmental health research is painstaking in evaluating the effect of chemical exposures at various life stages of development and critical windows of exposure. As exposure to a specific chemical has differential impacts on an individual’s health depending on life stage [ 156 , 157 ], racism can be considered similarly, as affecting health differently depending on developmental stage [ 154 ]. A comprehensive approach needs enlightened research perspectives. This requires moving beyond the strict disciplinary boundaries epidemiologists often uphold, and creating multidisciplinary research teams that include experts from different social science disciplines such as anthropology, demography, geography, psychology, and sociology.

Partner with community members to conduct research

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) strives to empower study participants by giving them a say in how and what research is conducted [ 158 , 159 , 160 ]. Use of CBPR methods to build BIPOC cohorts [ 1 , 136 ] is crucial but remains underutilized in environmental health research. CBPR includes qualitative methods and reliance on community expertise to inform researchers, empower communities, and build trust [ 1 , 136 ]; it deserves prioritization and widespread endorsement as a leading environmental health framework. Through CBPR, researchers are challenged not only to recognize health inequities associated with social, economic, and environmental racism but also to work with affected populations to create actionable solutions [ 158 ]. For instance, male reproductive health researchers could partner with community organizations to design studies that not only include more diverse cohorts outside the traditional IVF setting, but seek a better understanding of the fertility views and needs of that community. National reports and funding initiatives have called for a more comprehensive and integrated approach to conducting research by actively involving marginalized communities [ 161 , 162 ], and it is past time for environmental health practitioners to incorporate these measures to dismantle structural racism. Institutions should encourage and incentivize collaboration between researchers and social scientists versed in CBPR who can facilitate healthy relationships with community groups.

Researchers should also prioritize the needs of participants so that participants do not feel exploited and information is exchanged to benefit all stakeholders, as trust among researchers and participants is paramount. A key feature of participatory research is that it preserves the expertise of community members and uses it to advance research priorities within vulnerable and marginalized communities.

Improve training for researchers and students

To dismantle racist structures, public health professionals need the ability to identify and analyze the impact of racism. Antiracism literacy must be a foundational skill taught throughout public health education [ 122 ]. The Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH)'s foundation competencies should demand not just a narrow assessment identifying racism as a factor impacting health equity, but a curriculum informed by antiracism and a diverse body of educators. Public health institutions must ensure that their built-in systems do not perpetuate racism, their teaching materials encompass BIPOC communities, and practices such as “cluster hiring” are implemented to effectively and strategically diversify faculties [ 163 ]. Public health education will also benefit from adopting intersectionality as a critical praxis.

Training students and researchers in antiracist literacy may be challenging, but completing courses is a viable approach [ 164 ] and competency should be regularly maintained as is required with other competencies (e.g., health information privacy, laboratory safety, sexual harassment, etc.). A multitude of validated racial and cultural literacy self-assessment tools are available [ 165 , 166 ] as are an abundance of antiracism resources for students and researchers to take in outside of the classroom [ 167 ]. These issues are not new, and a body of literature exists educating practitioners about structural racism [ 108 , 168 , 169 ]. Antiracism learning in environmental health should be supported as a model of lifelong professional development.

The core of environmental health lies in eliminating environmental burdens for all, a legacy of which exists in BIPOC communities. Environmental health is ideally positioned to lead in improving analysis of structural racism as a barrier to health equity. But to do so, the field needs to also examine the way its structures may contribute to inequities, and demonstrate an active willingness to change. The impact of these structures is not unique to environmental health and epidemiology but they limit advances in scientific understanding of environmental components of health disparities, including those related to male reproductive health. Fortunately, the tools and strategies that scholars have long offered provide approaches to account for race, place, and the structural racist forces that have contributed to decades of population health disparities and knowledge gaps. It is past time for researchers to embrace these approaches, and the field of environmental health is uniquely positioned to advance them.

Availability of data and materials

Not applicable.

Abbreviations

American Indian/Alaska Native

Coronavirus infectious disease 2019

Black, Indigenous, and people of color

Environmental Justice

Community-Based Participatory Research

World Health Organization

In-Vitro Fertilization

Human Immunodeficiency Virus

Sexually transmitted disease

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome

National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

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Acknowledgements

We thank reviewers and editors who provided thoughtful comments on prior versions of the manuscript. As researchers in environmental health, we recognize some of the many authors whose work informed this commentary. They have previously called upon public health to take greater strides in evaluating the impact of structural racism on human health, and include but are not limited to: Madina Agénor, Collins O Airhihenbuwa, Zinzi D Bailey, Elizabet A Baker, Mary T Bassett, Jehonathan Ben, Terressa A Benz, Lisa Bowleg, Rhea W Boyd, Rachel Brahinsky, Elizabeth Brondolo, Robert J Brulle, Bunyan Bryant, Robert D Bullard, Natasha Bumpass, Heather H Burris, Joan A Casey, Jayajit Chakraborty, Jane E Clougherty, Timothy W Collins, John Cooper, Lara Cushing, Nida Denson, Jessie K Edwards, Keith Elder, Amanuel Elias, Michal A Elovitz, Chandra L Ford, Asia Friedman, Kurt Fristup, Jennifer Jee-Lyn Garcia, Danielle R Gartner, Gilbert Gee; Keon L Gilbert, Jasmine Graves, Sara E Grineski, Derek M Griffith, Arpana Gupta, Rachel R. Hardeman, Christopher D Heaney, Anna Hing, Joseph Hoover, Peter James, Bill M Jesdale, Camara Phylllis Jones, J’Mag Karbeah, Margaret Kelaher, Haresh Kirpalani, Lindsay Konkel, Katy Kozhinannil, Nancy Krieger, Thomas A LaVeist, Catherine Lee, Johnnye Lewis, Edwin G Lindo, Natalia Linos, Raoul S Liévanos, Scott A Lorch, Debra MacKenzie, Chantel L Martin, Monica R McLemore, Eduardo M Medina, Daniel J Mennit, Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern, Paul Mohai, Selina Mohammed, Seema Mohapatra, Danielle X Morales, Rachel Morello-Frosch, Charles Muntaner, Katy A Murphy, Shawna M Nadybal, Anthony Nardone, Grace A Noppert, Elizabeth L Ogburn, Yin Paradies, Manuel Pastor Jr., Devon Payne-Sturges, David N Pellow, Alex Pieterse, Naomi Priest, Carlos Porras, V Paul Poteat, Laura Pulido, DeWayne M Pursley, Rashawn Ray, Kara E Rudolph, James Sadd, Jane Sasser, Bhavna Shamasunder, Mienah Zulfacar Sharif, Shivan Shetty, Arjumand Siddiqi, Marilyn Snipes, Lisa B Spanierman, Derrick C Tabor, Brianna N VanNoy, Katrina M Walsemann, Lachelle D Weeks, David R. Williams, Omega Wilson, Sacoby Wilson, Willie Jamal Wright, Ruqaiijah Yearby, Lauren Zalla, and Ami R Zota.

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• Published: 07 April 2022

AIR POLLUTION IMPACTS

Systemic environmental racism exposed

• Dena Montague   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0743-0575 1  

Nature Sustainability volume  5 ,  pages 462–463 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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A short window of opportunity during the COVID-19 economic shutdown provides striking evidence of environmental disparity.

At a time when environmental justice advances as a field, precisely assessing the disproportionate impact of pollutant emissions on communities of colour has proven difficult because exposure to pollution is strongly correlated with socioeconomic variables. Communities of colour is a commonly used term in the United States to describe Black, Latinx, Asian and Indigenous communities. Under normal conditions, the long history of institutional racism couched in legal discrimination limiting access to housing, and an overrepresentation of polluting enterprises operating in or near communities of colour cannot be disentangled from the polluting impact of the local economy. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic opened a unique and valuable research opportunity to study what happens in terms of pollution exposure when turning the state economy ‘off’. Writing in Nature Sustainability , Richard Bluhm and colleagues 1 report how they innovatively took advantage of the strict COVID-19 economic shutdown in California to separate the confounding effects of socioeconomic factors from pollution. Their analysis shows that the everyday functioning of the economy as a whole, not just local conditions, contributes to the disproportionate impact of pollution on communities of colour in California.

Environmental justice research typically consists of spatial analyses largely focused on specific emission sources 2 . Quantitative environmental justice studies are predominantly measures of the impact of a local polluter on an adjacent neighbourhood or census tract 3 . Census tracts are statistical subdivisions of a county for the purpose of demographic comparison. A census tract has a population between 1,800 and 8,000, with an average population of 4,000 people. Environmental activism is primarily focused on protesting the construction of highly polluting industries in local communities 4 . The groundbreaking work of Pastor et al 5 . in 2005 pushed quantitative research to develop a broader type of geographic analysis including mobile sources rather than keeping a focus on proximity. Bluhm and colleagues were privy to the unique circumstances of the COVID-19 economic shutdown, which allowed them to expand the reach of previous studies, to analyse the impact of pollution in the entire state of California.

Bluhm and colleagues used the strict COVID-19-related economic shutdown in California as a period of ‘intervention’ to analyse the impact of the drastic reduction of emissions on communities of colour. They measured pre- and post-shutdown air quality (January to April 2019 and 2020) as a way to evaluate systemic racism and environmental injustice in California. They found that levels of particulate matter with a diameter of less than 2.5 μm (PM2.5) and nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ) emissions produced primarily by transportation and agricultural activity declined at a larger rate in Latinx and Asian communities than in wealthy white communities. Remarkably, this was true even though residents of low income, primarily Latinx communities, drove more than those in wealthy neighbourhoods during the shutdown, as many of them were probably frontline workers, and therefore were responsible for higher levels of transport emissions. In addition, they found that although Latinx communities have lower income levels than Asian communities, both Latinx and Asian communities had similar levels of reduction, which lends more weight to their conclusion that systemic racism is a major factor. They did not observe a similar reduction rate of pollution in Black communities. This could be due to the smaller and less concentrated Black population in California, of 7% versus 39% Latinx and 16% Asian, and could also demonstrate that factors other than the in-person economy, such as current and historical bias in policy, may be primarily responsible for the pollution burden for Black communities in the state. The authors conclude that the air pollution reduction for Latinx and Asian communities was not caused by the impact of local factors. The functioning of the whole of California’s economy has a disproportionate polluting impact on these communities, despite local conditions.

The data used in the analysis were collected from California Air Resources Board (CARB) air monitors, a network of monitors introduced by the State of California, combined with Purple Air Monitors, which are installed voluntarily by resident citizen scientists. In addition, satellite data were collected to measure NO 2 levels. This unique combination of data helped to account for the likely bias owing to the location of the air monitors. While accounting for shortcomings, the study raises awareness about the need for greater care and mindfulness of monitor placement to produce more accurate data of air quality in underserved communities.

The work by Bluhm and co-authors will stimulate new approaches to studying air pollution that allow us to understand why and how regional activity has a disproportionate impact on communities of colour. Although attention tends to focus on local environmental hazards, this research demonstrates that the whole economic system can have a substantial disproportionate impact on communities of colour. It reinforces the need for a holistic approach to economic planning that takes into consideration the fact that disproportionate pollution generation is not just a local issue. It calls for a reassessment of risk, cost and distributive impacts within current regulatory practices.

The US Environmental Protection Agency is currently discussing the changes needed to better address environmental justice — including proposed measures and strategies that eliminate race in the way vulnerable communities are identified 6 . Against this backdrop, the work by Bluhm and colleagues is particularly important, as it provides a causal link between systemic racism and pollution. The study clearly shows that if policymakers shy away from using race as a factor and instead only use income, unemployment rate and proximity to environmental hazards as variables to identify vulnerable communities they will fail to effectively identify communities in need and take the appropriate measures to equalize pollution impact. Bluhm and colleagues demonstrate that income disparity remains an important indicator of environmental risk, yet race and ethnicity are stronger determinants. These are striking findings that could only be produced under the unique circumstances of the shutdown. The study asserts the importance of re-envisioning a state economy that at its core is intentional about the broad, yet equitable reduction of pollutants, in addition to focusing on targeted local environmental justice interventions. Importantly, the authors propose a useful equation based on their findings that could effectively be employed by policymakers to balance the impact of pollutants, so that a broad reduction of pollution does not retain disparities. Their model could enhance current cost–benefit analysis by providing a more robust analysis of the disparate impact of environmental hazards, while recognizing the important role of race and ethnicity. Specifically for California, their proposed model could be added as a mechanism to enhance the work of the California Bureau of Environmental Justice so they can have an additional tool to create a more precise approach to understanding the share of environmental hazards in communities.

Bluhm, R. et al. Nat. Sustain. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00856-1 (2022).

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Friedman, L. White House takes aim at environmental racism, but won’t mention race. The New York Times (February 2022); https://go.nature.com/37oZJ64

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Montague, D. Systemic environmental racism exposed. Nat Sustain 5 , 462–463 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00875-y

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Building more epistemically inclusive and environmentally equitable universities

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Higher educational institutions tend to draw from mainstream approaches to environmentalism that reinforce race, class, and gender hierarchies around who constitutes “an environmentalist” and what activities constitute “environmentalism.” As a result, students of color and students from other marginalized backgrounds who often experience environmental degradation and catastrophe firsthand do not often see their experiences reflected in universities’ environmental programming, curricula, or research. Furthermore, faculty and staff who center issues of race, equity, power, and justice when addressing environmental topics tend to work in isolation from one another and their efforts are not well-coordinated. In this paper, we draw from the concept of “epistemic exclusion” (Settles et al. J Divers High Educ 14:493, 2021 ; J High Educ 93:31–55, 2022 ) to explain hidden biases that systematically devalue scholarship that does not fit mainstream parameters. We describe a research project focused on building more equity-centered environmental efforts at the University of California, Santa Cruz. We find that faculty and staff across divisions want to engage in more epistemically inclusive and equity-centered environmental work, but lack the institutional support and resources (e.g., knowledge, funding, time, incentives) to do so. Interestingly, only a few responses focused on the barriers and biases related to epistemic exclusion. Our findings suggest that more awareness is needed to identify, analyze, and challenge these less visible barriers to substantively work towards greater inclusivity in environmentalism.

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Introduction

In institutions of higher education, environmentalism is commonly understood through a mainstream lens, one that generally presumes an idea of “non-human nature,” in which humans are separate from nature and wilderness is a site for romantic contemplation (Packer 2010 ), recreation (Braun 2003 ), and preservation (Guha 1989 ). In his influential essay “The Trouble with Wilderness,” environmental historian William Cronon ( 1996 ) articulates the ways such conceptualizations reinforce whiteness, class privilege, settler colonialism, and masculinity—notions deeply rooted in US nation-making and contemporary politics and policy (see also Purdy 2015 ). Reification of “pristine” nature dismisses the importance of working landscapes and urban spaces and the people and livelihoods associated with them (Cronon 1996 ). Mainstream environmentalism also sets up racial and gendered profiles of what constitutes “an environmentalist” that are held widely today. In a national study, Pearson et al. ( 2018 ) found broad consensus as to who constitutes an environmentalist: members of all racial, ethnic, and class backgrounds surveyed described an environmentalist as white, wealthy, highly educated, and young. In addition, both white and non-white respondents disassociated non-whites from environmentalists, despite the fact that people of color reported significantly higher levels of environmental concern, on average (Pearson et al. 2018 : 12431).

In addition to privileging certain spaces and groups of people, mainstream environmentalism also amplifies certain forms of knowledge and knowledge holders as those best positioned to address ecological degradation. As Overland and Sovacool ( 2020 ) show, western countries center natural science viewpoints and environmental innovation focuses on quantitative knowledge and technological advancement. In fields like conservation or ecological science and adjacent fields (climate/atmospheric-, geo-, earth-sciences), “problems” and “solutions” are defined in narrow, technical terms, with problems perceived as identifiable, measurable, and therefore solvable (Latour 1999 ). Large-scale social processes like colonial expropriation and racial capitalism that shape both nature and society are often understood to be beyond the scope of such scientific studies and thus understudied or ignored (Lövbrand et al. 2020 ; Walker 2007 ). Similarly, mainstream environmental undergraduate curricula heavily favor the natural sciences over the social sciences and humanities (Strang 2007 ) and often do not examine the inequalities being exacerbated by the Western world’s response, or lack thereof, to various environmental crises (Ferreira 2017 ). This elevates Western forms of environmental knowledge production (e.g., quantitative, scientific approaches), while marginalizing knowledges derived from lived experiences, cultural traditions, community practices; large-scale historical and political analyses; and equity and justice-centered approaches to environmentalism.

The latter approach is what we refer to as “critical environmentalism.” In using this term, we take inspiration from Gould et al. ( 2018 ) in their assertion that broader interpretations of the environment are needed—in place of universalist, ahistorical, and homogenizing framings—towards more expansive, dynamic, multifaceted, and socially constructed notions of environment. Formally, the use of the term “critical” signals work in the tradition of “critical social theory,” a tradition originating with Marx but formalized by the Frankfurt School (Horkheimer 1982 [1937]). It marks a contrast from “traditional” or “mainstream” approaches in seeking to illuminate and expose the injustices, inequalities, and ideologies of present social formations—with an eye toward changing them (Brenner 2009 ). A social justice-centered approach to environmental studies centers on themes of power relations, epistemology, and social constructions of difference to study the relationships between humans, non-humans, and the environment (Pepper et al. 2003 ). Cole ( 2007 ) claims that teaching environmental studies through a critical lens improves students' understanding of the environment and how it interacts with humanity.

In this paper, we argue for the necessity of promoting more equitable, inclusive, and critical environmental approaches within higher education to offset the dominance of technical, scientific, and mainstream ones. We share research conducted from 2021 to 2023 with faculty and staff on our campus whose work sits at the nexus of environmental and social justice. We wanted to know about their experiences as environmental scholars on a campus that has historically maintained a mainstream environmental focus while simultaneously enrolling a diverse undergraduate student body. We asked faculty and staff questions about the kinds of obstacles they encounter and how the institution could best support their work. These perspectives, which often intersect with identities and experiences that have been historically marginalized in environmentalism and academia, challenge narrow definitions of environmentalism and work to create broader, more expansive notions of who is doing environmental work. Such approaches also speak to and enable the next generation of environmental activists to support communities at the front lines of environmental and climatic changes.

To better understand the challenges of fostering a more inclusive environmentalism, we draw from the concept of epistemic exclusion, a concept currently emerging within the literature on higher education. Epistemic exclusion refers to the devaluation of scholarship by individuals and institutions that is outside of the mainstream, especially by scholars who hold marginalized identities (Settles et al. 2019 : 796). It draws attention to the multiple ways academic gatekeeping reflects disciplinary and identity biases which in turn perpetuate a methodological and intellectual status quo around what kind of scholarship is deemed meritorious, and which scholars are credible and qualified (Settles et al. 2020 , 2022 ). Academic gatekeeping determines “who has access” to academia, “socializing trainees into disciplinary norms and removing those who fail to meet these standards” (Settles et al 2022 : 32). It also determines the boundaries of a discipline, and values and devalues certain kinds of scholarship and scholars. Devaluation can happen formally (e.g., article rejections, tenure denials) or informally (e.g., misrepresenting one’s work or minimizing accomplishments). Churcher ( 2022 ) argues that universities are shaped by and reproduce shared imaginings and attachments that maintain masculinist, Eurocentric, and Western forms of epistemic privilege. Knowledge is associated “with generality and abstraction…in the pursuit of ‘fundamental truths,’” rather than “particularity, embodiment, situatedness, power, and context,” which are considered peripheral and subordinate (Churcher 2022 : 899). Within this context, disciplinary norms and gatekeeping around them are thought to be neutral, objective activities in service to the discipline, rather than subjective, historical, and fraught with personal bias and structural oppression.

The consequences of unaddressed epistemic exclusion include a hostile work environment for those from marginalized identities; barriers to publication, tenure, and promotion; and maintenance of established disciplinary boundaries. It disproportionately affects “women and faculty of color due to negative stereotypes about their competence, and their likelihood of engaging research out of the disciplinary mainstream” (Settles et al.  2022 : 32) and places them in a Catch-22: they are both hypervisible, as scholars from underrepresented backgrounds, yet their scholarly successes are rendered invisible or unworthy, making scholarly achievement harder to attain. Yet epistemic exclusion is difficult to test for since metrics of merit, like securing grant funding, high-scoring teaching evaluations, and publishing in high-ranking journals are supposedly “identity-neutral.” This maintains the sense of entitlement of dominant social actors. Marginalized social actors are not immune from the pull of dominant epistemic communities, so these processes can have a co-opting effect, further undermining networks of solidarity, trust, and concern.

Despite a paucity of research to date, epistemic exclusion applies well to the field of environmentalism. Almost 30 years ago, Lewis and James ( 1995 ) called into question the idea of environmental education as universal (e.g., that environmental education programs appeal to all audiences) and inclusive (e.g., that the needs of people of color are recognized and addressed). That the environmental field remains, decades later, predominantly white and privileged speaks to the persistence of normative (yet often unrecognized) racial, class, and epistemological structures that overtly and covertly exclude the environmentalisms and knowledges of marginalized groups. Mainstream approaches arguably do not resonate with underrepresented groups, who are then not motivated to participate; yet this refusal is often interpreted as a lack of concern, knowledge, or awareness. Consequently, diversity, equity, and inclusion problems persist in environmentalism partly as a result of the uninterrogated assumptions, racist stereotypes, and reproduction of structures by those in power. Epistemic exclusion is, thus, a form of institutional racism, whereby dominant scholars maintain the disciplinary status quo and their position on top of the hierarchy (Bhopal 2017 ).

Environmental sociologist Dorceta Taylor ( 2018 ) has characterized most diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts of universities as “halfhearted,” “tentative,” and “superficial.” She highlights the necessity of “effective mentoring and engaged learning opportunities to nourish their [diverse students’] interests…[and learning opportunities] that incorporate the life experiences , expertise , and ideas of people of color ” ( 2018 : 384, emphasis added). Taylor’s research has found that there is a “robust pool of minority students who are pursuing degrees in a wide array of environmental programs” who consider diversity and equity very or extremely important in choosing where to work ( 2007 : 39), and thus, argues that environmental programs must make “fundamental changes in [their] ideology, structure, and operations of programs” and that universities require “systematic and extensive institutional change” (Taylor 2007 : 40).

The institutional changes that Dorceta Taylor calls on environmental programs to make require recruiting and retaining faculty of diverse backgrounds and identities. In a recent study of the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) systems, Taylor et al. ( 2022 ) found that while “students of color represent 58.2% (UC) and 52.4% (CSU) of the student population within environmental studies departments, faculty of color only represent 22.5% (UC) and 17.7% (CSU) within these departments” (490). This disparity is especially problematic in institutions that enroll large numbers of historically underrepresented students, given that these institutions could act as rich sources to increase diversity in the career pipeline if properly nurtured.

To the extent that mainstream environmental studies departments fail to consider issues of epistemic exclusion in their approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion, they fail to create the changes necessary to support faculty or students from underrepresented groups. In this paper, we argue that addressing the persistence and invisibility of epistemic exclusion, and collectively working towards epistemic inclusion —i.e., broadening disciplinary boundaries and redefining the topics, methodologies, and scholars that are deemed legitimate—can transform environmentalism in higher education. It can make meaningful systematic institutional changes and improve the recruitment and retention rates of faculty of color and the students they support.

In the sections that follow, we discuss a research project we conducted, dubbed “Critical Environmentalisms,” in which we examined the experiences of 58 critically oriented environmental faculty and staff on the University of California, Santa Cruz campus. Through a series of surveys and interviews, we examined both the institutional barriers and ideal forms of support that would enable participants to do more inclusive environmental work—for the campus to live up to the values of epistemic inclusion it promotes. We found that (1) barriers to doing more inclusive environmental work included a lack of time and access to a network of similarly minded scholars and resources, lack of knowledge in how to work with and support BIPOC students, and too few incentives to pursue this work; and (2) that opportunities for authentic and non-hierarchical networking, collaboration and relationship-building across sectors (e.g., departments, job classifications, campus resources) are central to supporting critical environmental work. Based on these findings, we argue that epistemic inclusion is not simply about more funding or more time for critical environmental work (though that helps); it is also about creating support networks and shared resources that will allow this work to flourish, be more visible, and have a sustained influence on campus.

UCSC as a case study

The University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) is a unique site to examine the tensions between mainstream and critical environmentalism, and the kinds of epistemic exclusions that limit advancement of more marginalized environmental perspectives. On one hand, the campus is a nationally recognized leader in environmentalism. The university is located on a 200-acre hill, nestled in redwood forest, with sweeping views of the Monterey Bay. Since its founding, UCSC has attracted faculty, staff, and students who were drawn to the natural beauty of the campus and town (Reti et al. 2020 ). Located in the Central Coast, a major agricultural center nationally, the campus has become a site for the development of agroecology, training generations of farmers through an apprenticeship program located on the campus’ long-running farm and garden (Reti et al. 2020 ). Its Environmental Studies department is one of the oldest in the nation and has a strong reputation. As a large, public, university that enrolls roughly 20,000 students and employs nearly 3500 faculty and staff (University of California 2020 ), environmental organizations, programming, courses, and internships abound.

On the other hand, major disparities in institutional resources and support exist between STEM and “hard” science approaches to environmentalism versus more critical, humanist, interpretive, or theoretically-based approaches on campus. For example, the campus recently established a department focused specifically on the Environmental Sciences, separate from the Environmental Studies department, although the latter already focuses on bridging social and ecological sciences in an interdisciplinary manner. The Environmental Studies department has the highest percentage of white staff and students (undergraduate and graduate) in the Division of Social Sciences, and tends to be dominated by white faculty members (for example, the prior chair (2020–2023) was the first person of color in that role, and there has never been a woman of color chair in the department’s 50 + year history). Students, staff, and faculty who identify as white and their associated interests (e.g., conservation, wildlife, plants) tend to be overrepresented in institutional curricula and programming; the Environmental Studies department did not even start a concentration in environmental justice until a few years ago. Scholars who do social science and humanistic environmental work are scattered across campus departments and maybe the lone scholar in their department doing that kind of work.

As a result, students from marginalized backgrounds often have difficulty identifying with and engaging in environmental work. UCSC is a Hispanic-serving institution (HSI) and an Asian-American and Native American Pacific Islander-serving institution (AANAPISI), and students of color make up a majority of the student population. But they often feel deterred from environmental studies due, in part, to the lack of representation and sense of belonging (Dare 2021 ; Koscher 2017 ; Pack 2014 ; Taylor 2018 ). For example, around 2014, UCSC’s Ethnic Resource Centers—dedicated to the retention and success of Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) students—started hearing more frequently that environmental spaces on campus were unwelcoming, that students felt micro-aggressed in environmental courses, and that important concerns they faced, such as food and housing insecurity, were not seen as “environmental” issues. These experiences were even undermining the retention of some students of color. The Ethnic Resource Centers started a hashtag campaign, #PoCSustainability, to begin shifting the discourse about environmental concern as being only a “white thing.” The director of the campus’s centrally-funded Sustainability Office—which had tended to focus on water conservation, zero waste, energy efficiency, and other mainstream environmental concerns—wanted to remedy the pervasive whiteness of their unit, and took the initiative to reach out to and show up in BIPOC-centered spaces. One of the authors, Flora Lu, then Provost of College Nine and John R. Lewis College, worked with the Ethnic Resource Centers and Sustainability Office to form a new initiative, the People of Color Sustainability Collective (PoCSC) to define and pursue the goal of inclusive sustainability (Lu et al. 2018 ). PoCSC has won multiple awards and informed similar efforts at other UC and CSU campuses (Lu and Murai 2023 ).

Thus, UCSC is a relevant case of the kinds of dynamics that play out between mainstream and critical environmentalisms. Examining the specific institutional barriers to critical approaches can provide insights into how epistemic exclusions operate within environmentalism more generally. Relatedly, it is no coincidence that all four authors on this paper (three faculty and one recent undergraduate) are from underrepresented groups. The project derives from our own experiences with environmental epistemic exclusions. A chance encounter between Emily Murai, Hillary Angelo, and Flora Lu led to a conversation about our shared interests in critical approaches to environmentalism and the difficulties of finding faculty of similar interests. In the absence of available information, we wanted to learn how many critically oriented environmental scholars there were on campus, what they were working on, what their experiences as critical scholars were, and what could be done to build a stronger campus network of social justice-oriented environmental scholars, staff and students. We applied for a small grant through the campus’s “Building Belonging” program—which supports underrepresented undergraduates through faculty-mentored research—for a survey and interview project we called Identifying Critical Environmental Work and Needs on Campus. The responses gave us insight into the ways epistemic exclusions marginalize and isolate knowledges and practices that threaten the status quo of the neo-liberal university and maintain dominant environmental frameworks, imaginaries, and methods.

We used a scaffolded process to gather data in the 2021–22 academic year. First, we used campus websites, word-of-mouth, and existing networks to compile a comprehensive list of faculty, staff, and organizations doing critical environmental work on campus, which included 55 people and 42 programs/initiatives. Then we designed a survey to learn more about this work. The instrument used a combination of open-ended and multiple-choice questions to inquire about the respondent’s academic training, methodological and pedagogical approaches, and curricular, co-curricular, or extra-curricular efforts. Additionally, the survey asked what, if any, barriers the respondent faced in pursuing critical environmental work at the university, and what kinds of institutional resources and support might enhance their work. After pre-testing and revising the survey, we invited 58 people to take it—a few more than the group we additionally identified through word of mouth—and received 39 responses (67% response rate). Demographically, two-thirds of the respondents were women and two-thirds were white, non-Hispanic. Figure  1 provides a divisional breakdown of respondents.

Number of respondents by division

To further investigate the kinds of institutional changes that would support critical environmental work on campus, we invited survey participants for a follow-up interview. Follow-up interviews gave respondents a chance to elaborate on their responses and give deeper insight into their thought processes (Clarke and Braun 2013 ; Staveteig et al. 2017 ). Thirty of the 39 survey participants agreed to participate in an interview, but due to scheduling constraints, we ended up interviewing only 18 original survey respondents (31%). For these interviews, we asked respondents to respond to set of four targeted questions: (a) what kinds of policy and/or actions could be taken to improve critical environmentalism on campus; (b) how to improve communication on campus; (c) what institutional support models they would like to see implemented; and (d) how they foresee interacting with a critical environmentalism network. These questions were derived from the initial survey results and were designed to pinpoint specific barriers and kinds of support faculty and staff need to do critical environmental work effectively.

We conducted another set of interviews with respondents who did not complete the initial survey. This additional set of data supplemented responses from both the survey and interview and was an effort to ensure better representation across campus (i.e., divisions and units that were not well-represented by data collection up to that point). We asked prior respondents for names and specifically followed up with those people. We only conducted verbal interviews with this group: the survey was administered verbally and the same follow-up questions were asked. Of the 33 faculty who were identified and contacted, 19 interviews (57%) were conducted. In total, 37 interviews were conducted.

Because this research is institutional and was conducted for institutional purposes, we were not required to gain Human Subjects clearance by the Institutional Review Board.

Critical environmental efforts

Our research identified 43 campus initiatives, organizations, and centers that report promoting critical environmentalism, Footnote 1 from field sites and laboratories to political mobilization groups (e.g., UC Green New Deal Coalition). Some are focused on recruiting diverse populations into predominantly white spaces (e.g., STEM fields), while others center on technological innovations to address environmental problems (e.g., the Agri-Food Technology Research Project). Other efforts are student-led. The Education for Sustainable Living Program is a student organization that offers courses about transitioning society to prioritize the environment and humanity.

The more exciting initiatives from an epistemic inclusion perspective traverse disciplinary and campus/community boundaries to interrogate notions of identity, expertise, and equity. The Science and Justice Center, for example, innovates experimental spaces, engages in collaborative research practices, and fosters emerging alliances that traverse multiple intellectual, institutional and ethico-political worlds to confront species extinction, toxic ecologies, and other contemporary matters of concern that undermine livable worlds. The Apprenticeship in Community Engaged Research or (H)ACER program promotes reflexive, real-world, praxis-oriented efforts in which students collaborate with off-campus partners to address pressing issues such as economic, educational, and environmental injustice through an approach that honors the cultural, social, and epistemological strength of community members. The Critical Realities Studio is a hybrid studio/lab for critical theory and art practice to engage, using algorithmic and intersectional methods, with pressing issues including climate change, gendered violence, racism, and colonialism. These efforts are designed and led by groups of queer women and women of color, and they pay close attention to particularity, situatedness, power, context, and embodiment, rather than universality, generality, and abstraction (Churcher 2022 ).

While these examples highlight an exciting array of opportunities around critical environmentalism, these efforts are not well coordinated and often lack financial support and security (e.g., they are sponsored by external grants rather than permanent funding through the institution), which undermines their continuity. Programs and resources have to reinvent themselves over and over again at the expense of programming depth, duplication, and permanence.

Challenges to critical environmental work

Although many faculty and staff on campus are working on supporting a more equitable environmental education and want UCSC to be a leader in this area, respondents described barriers that prevent the university from realizing this goal (Fig.  2 ). The results highlight three general categories of obstacles: a lack of networks and collaboration; a need to better engage and support students in critical environmental opportunities; and the invisibilization of and institutional deterrents to such work.

Percentages of respondents naming specific barriers to critical environmentalism. (Note: results from a multiple choice question in which respondents could make more than one choice)

Given the need for interdisciplinarity, one barrier towards more critical environmental work is the difficulties of forging inter-departmental collaborations, a challenge noted by 21 respondents (37.5%). Departments and divisions are perceived as distinct, “siloed” entities, and as a result, most faculty and staff report that they do not have the time or opportunity for interdisciplinary networking, collaboration, and co-teaching. Respondents said it was easy for them to find connections within their departments and divisions, but hard to meet people outside of them. This “silo-ing” is not only a result of the hard sciences being favored over other areas, but also of the physical layout of the campus. In the early 1960s, UCSC’s founders deliberately designed the campus to be highly decentralized to avoid the protests and student organizing that were happening on other campuses at the time (Reti et al. 2020 ). This now affects faculty and staff who are engaged in critical environmental efforts by making it challenging to meet people outside of their departments and find those who are doing similar work. As one respondent explained, “The fact that these academic territories are carved up means that often there is not a lot of communication that is centralized… and that means in certain ways there’s a limitation on the scope of collaborative possibilities and communication.” This also prevents collaboration across divisions because there is no physical interdisciplinary space for faculty and staff interested in critical environmentalisms to meet on campus (a challenge noted by over 60% of respondents). As a result, respondents who indicated they were deeply involved in critical environmental work on campus still find it difficult to make interdisciplinary connections and find out what others on campus were working on, and thus tend to work in isolation. Faculty and staff have found duplicate efforts in different departments (e.g., in developing courses on these issues) that could have been done collaboratively. There is no network for people with these interests at UCSC and they did not have the time to go through every department’s website and find those with the same interests.

Faculty and staff report not knowing about many of the critical environmental internships, projects, and groups on campus that welcome student involvement and, therefore, are not able to recommend them to students. Over half of the faculty and staff who participated in this study (31 respondents or 55.4%) expressed the desire to know about and have more opportunities to help their students participate in critical environmental work on campus. Because of the separation between academic departments and divisions, students do not get cross-departmental emails or see postings for opportunities and resources outside of their home units, which impedes their ability to branch out. Seven respondents (12.5%) expressed the desire to get more BIPOC students engaged and retained in critical environmentalism. One respondent explained, “The students of color that are engaged in conversations around critical environmentalisms and sustainability are very smart, very engaged, and they have some really good ideas about what could be done to engage their experiences more,” but that resources and opportunities often did not “zero in on these students” to create the kinds of support they crave. This respondent noted that critical environmental programs and projects do not get the attention and funding that they need, and do not effectively reach the marginalized populations that are and will continue to be the most affected by environmental issues on campus and elsewhere.

Beyond an information gap about opportunities available, respondents pointed to a more fundamental shortcoming: the level of faculty awareness about critical approaches and their importance. Some respondents felt this especially applied to white faculty in STEM disciplines who often do not include critical perspectives or social justice topics in their research and courses. One respondent explained, “I feel in general that if you were talking to some of my other STEM colleagues with that narrative [of critical environmentalism]…a lot of my colleagues would not be able to understand what you are saying.” Another commented that “a significant fraction of the students of color are actually mentored by white mentors. How you get the mentors to be more self-aware about some of their own biases…so they can support the students better.” Changing the demographics of these units is key. Respondents expressed that the lack of faculty and staff of color is an obstacle to critical environmentalism on campus and an impediment to creating a diverse pipeline of faculty and staff of color in environmental fields. One respondent said that the university needs to be pushed by people “advocating really strongly for faculty hires that address how white-dominated these departments are.”

Respondents also indicated that critical environmental work was challenging because crucial aspects of such work (e.g., program building, educating colleagues, and mentoring students) are not sufficiently incentivized or rewarded. One respondent touched on this by advocating for “promotion where DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] work is really amplified and an essential component of who we are as academics.” A junior faculty member and woman of color observed that, while she could include information about her DEI efforts in her personal statement for review, this would be to the detriment of the space she devoted to her research and publishing, given page limits. In a report about the experiences of faculty of color at UCSC, Covarrubias and Quinteros ( 2023 ) found that DEI efforts by faculty of color sustain the university but are narrowly conceived of as a lower tier of service, as compared to say, serving on a faculty senate committee. This invalidation of DEI work often results in faculty of color carrying “disproportionate workloads because they took on additional service roles that fit more traditional definitions” and potentially having a harder time getting tenure (Covarrubias and Quinteros 2023 : 4). Faculty of color play an important role in ensuring the retention and academic success of students of color in predominantly white institutions and disciplines, but this labor is often invisibilized and constitutes a form of cultural taxation that impedes progress towards tenure and promotion (Taylor et al. 2022 ).

Faculty and staff at UCSC also feel overworked; 11 respondents (19.6%) indicated that they lack time to pursue critical environmentalism to the extent they would like. One respondent wanted “ways of overcoming institutional barriers to free people up in meaningful ways, not just invite people to get together or discussions on top of everything else because everyone is just so busy with teaching, with research, with administrative obligations at the departmental, divisional, and senate level.” Ultimately, the issue becomes one of time, rather than lack of interest, and freeing up faculty’s schedules with reductions in other areas, like administration, would be one way to support critical environmentalism on campus.

How critical environmental efforts can be supported

Respondents who identified these common problems they faced within the university had ideas for how to better support and amplify critical environmentalism on campus (Fig.  3 ). We discuss the suggestions in descending order.

Percentage of responses to the question of how critical environmentalism can be supported at the institutional level. (Note: results from a multiple choice question in which respondents could make more than one choice)

Almost three-quarters of respondents (41 or 73.2%) wanted to see an equalization of funding opportunities that encouraged interdisciplinary, critical environmental work. This would give faculty and staff motivation to branch out of their departmental silos and build connections on campus.

To make more interdisciplinary connections, faculty and staff wanted a couple of different structures to be created. First, 36 respondents (64.3%) indicated they would like to see a critical environmentalism network that hosted periodic events. The idea of having a database to help scholars network with others interested in critical environmentalism was something respondents also mentioned (35 respondents, or 62.5% mentioned below). Many suggested having a webpage that kept the whole campus up-to-date on initiatives and events surrounding critical environmentalisms. One respondent said, “A web presence, some central list of people who are working and what they are working on specifically but whose work kinda fits under this broad umbrella, I think would be the first and most obvious thing that would be super helpful.  Respondents also wanted a list of faculty and staff who are engaged in this work, with information about their focus (35 respondents or 62.5%), in order to reach out to people who had similar interests across departments.

Faculty (32 respondents or 57.1%) also expressed that they wanted more opportunities to get course releases to free up their time for team teaching and campus engagement. Course releases would allow them to take on more critical environmental work and have the opportunity to expand their connections to do research they would not have the capacity for otherwise.

They also wanted more graduate student researchers and staff positions to be made that address critical environmental issues and allow current faculty and staff to be less overworked (29 respondents or 51.8%). Having a professional in charge of organizing and maintaining the network would enable those engaged in critical environmental research to work across divisions and produce more fruitful work.

Next, 26 respondents (46.4%) expressed a desire to socialize in person coming out of COVID-19 and use a meet and greet as an opportunity to expand their networks across divisions and potentially collaborate with others as a result, with one respondent noting, “COVID has really limited the visibility of all of us with each other, so the first thing I think of are social things.” This was also mentioned as an opportunity for faculty and staff to present their work informally.

In addition, 25 respondents (44.6%) indicated that they would like to see a formal critical environmental center, institute, or cluster on campus that would bring with it more opportunities for research, funding, education, and student involvement. Therefore, social gatherings and physical space on campus to create these networks are essential for driving critical environmental work.

Many faculty members also wanted more opportunities for co-teaching (21 or 37.5%) to support well-rounded classes that bring in multiple different perspectives and considerations when discussing the environment. This is something that one respondent noted saying, “I would absolutely jump at the opportunity to work with people well outside of my field of expertise on shared problems… at the end of the day to do that requires time.” Therefore, co-teaching would allow faculty to both network with professors in related fields and expand their areas of expertise, but such coordination takes additional work and is not viable if it is done on top of already heavy teaching demands.

A dozen respondents (21.4%) indicated that they would like more administrative support to build and sustain critical environmentalism on campus. They would like to see someone take charge of the network as a full-time position so that others are not burdened with doing this on top of their job. This would also allow the network to take on more than it would otherwise be able to.

Respondents (9 or 16%) also wanted to see the university change its practices to be a leader in not only environmentalism but also critical environmentalism. One respondent noted, “Conceptualizing and making sense of critical environmentalism on a campus such as UCSC requires that type of intentional restructuring and institutional framing in order to begin to upset the incredibly rooted white supremacist history of food and environmentalism on this campus.” They also called for changes in the projects the university is taking on, such as the proposed new construction projects which will fundamentally change the campus and have major impacts on the environment. One respondent highlighted, “I think that the university needs to listen to its constituents, it needs to listen to its students and faculty and decisions around planning need to not be made by a couple of executive vice chancellors in closed rooms with contractors. The institutional support really needs to be around transforming the whole university and centering students, staff, and the broader community, the Indigenous community on which UCSC stands, I think the institutional support that I envision requires a full transformation of the university.” Therefore, although there are many relatively easy solutions outlined throughout this section, and broad support from faculty for such changes on campus, significant changes will also be needed to support long-term critical environmental work on campus.

Faculty and staff indicated that they would also have more time to do critical environmental work if it was incentivized. Faculty indicated that they would like tenure incentives for doing non-research work related to critical environmentalism, such as committee and grassroots work (7 respondents or 12.5%). One respondent said, “There’s not really a lot of incentive for faculty to be involved in either academic senate work that is related to fighting the climate crisis or even grassroots efforts on campus, they’re not rewarded by course releases or anything like that.” These are important elements to promoting critical environmentalisms on campus but are not things that faculty and staff have a lot of time to commit to because they are not heavily favored by the university.

Respondents (7 or 12.5%) also wanted more opportunities and resources for undergraduate and graduate students, staff, and faculty to work together on issues related to critical environmentalism. Such efforts could be incentivized for students through the establishment of a critical environmental general education requirement.

Our research found that while there are a plethora of campus environmental initiatives at UCSC, including some innovative critical environmental projects that cross disciplinary, campus, and community boundaries, these efforts are not well-coordinated or centrally funded. This both reflects and reinforces the siloed, isolating nature of our campus community, which exacerbates the marginalization of already underrepresented groups. In addition, we found that barriers to inclusive environmental work included invisibilization and institutional deterrents such as a lack of knowledge of networks, resources, and collaboration and not knowing the best practices around engaging and supporting students in critical environmental opportunities. Respondents offered a comprehensive list of possible solutions to these issues, ranging from increasing and equalizing funding, to creating more centralized resources and networking opportunities, to ideological changes at the university.

Despite the critical environmental work that is already being done on campus, our research found that faculty and staff want to do even more . As one respondent noted about the critical environmentalism network, “I would be hoping to learn a lot about what other people are doing…I would most be thinking about learning how to do more in my own research and teaching, given that's not really a strong theme in my field.” The university needs to offer more institutional support to bridge this gap and combat the issues that are preventing this work from being done. Doing so requires a multipronged approach, from curricular changes to centralizing resources and information to hiring and retaining diverse staff and faculty (Dicochea 2012 ; Ferreira 2017 ).

What is most interesting about our pool of responses, however, is what is not said: despite being some of the most critically trained environmental thinkers on our campus, many of the solutions offered remain comfortably within institutional constraints and do not address the hidden and subtle practices of epistemic exclusion. For us, this indicates the ways in which highly operationalized, bureaucratic mindsets dominate our own ways of thinking, and the necessity to create new imaginaries that enable us to critique normalized exclusionary practices. If these practices were done away with and more inclusive, democratic practices and principles were fostered, it could potentially re-organize institutional structures such that they center greater equality and inclusion to begin with.

Programs that attempt to “diversify” their disciplines and departments through “accommodationist” practices that attempt to recruit and retain diverse students in STEM or mainstream conservation movements (Cronin et al. 2021 ) do not fundamentally challenge the hierarchical, exclusionary nature of these disciplines. Nor do related efforts, such as implicit bias training or diversity statements, in the absence of recognizing how fundamental white supremacy, settler colonialism, and androcentrism are to mainstream environmentalism and STEM fields. Instead, in promoting techno-solutions to environmental problems, they often replicate apolitical/decontextualized thinking that serves to perpetuate unjust power relations.

Scholarship by marginalized groups clarifies that as knowers, we are situated, and social position both confines and directs our vision and habits of attention (Dotson 2014 ). Overcoming the limits of one’s instituted, social imaginaries that can lead to poor epistemic habits, such as epistemic laziness, closed-mindedness, and arrogance (Dotson 2014 ). It will require that we become more cognizant of concepts such as positionality, reflexivity, and subjectivity, and name and challenge the hidden biases and oft-invisible processes of epistemic exclusion and their consequences.

The most innovative critical environmental programs and initiatives, as we see in several examples at UCSC, bring together people from different backgrounds and epistemologies to tackle contemporary problems in efforts to promote greater epistemic inclusion and diversity in scholarship. These methods and research foci are reflexive, affective, contextual, boundary crossing, and creative, and are led by queer women and women of color, who are often the ones most epistemically excluded at the university, both invisibilized and hypervisibilized, culturally taxed, and committed to doing work that promotes a more just society. Women and/or scholars of color tend to undertake interdisciplinary work, using methods such as Indigenous methodologies, critical race theory, community-engaged scholarship that center collaboration, involvement with community (Gold 2021 ). As Roshanravan ( 2014 ) points out, “Because Women of Color politics seeks to affirm and build coalition among racially devalued ways of thinking, traditional knowledge-production within academic disciplines cannot contain the methodological and theoretical work of Women of Color” (42).

Productivity culture and overwork leave minoritized people with less wealth and thus less time; they are ones who pick up slack when those with more power offload labor (Covarrubias and Quinteros 2023 ). Respondents say that they want to do more critical environmental work, but they want to have that work recognized and compensated. Hence we see requests for course buyouts, Graduate Student Researchers, incentives to co-teach, funding support for centralized networks or an institute, and space. But these kinds of requests work within the constraints of the university. They promote a different distribution of work, but will not likely support meaningful change. Instead, when identifying problems, respondents highlighted relationality and connection as something that was lacking. This recognizes how “knowing is also interdependent, requiring the use of collective and shared epistemic resources” (Dotson 2014 ). We see centering more organic, authentic forms of engagement that respects and fosters the sociality of intellectual work as a purposeful means to offset the harsh disciplinary nature of the neo-liberal university, even though these practices may be less visible or quantifiable as institutional labor.

Some respondents asked for “ideological changes” at the university. They want to see the university really caring about, listening to, and serving the people at the institution. This emphasizes the very interpersonal, humanizing (and unique) potential of universities: as spaces for intellectual exchange, participation in public life, humanization through education and learning, creative and exploratory knowledge creation, systems of governance. Today, the neo-liberal university has become anything but. Scholars face pressure to conduct research that wins large grants and earns them tenure, which marginalizes public and community-based research that may actually serve the communities they study and build more trust in higher educational institutions (Fischer 2023 ).

In this paper, we have described the work we undertook as part of a research project on critical environmentalisms, the goal of which was to make critical environmental work more visible and accessible to UCSC students, faculty, and staff. The work also identified institutional challenges to critical environmental efforts in higher education. We have since implemented some specific solutions, such as establishing an online network housed on the UCSC Sustainability Office website that we hope will improve access and lead to more collaborative, interdisciplinary work. But the research underscored that, in order to redress the epistemic exclusions, academic gatekeeping, and the unequal burdens faced by marginalized scholars, UCSC must also tackle disparities in access to power and resources between disciplines and scholars. As Bhopal ( 2017 ) argues, “universities must address the racism that takes place in their institutions … and move away from a deficit focus which blames individuals” (2298). A more structural, institutional response of this kind would require the university to examine its role in perpetuating colonialist modes of research, education, and innovation, but might also make it a leader in meaningful efforts to overcome environmental exclusion.

This project underscored, too, that supporting and retaining students and faculty of color and those from other minoritized backgrounds requires a fundamental rethinking of how environmental education is done, including conceptions of the environment itself. Fully two-thirds of UCSC’s undergraduate population is non-white, and research by PoCSC has found that a significant proportion of these students confront environmental health threats and environmental racism in their home communities (Lu and Murai 2023 ). As mentioned, mainstream environmentalism has alienated many of these students, who are already grappling with an institution of higher education steeped in settler colonialism and white supremacy. Supporting them involves not simply superficial efforts of inclusion but environmental teaching and research that takes the structural environmental injustices students experience as within its purview.

Making these changes requires not only research into what kinds of interventions are needed, but engaging with stronger mechanisms for institutional change. This labor, we recognize, involves a certain amount of political and institutional risk (e.g., identifying shortcomings and advocating for change) and disproportionately burdens women and faculty of color who are more likely to take up the mantle of this work. How do we support junior or non-tenure-track faculty who wish to engage in this work? How do we ensure that this work is evenly supported? One way we address both questions is by creating strong networks of critical environmental advocacy both within and outside of our institutions; supporting critical environmental scholars at every stage of their career (including through teaching and mentoring undergraduates to bring them into the field); and working to advance them into positions of institutional leadership so that critical environmental scholars will be in positions to make the institutional changes we outline here. When we have multiple, overlapping networks outside of our institutions of primary affiliation (e.g., departments and universities where we work), we are less reliant upon them for emotional support and validation, which in turn may make it easier to instigate change within them.

That said, many of the things that faculty describe wanting are fairly inexpensive and would not be hard to implement at colleges of different sizes, in terms of creating opportunities to do this kind of work and establishing incentive and/or reward structures. They include opportunities for team teaching, paid opportunities for students to work with faculty on these issues, small grants or other funding for faculty to work together to develop courses or small research projects, etc. Making broad epistemically inclusive changes, like changes to hiring and curriculum, may require more political capital, but still follow institutions' stated commitments to diversity, so advocating for these changes should be politically less risky. One thing that some departments at UCSC have done that is easily replicable and low-cost, is asking candidates to include a section on contributions to diversity in promotion/tenure files. Though imperfect, it is an effort to make visible and reward this kind of labor that mostly women faculty of color take on and to remind others to do it too. These kinds of small changes that increase the visibility and raise the profile of invisible labor are ways departments can make changes while holding space for larger institutional and disciplinary buy-in.

For further insights into how students in the earliest stages of the career pipeline can be best supported within their courses and at the departmental level, we would like to center the voice of our co-author Serena Campbell, an African American, mixed-race woman who was the undergraduate researcher for this project.

As a student coming into the University of California, Santa Cruz, I had not been introduced to any information on critical approaches to environmentalism in my previous education. When introduced to the concept of environmental racism, I realized how my previous environmental education prevented me from fully engaging with what I was being taught. I decided to become a double major in Sociology and Environmental Studies in my second year of college, hoping that it would allow me to learn even more about critical approaches to environmentalism and identify potential careers. Unfortunately, when I took my first class for Environmental Studies, the focus was heavy on math and science. The course discussed fundamental chemistry and physics and examined the earth’s spheres alongside the global cycles of carbon, nitrogen and other elements. While this was important to learn to understand how earth’s systems work, the course fell short of giving me the education I was craving because it lacked an interdisciplinary curriculum. It did not have relevance to the modern world and was ahistorical as well as apolitical. I wanted to learn about contributions to environmentalism from marginalized communities and approaches to tackling climate change rooted in ending capitalism and western imperialism, but this was rarely discussed in the wider Environmental Studies department. This impacted my ability to relate to what I was learning, a phenomenon documented by Pearson et al. ( 2018 ) who found that when interdisciplinary approaches are not valued within environmental education, students from marginalized backgrounds have trouble engaging and continuing to pursue the field of study because they over-emphasize natural (“hard”) science and technical knowledge. As a result of not feeling a sense of belonging, I decided to drop the class and pursue a double major in Sociology and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies instead .

However, I still had an interest in pursuing critical approaches to environmentalism. After hearing about the Identifying Critical Environmental Work and Needs on Campus, during my third year of college, I knew I had to get involved. This experience has allowed me to address the environmental and racial issues that I have grappled with from a young age and I have been able to take agency in examining why environmental education and fields can be so polarizing to people of color. Unlike before, when I did not consider myself to be an environmentalist because I did not feel represented by the term, I now have been able to see diversity and representation within environmentalism and feel confident in considering myself to be an environmentalist among many other scholars of color who are advocating for crucial changes to be made to the field. As I conducted research for this project, I became more confident with seeing myself as a researcher and was able to broaden my understanding of who is considered a knowledge producer. I was able to reimagine what the environmental field could look like, in a way that is better prepared to tackle the environmental concerns of my generation and combat the notions of natural science superiority that are currently rampant in the field. Through this research project, I have been able to explore alternatives to mainstream environmental movements and education, and this has reshaped how I conceive of the possibilities that I am able to pursue on campus and beyond .

In order to make Environmental Studies an appealing major to students/staff/faculty who are interested in critical approaches to environmentalism, there needs to be more crossover between Environmental Studies and other departments that have critical foci. This could include social sciences, humanities, or the arts to give people a variety of critical approaches that they can use to then center environmentalism. Environmental Studies departments and majors also create meaningful change by being open to interdisciplinary collaboration whether it is in teaching, research, or in service work. This collaboration can be done with departments with critical focuses that attract students of color so that they can be exposed to a variety of academic disciplines .

In miniature, the critical environmentalism project illustrates how institutional support, in the form of funds and reward structures, can help overcome institutional barriers and encourage collaborative and heterodox approaches. The research process created an important positive feedback loop between students and faculty; supported collaboration between faculty who did not work together before; honed a student's research and professional skills (e.g., public presentations); and created new information and resources. We see the process—across racial and tenure-line hierarchies, including undergraduate student mentorship—as itself an example of critical environmental work that both addresses a specific need while also working towards greater institutional accountability. It was important for the kinds of relationships that were built and the outcomes that were produced. But we are also aware that medium- or long-term, institutional changes must be made at a larger scale so that the burden of this work does not fall solely on individual projects.

As Serena Campbell’s words suggest, part of the positive feedback loop is faculty exposing students to critical environmental courses, internships, programs, and events. Students at UCSC are advocating for change. They have let their interest in interdisciplinary critical environmental courses, research, and networking opportunities be known, by calling on the university to make changes such as those outlined in this paper, and can now use this network to identify possible mentors and courses of interest. But, as described above, institutional responses to such pressures must be also substantial, involving dedication of time and resources, revision of course content and pedagogy, and a long-term commitment to supporting faculty who work on these issues. Such efforts will not only make environmental courses and majors more accessible to students from underrepresented backgrounds, but, to the extent that they transform the university and its assumptions about what environmentalism is , also enact epistemic justice.

Data availability

Not applicable.

See https://sustainability.ucsc.edu/engage/academic-opportunities/critical-environmentalisms.html

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This project received funding from the Building Belonging program at the Institute of Social Transformation at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

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Environmental Factor

Your online source for niehs news, january 2021, environmental health disparities, racism studies collected at ehp.

Environmental Health Perspectives collects articles on exposures and outcomes behind Black Americans' health disparities.

By Kelly Lenox

The NIEHS-affiliated journal Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP) curated a special collection of papers related to exposure and health inequities in Black Americans (https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/curated-collections/environmental-racism) . EHP began promoting the collection in early August, and in just five months, it has received approximately 2,000 visits. As part of the Environmental Factor series on ways that NIEHS is working to advance racial equity, we take a closer look at this collection, which complements earlier collections on environmental health of indigenous populations (https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/curated-collections/indigenous-health) and elderly (https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/curated-collections/healthy-aging) .

“Motivated by this unprecedented time in U.S. consciousness, we compiled original research, reviews, and other content previously published,” wrote EHP News Editor Susan Booker Woolard in a Dec. 11 internal NIEHS blog post. “Although none of these papers specifically names racism as an environmental health factor, growing evidence indicates that it is, in fact, both a social determinant of health and a public health crisis .”

“Blacks had higher death rates than whites for all-cause mortality in all age groups [under age] 65 years,” concluded a 2017 report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. EHP editors specified some of those causes in the collection’s introduction.

“To understand environmental racism is to understand, in part, the inequity that drives health disparities in Black Americans, who face higher rates of infant mortality as well as death from type 2 diabetes, heart disease, multiple cancers, homicide, and HIV, compared with white counterparts,” they wrote. “Yet this and other racial [and] ethnic groups tend to be underrepresented in studies of many of the chronic diseases that affect them disproportionately.”

This underrepresentation occurs despite a 1993 congressional directive that the National Institutes of Health diversify study populations by race and ethnicity.

From exception to norm

EHP Editor-in-Chief Joel Kaufman, M.D. , who came on board in early 2020 , underscored the project’s objectives. “We recognize that racism is a public health crisis with many roots — including those that stretch deeply into the interplay between environment and health,” he said in an August announcement (https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/do/10.5555/c28456dc-c2ca-42f4-b978-d4242588dc20/full/) . “This curated collection, which will continue to grow, is a small step in the journal’s work to understand and address inequities that fuel health disparities.”

So far, the collection includes 14 original research papers as well as reviews, feature articles, commentaries, and an editorial. All were published in EHP from 2004 to 2019.

“The journal is actively recruiting more environmental health studies and commentaries that directly address structural racism as a factor in health disparities,” said EHP Senior Science Editor Windy Boyd, Ph.D. “We hope to see structural racism and other factors that affect disparities become more of the norm than the exception in environmental health research.”

The strategy appears to be working. “The editorial team has noticed an increase in the number of research and commentary articles submitted for potential publication since we posted the collection,” she observed. “We anticipate publication of a few of these articles in early 2021.”

Within the collection, papers cited most frequently address air pollution, maternal and child health, as well as psychosocial and residential factors. Full citations appear at the end of this article.

• “ Environmental health disparities: a framework integrating psychosocial and environmental concepts .”
• “ Separate and unequal: residential segregation and estimated cancer risks associated with ambient air toxics in U.S. metropolitan areas .”
• “ Environmental inequality in exposures to airborne particulate matter components in the United States .”
• “ The environmental ‘riskscape’ and social inequality: implications for explaining maternal and child health disparities .”

Among the news articles, “ Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Research Studies: The Challenge of Creating More Diverse Cohorts ,” published in 2015, has the most attention and has even been cited in research papers.

Citations : Bell ML, Ebisu K . 2012. Environmental inequality in exposures to airborne particulate matter components in the United States. Environ Health Perspect 120(12):1699–1704.

Gee GC, Payne-Sturges DC . 2004. Environmental health disparities: a framework integrating psychosocial and environmental concepts. Environ Health Perspect 112(17):1645–1653.

Morello-Frosch R, Jesdale BM . 2006. Separate and unequal: residential segregation and estimated cancer risks associated with ambient air toxics in U.S. metropolitan areas. Environ Health Perspect 114(3):386–393.

Morello-Frosch R, Shenassa ED . 2006. The environmental 'riskscape' and social inequality: implications for explaining maternal and child health disparities. Environ Health Perspect 114(8):1150–1153.

Oh SS, Galanter J, Thakur N, Pino-Yanes M, Barcelo NE, White MJ, de Bruin DM, Greenblatt RM, Bibbins-Domingo K, Wu AHB, Borrell LN, Gunter C, Powe NR, Burchard EG . 2015. Diversity in clinical and biomedical research: a promise yet to be fulfilled. PLoS Med 12(12):e1001918.

Cunningham TJ, Croft JB, Liu Y, Lu H, Eke PI, Giles WH . 2017. Vital signs: racial disparities in age-specific mortality among Blacks or African Americans — United States, 1999–2015. Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 66(17):444–456.

See sidebar above for more information. (Image courtesy of NIEHS)

Diversifying the team

EHP is actively seeking to diversify its editorial and review boards. “The lack of racial and ethnic diversity in our own boards mirrors the homogeneity of environmental health scientists in high-ranking positions,” said Boyd. Black scientists in particular have traditionally been underrepresented among journal editors.

“Serving in an editorial capacity can be an important step in advancing an investigator’s scientific career,” she said. “We want to make this opportunity open to all who seek it, free of racial barriers.”

EHP’s recently updated Board of Associate Editors reflects this commitment to diversity by including highly qualified and well-respected experts with a broader range of backgrounds, ethnicities, and countries of origin.

The journal welcomes nominations, including self-nominations, for additional new associate editors and Editorial Review Board members. Please email the journal  for more details.

Strategic planning summit

On Jan. 28, EHP will kick off its first Strategic Planning Summit. The 3-day virtual event will:

• Explore the futures of the environmental health sciences and scholarly publishing.
• Map a strategy for EHP.
• Cultivate a more connected and collaborative EHP community.

Please visit the EHP Strategic Planning Summit webpage (https://tools.niehs.nih.gov/conference/ehp_sps_2021/) to learn more and to register interest in this event. Space is limited.

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A Case Study of Environmental Injustice: The Failure in Flint

Carla campbell.

1 Department of Public Health Sciences, Room 408, College of Health Sciences, University of Texas at El Paso, 500 W. University Ave, El Paso, TX 79968, USA

Rachael Greenberg

2 National Nurse-led Care Consortium (NNCC), Philadelphia, PA 19102, USA; su.ccnn@grebneergr

Deepa Mankikar

3 Research and Evaluation Group, Public Health Management Corporation, Philadelphia, PA 19102, USA; gro.cmhp@rakiknamd

Ronald D. Ross

4 Occupational and Environmental Medicine Consultant, Las Cruces, NM 88001, USA; [email protected]

The failure by the city of Flint, Michigan to properly treat its municipal water system after a change in the source of water, has resulted in elevated lead levels in the city’s water and an increase in city children’s blood lead levels. Lead exposure in young children can lead to decrements in intelligence, development, behavior, attention and other neurological functions. This lack of ability to provide safe drinking water represents a failure to protect the public’s health at various governmental levels. This article describes how the tragedy happened, how low-income and minority populations are at particularly high risk for lead exposure and environmental injustice, and ways that we can move forward to prevent childhood lead exposure and lead poisoning, as well as prevent future Flint-like exposure events from occurring. Control of the manufacture and use of toxic chemicals to prevent adverse exposure to these substances is also discussed. Environmental injustice occurred throughout the Flint water contamination incident and there are lessons we can all learn from this debacle to move forward in promoting environmental justice.

1. Description of the Flint Water Crisis

At this point, most Americans have heard of the avoidable and abject failure of government on the local, state and federal level; environmental authorities; and water company officials to prevent the mass poisoning of hundreds of children and adults in Flint, Michigan from April 2014 to December 2015 [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]. One tends to imagine chemical poisoning as a victim dropping dead in a murder mystery, or the immediate casualties in an industrial accident or a chemical warfare attack. Unlike the release of methyl isocyanate gas in Bhopal, India in 1984 or the release of radiation with the radiation accident in Chernobyl, Ukraine in 1986, the poisoning of the population in Flint was an insidious one. People drinking the contaminated water would never have known they had elevated blood lead levels (BLLs) without specific medical testing for blood lead levels. In fact, if the water contamination had not been made public, most exposed children and their families would have never suspected they were being exposed over a 20-month period of time, and it would be expected that the water contamination and lead exposure would have continued up until today.

Lead can cause immediate acute poisoning but the subacute, moderate, long-term exposure impact of concern in Flint is more common, and much more insidious. Any resulting behavioral disturbance or loss of intellectual function would probably not been have linked by their physicians or families to lead poisoning, and instead accepted as something that had just occurred. Additionally, the adverse effects from this event may take years to surface as most negative health effects from low-level lead exposure develop slowly [ 4 ]. Hypertension and kidney damage may not present until long after the exposure. Any resulting behavioral disturbance or loss of intellectual function would probably have not been linked by their physicians or families to lead poisoning, and instead accepted as something that had just occurred.

The Flint disaster was due to the switch in water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River, which was then not treated with an anti-corrosion chemical to prevent lead particles and solubilized lead from being released from the interior of water pipes, particularly those from lead service lines or those with lead solder. This water was known to be very corrosive, so corrosive that, in fact, it was not used by the nearby auto industry [ 2 ]. The General Motors plant switched to water from the neighboring Flint Township when General Motors noticed rust spots on newly machined parts [ 2 ]. This corrosive new water supply was then not treated with the anti-corrosion treatment, in noncompliance with the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Lead and Copper Rule, which calls for action when a water supply is found to be corrosive to prevent the potential release of metals from water service lines [ 5 ].

A national water expert, Dr. Marc Edwards, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech University, has stated that the published instructions by EPA for collection of water samples for lead analysis were biased in the direction of underestimating the lead content of the water samples. He had spent years communicating this problem to EPA without a subsequent change in these instructions [ 6 ]. Dr. Edwards testified before Congress in spring 2016 that the Regional EPA Administrator was not alert to what was happening in Flint. Dr. Edwards also published papers previously bringing to the public attention the lead contamination of drinking water in Washington, DC. After Washington, DC made a change in its water disinfectant from chlorine to chloramine, residents were exposed to water with high levels of lead (140 ppb and above) from 2001 to 2004 [ 7 , 8 ]. This resulted in an increase of blood lead levels in young children (many from high-risk neighborhoods) of four times the amount that it was prior to the change in water disinfectant [ 7 , 8 ]. Dr. Edwards was a key player in ensuring that this issue was brought to light and those responsible parties were held accountable [ 9 ]. For comparison, the EPA standard for maximum contaminant level for lead in water is 15 ppb [ 5 ].

Regarding the Flint, Michigan water contamination incident, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, a local pediatrician, performed a study looking at blood lead levels (BLLs) from Flint children from 2013 (before the water change) to 2015 (after the water change), assessing the percentage of BLLs over the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reference level of 5 µg/dL, reviewing water levels in Flint, and identifying geographical locations of blood and water levels using geospatial analysis. Her study demonstrated that the level of elevated blood lead levels (above 5 µg/dL) in a group of Flint children almost doubled between levels collected prior to the change in water source and afterwards; among children living in the area with highest water lead levels the percentage with elevated BLLs was approximately three times higher when compared to pre-diversion levels (4% versus 10.6%) [ 10 ]. These are extraordinary changes! (The specific blood lead levels or even range of BLLs was not reported in the article.) Unfortunately, many children in Flint already had multiple risk factors for lead poisoning, including “poor nutrition, concentrated poverty, and older housing stock” [ 10 ].

2. Elevated Blood Lead Levels in US Children and the Adverse Health Impacts and Costs of Exposure

Lead exposure in young children can lead to decrements in intelligence, development, behavior, attention, and other neurological functions. Two giants in childhood lead poisoning research and advocacy, Dr. Philip Landrigan and Dr. David Bellinger, summarize the adverse effects of lead very completely, yet succinctly: “Lead is a devastating poison. It damages children’s brains, erodes intelligence, diminishes creativity and the ability to weigh consequences and make good decisions, impairs language skills, shortens attention span, and predisposes to hyperactive and aggressive behavior. Lead exposure in early childhood is linked to later increased risk for dyslexia and school failure.” [ 11 ] Other articles and reports have also confirmed these adverse effects [ 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 ].

Therefore, it is important to determine the extent of the problem of elevated blood lead levels in U.S. children. Currently, based on data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 2003 to 2012, 3.24% of children overall aged 1–5 years had a BLL > 5 µg/dL, compared with 7.8% of non-Hispanic Black (NHB) children [ 21 ]. Males had higher adjusted BLLs than females, and a higher poverty income ratio was associated with lower adjusted blood lead levels. Adjusted BLLs increased in renter-occupied (as opposed to owner-occupied) homes and with an increase in the numbers of smokers inside the home [ 21 ]. A previous analysis by Dixon et al. [ 22 ] of NHANES data from 1999 to 2004 found that BLLs were affected by the levels of lead in the floor and the condition of and surface type of the floor; that non-Hispanic Black children had higher BLLs than non-Hispanic white (NHW) children; that Mexican-born children had higher BLLs than those born in the U.S.; that houses built before 1940 were associated with children with higher BLLs; that children living in houses with a smoker had higher BLLs than those living with non-smokers; and that the odds of NHB children having BLLs > 5 µg/dL and > 10 µg/dL were more than double that of NHW children [ 21 , 22 ]. A recent report suggested that many children requiring blood lead testing due to Medicaid insurance status or state or city requirements for testing are not getting tested, and/or the results are not being properly followed up on [ 23 ].

The costs from lead poisoning are considerable, as are the cost savings for prevention of childhood lead poisoning. Attina and Trasande state that in the United States and Europe the lead-attributable economic costs have been estimated at $50.9 and $55 billion dollars, respectively [ 24 ]. Interestingly, they estimate a total cost of $977 billion of international dollars in low- and middle-income countries, with economic losses equal to $134.7 billion in Africa, $142.3 billion in Latin American and the Caribbean, and $699.9 billion in Asia, giving a total economic loss for these countries in the range of $728.6–$1,162.5 billion [ 24 ]. A previous analysis showed that each dollar invested in lead paint hazard control results in a return of $17–$221 or a net savings of $181–$269 billion for a specific cohort of children under six years of age as the benefits of BLL reduction would include categories such as health care, lifetime earnings, tax revenue, special education, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, and the direct costs of crime [ 25 ]. Another prior analysis estimated the economic benefits resulting from an historic lowering of children’s BLLs as measured by data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) to be $110–$319 billion for each year’s cohort of 3.8 million two-year-old children, using a discounted lifetime earnings of $723,300 for each two-year-old child in 2000 dollars [ 26 ]. These estimated benefits were due to projected improvements in worker productivity due to increased intelligence quotient (I.Q.) points.

3. How the Flint Case and Other Examples Exhibit Environmental Injustice

Most affected by this egregious environmental disaster was a mostly poor and African-American population [ 27 ]. Some have speculated whether such an error in judgment might have occurred if a different population had been involved, and The New York Times uses the term racism in its editorial [ 27 ]. Another New York Times article talks of an analysis of emails from Governor Rick Snyder’s office that did not mention race but talked of costs involving Flint’s water supply, questioned scientific data regarding water contamination with lead, and mentioned uncertainties about the duties of state and local health officials [ 28 ]. It also mentions that some civil rights advocates were indicating that the Flint water crisis appeared to represent environmental racism [ 28 ]. The article goes on to discuss that the switch in water source was explicitly decided in favor of saving money for the financially unstable city of Flint, and that an emergency manager appointed by Gov. Snyder to carry out the running of the city was himself African-American [ 28 ]. One of Gov. Snyder’s key staff people sounded an alarm about the concern for lead in water, but the state health department responded back that the Flint water was safe [ 28 ].

The Flint Water Advisory Task Force, comprised of five experts in public health and water policy and convened by Governor Snyder, repeatedly stated in its findings that the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) improperly and inaccurately described the Flint water as being safe, which unfortunately was then interpreted as accurate by other state agencies and city and county agencies [ 29 ]. The Task Force report also described the Flint water crisis as “a story of government failure, intransigence, unpreparedness, delay, inaction and environmental injustice”, and adds that the MDEQ failed in its responsibility to properly enforce drinking water regulations, while the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHD) failed its mission to protect public health [ 29 ]. A recent article suggests these two agencies produced sampling data that were flawed, failed to provide accurate information to the Governor’s office, the EPA and the public, and did not respond appropriately when given information by environmental health and medical professionals [ 30 ]. The Task Force report also explains that state-appointed emergency managers replaced local decision-makers in Flint, thus removing “the checks and balances and public accountability that come with public decision-making” [ 29 ]. The group also credits the public and engaged Flint citizens with continuing to question government leadership (although the Task Force noted “callous and dismissive responses to citizens’ expressed concerns”), and the media for its investigative journalism of the crisis [ 29 ]. The Task Force’s conclusion was that “Flint water customers were needlessly and tragically exposed to toxic levels of lead and other hazards through mismanagement of their drinking water supply” [ 29 ]. The Flint Water Advisory Task Force suggests that the Michigan governor should issue an executive order to mandate training and guidance on environmental justice across all state agencies, with acknowledgement that the Flint crisis of water contamination is an example of environmental injustice which has fallen on a predominantly African-American community [ 29 ]. The Task Force issued 44 recommendations to remedy the results of the failure of proper governance and resultant lead poisoning [ 29 , 30 ].

Many have spoken out about this environmental injustice, including research scientists and clinicians [ 11 , 31 , 32 , 33 ] and public health professionals [ 34 ]. Even the EPA administrator, Gina McCarthy, is speaking about how Michigan evaded the EPA regarding the Flint water crisis and how this type of disaster cannot happen elsewhere [ 34 , 35 ]. Dr. Robert Bullard, dean of the School of Public Health at Texas Southern University, calls the Flint water crisis—leading to lead exposure and poisoning with long delays in addressing the problem—a classic case of environmental racism [ 36 ]. “Environmental racism is real…so real that even having the facts, having the documentation and having the information has never been enough to provide equal protection for people of color and poor people” [ 37 ]. He continues, “It takes longer for the response and it takes longer for the recovery in communities of color and low-income communities.” [ 37 ] He explains that regional EPA officials and state officials in Michigan responded first with a cover-up, “and then defensively—either trying to avoid responsibility or minimizing the extent of the damage”, as contrasted with handling of other environmental problems in predominantly white communities [ 37 ]. An example is then given of government officials on all levels helping to clean up a spill of coal ash in Roane County, Tennessee, in a mostly white community [ 37 ]. A Democrat who represents Flint, Michigan, Representative Dan Kildee, called race “the single greatest determinant of what happened in Flint” [ 28 ]. What is the solution? Dr. Bullard suggests that real solutions will result when communities previously left out of decision-making are offered a seat at the table [ 31 ]. In order to stop unequal protection from environmental hazards, Dr. Bullard has come up with five principles he suggests government adopt to further environmental justice: “guaranteeing the right to environmental protection, preventing harm before it occurs, shifting the burden of proof to the polluters, obviating proof of intent to discriminate, and redressing existing inequities” [ 37 ]. Charles Lee, another author writing about environmental justice who worked in the Office of Environmental Justice at EPA, quotes a definition of the environment as “the place where we live, where we work, and where we play” [ 38 ]. He goes on to state that “environmental justice must be the starting point for achieving healthy people, homes, and communities” [ 38 ]. Lastly, the Flint Water Task Force elaborates on its finding of environmental injustice in the Flint case. “Environmental justice or injustice, therefore, is not about intent. Rather, it is about process and results—fair treatment, equal protection, and meaningful participation in neutral forums that honor human dignity…The facts of the Flint water crisis lead us to the inescapable conclusion that this is a case of environmental injustice. Flint residents, who are majority Black or African American and among the most impoverished of any metropolitan area in the United States, did not enjoy the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards as that provided to other communities” [ 29 ].

The reader is referred to several references [ 1 , 2 , 3 ] for a more detailed timeline of the specific events and actions that occurred in Flint. The Flint Water Task Force report also provides a summary of its findings and recommendations, giving greater details on the specific events and actions during the switch in water supply [ 29 ]. Regardless of the motivations behind the water supply mismanagement, we must improve governmental safeguards and public health surveillance to strive to avoid such needless exposures to environmental toxicants in the future.

Another recent disaster, involving contamination of local water supplies, was that of the contamination of the Animas River in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico by mine waste from the Gold King Mine, leading to excessively high levels of some toxic elements metals including lead, arsenic and cadmium (all of these being toxic metals) [ 39 , 40 , 41 ]. The river water was subsequently off limits for agricultural use and closed for recreational use [ 39 , 42 ]. The Navajo Nation has recently expressed how difficult and problematic this poisoning of their drinking water source has been to this tribe, and that they have not been adequately reimbursed for the adverse impacts to their water source and way of life [ 43 , 44 ]. The Native American Rights Fund states that a source of clean and abundant water is hard to come by for many Native tribes and peoples and that many face health and developmental risks from environmental problems such as surface and groundwater contamination, hazardous waste disposal, illegal dumping, and mining wastes, all of which can contribute to poor quality of water [ 45 ]. As the Flint, the Navajo Nation, and the Native American Rights group exposures highlight, poor and minority communities are unfortunately too often exposed to poisonous chemicals in their neighborhoods and on their tribal lands, leading to environmental injustice [ 44 ].

Not only has the incident in Flint brought to light the contamination of Flint’s water system, it raises issues about local water supplies to towns and cities, and particularly to child care centers and school systems, around the nation [ 46 , 47 , 48 ]. This has caused our nation to focus on investigating for lead contamination in water supplies in other cities, particularly in school systems, child care centers and other places occupied by children [ 49 , 50 ]. A Huffington Post article states that the Flint water crisis has provided a wake-up call to the country with the “discovery” of poisoned water in many communities in the U.S., and that our water infrastructure is outdated and deteriorating, and that water sampling procedures for lead are also “dangerously” outdated, as they allow for 10% of the population to be exposed to levels over the EPA maximum contaminant level [ 51 ]. Some cities have been cited for their exemplary actions in keeping their city water supplies free from lead contamination [ 52 ].

Historically, the scientists in the companies that put lead in gasoline and lead in paint became aware of the dangers of those specific lead exposures, but it took much time to finally remove lead from these products; many counties banned the use of lead-based paint in residential housing before the U.S. did [ 53 , 54 ]. One author states, “Flint’s tragedy is shedding light on a health issue that’s been lurking in U.S. households for what seems like forever. But that demands the question: Why has lead poisoning never really been treated like what it is—the longest-lasting childhood-health epidemic in U.S. history?” [ 55 ]. Bliss then goes on to describe how when in the 1950s, when “millions of children had had been chronically or acutely exposed (to lead)” and this had been linked to health problems, that “If the lead industry had stepped up then (or if it had been forced to by government)”, maybe lead poisoning would have been treated like any other major childhood disease—polio, for example. In the 1950s, “Fewer than sixty thousand new cases of polio per year created a near-panic among American parents and a national mobilization that led to vaccination campaigns that virtually wiped out the disease within a decade”, write Rosner and Markowitz [ 56 ]. “With lead poisoning, the industry and federal government could have mobilized together to systemically detoxify the nation’s lead-infested housing stock, and end the epidemic right there” [ 55 ]. Bliss then goes on to describe how “the industry’s powerful leaders diverted the attention of health officials away from their products, and toward class and race” by associating childhood lead poisoning with that of a child “with ‘ignorant’ parents living in ‘slums’” [ 55 ]. Bliss goes on to state that “lead poisoning in children can be eradicated…Today the cost of detoxifying the entire nation hovers around $1 trillion, says Rosner. Any federal effort to systematically identify and remove lead from infested households would be complex, decades-long, and require ongoing policy reform. ‘But it’s also saving a next generation of children,’ Rosner says. ‘You’re actually going to stop these kids from being poisoned. And isn’t that worth something?’” [ 56 ]. “And Rosner is a tiny bit hopeful. Amid national conversation about economic inequality, a housing crisis, and the value of black and Latino lives, the attention that Flint has brought to lead might usher in the country’s first comprehensive lead-poisoning prevention program” [ 56 ].

With the information about lead contamination in Flint and many cities around the country, one might wonder whether there is a dearth of information or recommendations about how to prevent and manage childhood lead poisoning. There is not. Many authors have weighed in on this question recently [ 11 , 12 , 13 , 15 , 17 , 19 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 ], some with very specific plans and ideas. Primary prevention of lead exposure has been particularly emphasized in almost all of them. Landrigan and Bellinger compel us to “map the sources of lead, get the lead out, and make sure there is no new lead” [ 11 ]. Jacobs and colleagues at the National Center for Healthy Housing have started a campaign for lead exposure detection and lead poisoning prevention based on these three principles: “find it, fix it, and fund it” [ 33 ]. Some call for revised standards for lead in air, house dust, soil and water [ 12 , 61 , 62 , 63 ]. The chief causes of lead exposure are nicely summarized by Levin and colleagues [ 64 ]. Unfortunately, childhood lead poisoning prevention is often deemed to be not important enough to work on, with other pressing medical and public health problems intervening; it is also complicated, complex and involves many stakeholders. Thus, the clinicians, government officials, and public health officials looking for a quick fix and a one-prescription answer to this medical problem are often disappointed and discouraged.

Concern about the neurotoxic effects of lead has been expanded now to include the neurotoxic effects of many more new chemicals out in use by the American public, including children. Children are exposed to chemicals in their everyday lives, as these are found in toys, children’s products, personal care items such as shampoos and skin creams, on foods in the form of pesticide residues, and in the air in the form of air pollutants. Some authors have weighed in on the need for more control of the manufacture and use of these toxicants and for more research into adverse health effects [ 31 , 65 , 66 ]. In 2015, a unique group of research scientists, clinicians, government representatives, and health care advocates met to form the Project TENDR (Targeting Environmental Neurodevelopmental Risks) which focuses on engendering action to prevent exposure of fetuses, infants and children to environmental toxicants [ 67 ]. The group has created a list of five chemical classes of neurotoxins which have adverse effects on brain development. The list includes lead, specific air pollutants, organophosphate pesticides, phthalates, and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), which are flame retardants. These were selected based on the degree of evidence for their adverse effects and the ability of this group and other scientists, clinicians, government officials, and advocates to work effectively to prevent exposures to these toxicants. Project TENDR has recently released a consensus statement with many signatures of both individuals and groups [ 67 , 68 , 69 ], as well as other articles on the project’s work [ 70 ]. Later this year, the group will release specific recommendations for prevention of exposure to the five chemical groups. The recent passage of the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act has been a welcome revision and updating of the Toxic Substances Control Act promulgated by EPA in 1976 [ 71 , 72 , 73 ]. This is a step in right direction for better control of exposures to lead and other toxic chemicals in our environment.

4. Future Directions: How to Move Toward Environmental Justice

How do we remedy the situation in Flint, Michigan, and prevent future episodes similar to the Flint and Navajo Nation disasters? The Flint Water Task Force recommends that the MDHHS establish a Flint Toxic Exposure Registry to follow-up on the children and adults who were residing in Flint from April 2014 until the present, and carry out more aggressive clinical and public health follow-up for all children with elevated BLLs in the state [ 29 ]. It also recommends that routine lead screening and appropriate follow-up occur in the children’s medical homes (with the primary care provider) [ 29 ]. Additionally, the Task Force recommends that the Genesee County Health Department improve follow-up of health concerns in cooperation with the MDHHS and City of Flint “to effect timely, comprehensive, and coordinated activity and ensure the best health outcomes for children and adults affected” [ 29 ]. Dr. Hanna-Attisha has established the Flint Child Health and Development Fund which will support children and their families to obtain the optimum health and development outcomes, early childhood education, access to a pediatric medical home, improved nutrition and integrated social services [ 6 ]. The Michigan State University (MSU)/Hurley Pediatric Public Health Initiative will assess, monitor, and intervene to increase children’s readiness to succeed in school by providing the above services, along with stimulating environments and parenting education [ 6 ]. This type of close follow-up has been recommended under the Flint Recovery and Remediation section of the Flint Water Task Force, as well as a recommendation to establish a dedicated subsidiary fund in the Michigan Health Endowment Fund for funding health-related services for Flint residents [ 29 ]. Therefore, local efforts will be taken to counteract the negative consequences of exposure to lead for Flint’s children. Several recent publications support the positive effects that enriched home environments can have on cognition and behavior in both human and animal studies [ 74 , 75 , 76 ].

Secondly, government agencies at the federal, state and local level and municipal authorities will need to improve their performance to ensure environmental justice, rather than contribute toward environmental injustice. This was mandated in an Executive Order by President William Clinton which requires all federal agencies to take action to ensure environmental justice [ 77 ]. The American Academy of Pediatrics provides a good starting point regarding childhood lead exposure prevention with their recommendation that “The US EPA and HUD should review their protocols for identifying and mitigating residential lead hazards (e.g., lead-based paint, dust, and soil) and lead-contaminated water from lead service lines or lead solder and revise downward the allowable levels of lead in house dust, soil, paint, and water to conform with the recognition that there are no safe levels of lead” [ 12 ]. They also give many other recommendations for government, as well as for pediatricians and other health care providers, for reducing and preventing children’s exposure to lead. Other groups, authors and reports have weighed in on what needs to be fixed and carried out, as indicated earlier in this article. As Bellinger puts it, “We know where the lead is, how people are exposed, and how it damages health. What we lack is the political will to do what should be done” [ 32 ].

Looking at the Flint case specifically, why was the water supply switched in Flint? The evidence seems to point to financial reasons for this. In Flint, state officials decided to save money without concern for providing environmental protections for a community at well-established increased risk. This is clear injustice in environmental protection to a low income and minority community. Why weren’t the corrosion control measures implemented? The Flint Water Task Force implicates various leadership groups, including the MDEQ, MDHHS, Michigan’s Governor’s Office, State-appointed Emergency Managers, the EPA, and City of Flint, although the MDEQ and EPA seem to share most culpability [ 29 ].

5. Conclusions

In short, this crisis was the result of failures on every level. We have presented various comments about how environmental racism and injustice played into this situation. Why were the concerns and complaints about water quality from a mostly African-American community not addressed? The facts presented demonstrate that environmental injustice is the major and underlying factor involved in the events in Flint. Having a state-appointed emergency manager in charge took away the normal communication the City of Flint might have had with its residents and constituents. The Flint Water Task Force has a list of 44 recommendations, mostly directed at the various agencies and offices involved, for improving the situation and preventing further problems [ 29 ]. Much of this involves recommending that these entities seek and follow expert advice, whether on water treatment techniques or protecting the public’s health [ 29 ]. It is also imperative to rebuild relationships with Flint’s community and respond to community needs in order to make real and lasting change. Perhaps putting the Flint situation under a microscopic analysis may prevent future episodes of such environmental injustice.

We must do a better job at moving forward and preventing environmental injustice; our future work is cut out for us.

Author Contributions

The concept of the paper was developed by all of the authors. Carla Campbell performed the lead writing. Rachael Greenberg, Deepa Mankikar and Ronald Ross contributed references, edited the paper, and contributed to the revisions. All authors reviewed the article and approved the final content.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

June 17, 2022

Racism Drives Environmental Inequality—But Most Americans Don’t Realize

Survey finds that most people think poverty is why pollution disproportionately affects Black people, despite evidence that racism is the major cause

By Brittney J. Miller & Nature magazine

A person walks along an overpass above the Cross Bronx Expressway, a notorious stretch of highway in New York City that is often choked with traffic and contributes to pollution and poor air quality on November 16, 2021.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Most Americans do not think that Black people are any more likely to be affected by pollution than white people, despite significant evidence that racism is a root cause of environmental injustice in the United States, a survey has found.

Numerous  research papers  over the years have shown that people of colour and poor people are significantly more likely to live in areas of high pollution — a result of the deliberate construction of polluting industries in these communities, says Dylan Bugden, an environmental sociologist at Washington State University in Pullman.

But Bugden found that respondents to the survey were more than twice as likely to identify poverty as the main cause of environmental inequalities, instead of blaming structural racism. This is despite scientific evidence clearly demonstrating that “race, rather than poverty, is the primary factor behind environmental inequality”, notes Bugden in his study, published in  Social Problems 1 . Additionally, many people suggested that a lack of hard work and poor personal choices were responsible for increased exposure to pollution.

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“The evidence here is strong: America is in a state of denial about its racism and the unequal impacts of environmental exposures,” says Timmons Roberts, an environmental sociologist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

The US mindset

To investigate how Americans view environmental injustice, Budgen devised two sets of questions. The National Opinion Research Center, which operates out of the University of Chicago in Illinois, distributed these through mail, telephone and face-to-face interviews to households that were randomly selected and nationally representative. They received responses from 1,000 people.

The first set of questions explored whether Americans understand the causes of environmental inequality, whether they think it is fair and whether they support policies that address it. The results showed that only one-third of people felt that Black people are more likely to experience pollution and that this inequality is unfair. By contrast, another third of the respondents acknowledged that Black and Hispanic people and poor people experience environmental inequalities but felt that it is fair. Most respondents, however, generally supported policy measures to address these issues, such as compensating people affected by pollution.

The second set of questions investigated how beliefs about hard work and social mobility along with racial attitudes influence US opinions about environmental inequality. Respondents whom the survey characterized as having an underlying bias against Black people were less likely to understand the causes of environmental inequality. They were also more likely to think that pollution is more harmful to poor communities than Black communities. Additionally, when respondents felt that people could get out of harmful living situations by, say, working harder, they were also less likely to think that Black communities disproportionately experience environmental pollution.

Unequal opportunities

Bugden says the results show that there is a widespread belief in the United States that everyone has equal opportunities and that existing inequalities aren’t due to race. Instead, some Americans think that the only barriers facing minority racial groups are personal choice, responsibility and hard work, he says. He calls this phenomenon colour-blind environmental racism.

The lack of understanding that racism is causing environmental inequality undermines efforts to fix those disparities, even when the data show that race is the  biggest predictor  of exposure to environmental hazards, says Sacoby Wilson, an environmental-health scientist at the University of Maryland in College Park.

To gain more public support for policies that address the role of racism in environmental inequality, environmental-justice research needs to be better integrated into school curriculums and the media so people become more aware of the issues, says Sarah Grineski, a sociologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

The findings also have lessons for the groups and organizations trying to address environmental injustices and protect marginalized communities. These groups should consider communicating that race is the root of environmental inequalities, Bugden says. “It has got to be part of our environmental policy,” he concludes.

US President Joe Biden has promised  to address environmental inequalities. His administration’s Justice40 initiative pledges that disadvantaged communities will receive 40% of the federal government’s investments in climate and clean energy. But advocacy  groups  have criticized the initiative because the tool it will use to decide which communities are disadvantaged does not currently factor in race. “People have this myth in their brains that poverty is the biggest driver of the differential burden of hazards when it isn’t,” says Wilson. “It’s race and racism.”

This article is reproduced with permission and was  first published  on June 14 2022.

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Policy approaches to addressing a history of racial discrimination

Key takeaways.

• Race-blind policies can inadvertently exacerbate racial inequalities by failing to address the lingering effects of past discrimination. To reduce anti-Black discrimination, policymakers must explicitly consider how these policies interact with historical injustices created by past legislation.
• Recent research has shown that historical injustices, such as slavery and Jim Crow laws, continue to impact racial inequality today due to systemic discrimination that perpetuates the effects of past discrimination.
• Comprehensive strategies that effectively address the consequences of historical injustices are essential to ensure equal opportunities for all members of society. This principle applies not only to racial inequality but to all forms of inequality and discrimination.

M ay 17 marked the 70th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawing segregation in public schools. And it’s been 60 years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act that banned discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.

Despite major court rulings and landmark legislation meant to right the wrongs of racist laws, inequality persists – partly because the impacts of slavery and segregation were never fully considered in the formulation of the policies meant to address racial disparities.

My research traces the history of legislated discrimination and shows how those now-illegal policies continue to significantly impact Black Americans. Without a thorough understanding of that history, policymakers run the risk of inadvertently perpetuating systemic discrimination and exacerbating existing inequalities.

This policy brief lays out my work and suggests steps that government officials can take toward ensuring more racially equitable economic opportunities for Americans.

The long-term impact of slavery and Jim Crow laws

My research with Hugo Reichardt (Althoff and Reichardt 2024) examines the economic progress of individual Black families from their enslavement to the present day. Our work reveals that Black families have faced repeated obstacles to realizing their full economic potential, and those hurdles often emerged because of past hurdles they faced – the very definition of systemic discrimination (Bohren, Hull, Imas 2023).

Specifically, we show that the timing and location of a family's emancipation from slavery continue to influence their economic status today. Black families whose ancestors were enslaved until the Civil War have considerably lower education, income, and wealth than Black families whose ancestors were free before the four-year war began in 1861.

For example, we find that a Black man with enslaved ancestry had $12,500 less in predicted annual income in 2023 than a Black man with free Black ancestry – a Free-Enslaved gap that is around one-quarter of the corresponding Black-white income gap today. Gaps of similar magnitude have persisted throughout the 20th and 21st centuries in other outcomes including education and wealth.

The Free-Enslaved gap persists largely because systemic forces drastically disadvantaged families enslaved until the Civil War and then under the subsequent Jim Crow laws that disenfranchised Black voters, limited Black geographic and economic mobility, and mandated racial segregation throughout the South. Longer enslavement increased the likelihood of a family being concentrated in the Deep South (Figure 1), where the strictest Jim Crow regimes emerged after 1877 and limited Black economic progress.

Figure 1: Number of enslaved people (left) and free Black Americans (right) in 1860

The state and local Jim Crow laws enacted in Southern states affected all Black Americans living in those jurisdictions.

For example, free Black families in Louisiana — who had attained relatively high economic position — lost their protected legal status once Jim Crow began. By the mid-20th century, their economic position had converged with formerly enslaved families due to the severe limits imposed by Louisiana's oppressive policies. In contrast, white Americans’ economic trajectories, such as their educational attainment, were entirely uncorrelated with those of Black Americans across different states or counties, highlighting the race-specific nature of Jim Crow’s impact.

On the flip side, families who had been enslaved in regions that ended up adopting less severe Jim Crow laws made substantial economic strides in the decades after slavery (see Figure 2). For example, the regression discontinuity design in our study reveals that Black families freed in Louisiana attained 1.2 fewer years of education by 1940 compared to families freed just a few miles away in Texas. But even in Texas and other states with less severe Jim Crow laws, Black families were still disadvantaged relative to white families by being excluded from specific occupations, industries, and firms; and facing other forms of racial discrimination, particularly in the housing and consumer markets. The impact of systemic racism was pervasive and continued to hinder Black economic progress even in areas with less oppressive Jim Crow policies.

Figure 2: Jim Crow’s impact on the education of Black families

While it was difficult to advance economically in areas with restrictive Jim Crow laws, a natural experiment in the construction of schools shows that Black Americans effectively seized opportunities when they were accessible.

Specifically, the Rosenwald school program – a philanthropic effort to build schools for Black children – provided access to education for almost a third of all Black children in the South between 1913 and 1932 (Aaronson and Mazumder 2011). We show that gaining access to a school translated into large gains in education among Black children and improved their long-run economic outcomes.

Black men today whose fathers had access to a Rosenwald school (for plausibly exogenous reasons) today are 40 percent more likely to hold a college degree than those whose fathers did not have access.

These results highlight that when and where their environment allowed, Black Americans made substantial progress over generations. The fact that the vast majority of formerly enslaved Americans made far less progress than they could have is because they were concentrated in soon-to-be Jim Crow states.

Systemic discrimination – higher exposure to discrimination due to past discrimination – is at the core of why Black Americans' socioeconomic status throughout recent decades has continued to depend on their ancestors' enslavement status. Even today, the income and wealth gap between Black Americans whose ancestors were either free or enslaved is 20 to 70 percent of the gap between Black and white Americans.

How policies interact with the effects of past discrimination

Having established the impact that legalized discrimination continues to have on the socioeconomic status of Black Americans, the next question is how these persistent effects interact with race-blind policies to exacerbate systemic discrimination.

The World War II G.I. Bill is a case in point. The G.I. Bill provided virtually all World War II veterans with generous subsidies to gain additional education, finance their first home, and purchase businesses and farms. The policy has been celebrated as a huge success and credited with creating America’s middle class.

But it also has become increasingly clear that Black veterans benefited from the policy substantially less than white Americans despite the race-blind statutory terms of the policy.

First, fewer Black men had the opportunity to serve due to racial discrimination in the military. They also had lower levels of education resulting from slavery and Jim Crow (Althoff and Reichardt 2024).

Second, even among the Black Americans who served, many faced severe obstacles in using their benefits (Katznelson 2005). Many colleges did not accept Black Americans at the time, limiting their ability to use the G.I. Bill's educational benefits, especially in the segregated South (Turner and Bound 2003).

In the housing market, severe discrimination among sellers and financial lending institutions made it hard to use the G.I. Bill's homeowner benefits (Cohen 2003). Redlining, anti-Black covenants, and other government-condoned discriminatory practices limited the areas in which Black veterans were able to buy property, impacting the returns they could achieve from homeownership (Fishback et al. 2021, Ali 2023, Hynsjö and Perdoni 2024). A survey at the time concluded that in 13 cities in Mississippi, only two of over 3,000 loans guaranteed through the G.I. Bill had been granted to Black veterans (Cohen 2003, p. 171).

The G.I. Bill’s failure to Black veterans lies in ignoring race. This failure manifested in at least three key ways.

First, the bill's benefits were designed primarily with white veterans in mind, reflecting the broader trend of policies at the time that Katznelson (2005) termed "affirmative action for white people."

Second, the decision to allow local offices to administer benefits, a provision heavily advocated for by Southern states, enabled rampant racial discrimination, particularly in the South, where nearly all administrators were white.

Third, the federal government failed to seize the opportunity to combat discrimination by tying G.I. Bill funds to anti-discrimination efforts. For instance, it could have mandated that any institution receiving G.I. Bill funds – such as colleges, mortgage providers, or employers – must commit to providing equal access to veterans regardless of race. Alternatively, the bill could have included specific provisions designed to support Black veterans, acknowledging and addressing the unique challenges they faced due to systemic racism. By failing to confront racial inequality head-on, the G.I. Bill perpetuated and even exacerbated the disparities between white and Black families.

The policy forcefully highlights the problem of ignoring race in policy design. If the goal of policymakers is to design equitable policies, they must consider the lingering impact of past discrimination.

There are many lessons policymakers can learn from the unintended consequences of the G.I. Bill. Considering and understanding government policies that led to discrepancies in formal education and other opportunities is crucial to ending systemic discrimination. Policies that encourage job training, educational opportunities and increased oversight to mitigate discrimination in benefit usage, have been implemented and reflect important progress. What the G.I. Bill highlights, however, remains timely and pressing: ignoring race is not a solution to fighting discrimination – it can exacerbate racial inequality through systemic discrimination.

The Biden administration's Child Tax Credit reform illustrates how race-blind policies, calibrated to the needs of disadvantaged groups, can enhance racial equity. By increasing benefits for low-income families (disproportionately Black) and eliminating work requirements that hindered single mothers (more prevalent among Black families), the reform significantly reduced racial disparities (Parolin et al. 2022). The reform's positive effect on racial equity was likely the result of careful consideration of the needs of Americans close to the poverty line, but Congress failed to make those reforms permanent, jeopardizing the longevity of the policy’s impact.

Policy implications

There are several policy proposals being considered to combat the legacy of past discrimination. These policies must be carefully designed and targeted.

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Georgia) has recently reintroduced the G.I. Bill Restoration Act, aimed at addressing the racial inequities perpetuated by the original G.I. Bill. The legislation seeks to provide the families of Black World War II veterans who were denied full access to G.I. Bill benefits due to racial discrimination with the opportunity to receive those benefits today.

The approach of carefully identifying and addressing specific disparities created by past governments has precedent in the U.S. After a class action lawsuit accused the Department of Agriculture of anti-Black discrimination, an extensive investigation confirmed that disaster relief aid was systematically withheld from Black farmers but not white farmers during the 1980s and 1990s (Woods 2013). In 2010, President Barack Obama finalized legislation that entitles Black farmers or their descendants to up to $250,000 if they were denied relevant aid in the past.

Affirmative action, while less targeted, seeks to increase diversity and expand opportunities for underrepresented groups. However, its effectiveness in addressing past harm may be limited if the primary beneficiaries are less directly impacted by historical discrimination. Sociologists have shown that the more selective a college is, the less likely its Black students are to be descendants of the enslaved (Massey et al. 2007). Often, selective colleges choose to admit Black students from abroad, not Black American students.

Another promising approach includes policies that provide broad-based support to disadvantaged communities, like the Child Tax Credit reform that removed working requirements. By providing support regardless of employment status, this policy helps mitigate the compounding effects of historical injustices on economically disadvantaged groups.

Any policymaker interested in creating a more equitable society must acknowledge and address the impact of past discrimination. Failing to do so risks perpetuating systemic discrimination and exacerbating inequalities, harming marginalized communities, and undermining the overall social and economic well-being of the nation.

Targeted policies that directly address the specific harms of historical injustices are essential for greater equity. However, broad policies that support disadvantaged communities also play a crucial role in combating the lingering effects of past discrimination. Going forward, policymakers must prioritize comprehensive strategies that effectively address the complex and far-reaching consequences of historical injustices, ensuring all members of society have an equal opportunity to thrive.

About the Authors

Lukas Althoff is a Postdoctoral Fellow at SIEPR. He joins Stanford’s Department of Economics as an Assistant Professor in 2025. His work focuses on the causes and consequences of inequality using tools from applied microeconomics and economic history.

Aaronson, D., & Mazumder, B. (2011). The Impact of Rosenwald Schools on Black Achievement. Journal of Political Economy, 119(5), 821-888.

Ali, O. (2023). The Impact of Federal Housing Policies on Racial Inequality: The Case of the Federal Housing Administration. Working Paper.

Althoff, L., & Reichardt, H. (2024). Jim Crow and Black Economic Progress after Slavery. Working Paper.

Baker, R. S. (2022). The Historical Racial Regime and Racial Inequality in Poverty in the American South. American Journal of Sociology, 127.

Bohren, J. A., Hull, P., & Imas, A. (2023). Systemic Discrimination: Theory and Measurement. Working Paper.

Cohen, L. (2004). A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America. Vintage Books.

Fishback, P. V., Rose, J., Snowden, K. A., & Storrs, T. (2021). New Evidence on Redlining by Federal Housing Programs in the 1930s (NBER Working Paper No. 29244).

Hynsjö, D. M., & Perdoni, L. (2024). Mapping Out Institutional Discrimination: The Economic Effects of Federal "Redlining". Working Paper.

Katznelson, I. (2006). When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Massey, D. S., Mooney, M., Torres, K. C., & Charles, C. Z. (2007). Black Immigrants and Black Natives Attending Selective Colleges and Universities in the United States. American Journal of Education, 113(2), 243-271.

Parolin, Z., Collyer, S., & Curran, M. A. (2022). Absence of Monthly Child Tax Credit Leads to 3.7 Million More Children in Poverty in January 2022. Poverty and Social Policy Brief, 6(2). Columbia University Center on Poverty and Social Policy.

Turner, S., & Bound, J. (2003). Closing the Gap or Widening the Divide: The Effects of the G.I. Bill and World War II on the Educational Outcomes of Black Americans. The Journal of Economic History, 63(1), 145-177.

Woods, L. L., II. (2013). Almost "No Negro Veteran … Could Get a Loan": African Americans, the GI Bill, and the NAACP Campaign Against Residential Segregation, 1917–1960. The Journal of African American History, 98(3), 392-417.

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Wiccans through the Ages: a Historical Perspective

This essay about Wicca explores its roots in ancient European pagan religions, detailing its evolution through historical suppression and revival. It highlights key figures like Gerald Gardner and Doreen Valiente, the influence of feminist movements, and the rise of various Wiccan traditions. The text also discusses Wicca’s increasing acceptance, public visibility, and its modern emphasis on environmentalism and nature reverence.

How it works

Wicca, often referred to as modern witchcraft, represents a contemporary Pagan religious movement with deep connections to various historical traditions. Although Wicca officially emerged in the mid-20th century, it draws extensively from ancient pagan practices, folklore, and occult traditions. The evolution of Wicca is a compelling story of revival, adaptation, and innovation.

The prehistory of Wicca is rooted in the ancient pagan religions of Europe. Before the rise of Christianity, numerous polytheistic and animistic traditions thrived, worshipping multiple deities often linked to natural forces.

These early religions conducted rituals to ensure fertility, successful harvests, and protection from harm. Archaeological sites like Stonehenge in England provide evidence of the significance of solar and lunar cycles in these rituals. While these ancient practices were not Wiccan, they established a foundation for the development of Wicca by fostering a connection to nature and the divine.

As Christianity spread across Europe, many pagan traditions were suppressed, forcing their practices underground. The Christian church frequently labeled pagan rituals as witchcraft and heresy, leading to widespread persecution. The notorious witch hunts from the 15th to the 18th centuries resulted in the torture and execution of thousands accused of witchcraft. These persecutions significantly shaped modern perceptions of witchcraft and contributed to the clandestine nature of later Wiccan practices.

Despite this persecution, elements of pre-Christian traditions endured, often blending with Christian customs in rural areas. Folk magic and herbal medicine, practiced by cunning folk and healers, remained integral to daily life for many people. These practices, although not explicitly Wiccan, preserved knowledge and customs that would later be incorporated into modern Wicca. The grimoires and spellbooks of the Renaissance period, documenting occult knowledge and magical practices, also played a crucial role in preserving esoteric traditions.

The late 19th and early 20th centuries witnessed a resurgence of interest in the occult and paganism, fueled by the Romantic movement’s fascination with folklore and the supernatural. Secret societies like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the Theosophical Society emerged, reflecting a growing interest in mystical and esoteric traditions. These societies explored various spiritual practices, including magic, alchemy, and Eastern religions, influencing the development of modern witchcraft.

Gerald Gardner, often considered the father of modern Wicca, emerged within this context. Gardner, an amateur anthropologist and occultist, claimed to have been initiated into a coven of witches in the New Forest, England, in the late 1930s. According to Gardner, this coven practiced a form of witchcraft that had survived from pre-Christian times. In 1954, Gardner published “Witchcraft Today,” outlining the beliefs and practices of this tradition, which he called Wicca. Gardner’s Wicca was a syncretic creation, blending elements of ceremonial magic, folk magic, ancient paganism, and contemporary occult movements.

Gardner’s writings sparked renewed interest in witchcraft and led to the formation of numerous covens, spreading Wicca beyond England. Doreen Valiente, Gardner’s high priestess, significantly shaped Wiccan liturgy and rituals, infusing them with poetic and mystical elements. Valiente’s contributions helped establish a coherent and accessible framework for Wiccan practice.

In the United States, the countercultural movements of the 1960s and 1970s provided fertile ground for Wicca’s growth. The feminist movement, in particular, resonated with Wicca’s emphasis on the divine feminine and the Goddess. Figures like Starhawk and Zsuzsanna Budapest were instrumental in developing feminist forms of Wicca, emphasizing women’s empowerment, ecological consciousness, and social justice. Starhawk’s book “The Spiral Dance,” published in 1979, became a seminal text for feminist Wiccans and Pagans, promoting a vision of spirituality that was both mystical and activist.

As Wicca gained popularity, it diversified. Various traditions and branches emerged, each emphasizing different aspects of Wiccan practice. Alexandrian Wicca, founded by Alex Sanders, closely mirrored Gardnerian Wicca but placed greater emphasis on ceremonial magic. Other traditions, such as Dianic Wicca, focused exclusively on the worship of the Goddess and were often women-only. Eclectic Wicca, which allows practitioners to draw from multiple traditions and create personalized practices, also gained prominence.

The late 20th and early 21st centuries saw Wicca gain greater public visibility and acceptance. In 1985, Wicca was recognized as a legitimate religion by the U.S. military, and Wiccan chaplains have since been appointed to serve in the armed forces. The internet played a crucial role in connecting Wiccans worldwide, facilitating the exchange of information and the formation of online communities. This period also saw the publication of numerous books on Wicca, making its teachings more accessible to a broader audience.

Wicca’s emphasis on environmentalism and reverence for nature resonates strongly in an era of growing ecological awareness. Wiccans celebrate seasonal festivals, known as the Wheel of the Year, and perform rituals honoring the cycles of nature, reflecting a deep commitment to living in harmony with the Earth. This ecological aspect of Wicca has attracted many individuals concerned about environmental degradation and seeking a spiritual path aligned with their values.

Today, Wicca continues to evolve, reflecting the diverse and dynamic nature of its practitioners. Contemporary Wiccans come from all walks of life and may practice alone or in covens, drawing on a rich tapestry of traditions and personal inspirations. The core principles of Wicca—reverence for nature, belief in the divine, and the practice of magic—remain constant, even as the forms and expressions of these principles change.

The history of Wicca is a testament to the enduring power of spirituality and the human quest for connection with the divine. From its roots in ancient paganism to its modern incarnation as a vibrant and dynamic religious movement, Wicca has navigated persecution, adaptation, and revival. Its journey reflects a broader narrative of resilience and transformation, echoing the cycles of nature that Wiccans hold sacred. As Wicca continues to grow and change, it remains a living tradition, offering a path of spirituality that honors both the past and the ever-unfolding present.

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