BOOKS

James Robert Allison III: Sovereignty for Survival: American Energy Development and Indian Self-Determination.

Robert D. Bullard: known as the “father of environmental justice,” Bullard has published 18 books. You can find them all here.

Jayajit Chakraborty, Ryan Holifield, & Gordon Walker (editors): The Routledge Handbook of Environmental Justice.

Luke W. Cole & Sheila R. Foster: From the Ground Up: Environmental Racism and the Rise of the Environmental Justice Movement.

Jaskiran Dhillon & Nick Estes: Standing with Standing Rock: Voices from the #NoDAPL Movement.

Nick Estes: Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance.

Dina Gilio-Whitaker: As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock.

Elizabeth Hoover: The River Is in Us: Fighting Toxics in a Mohawk Community.

Nadia Y. Kim: Refusing Death: Immigrant Women and the Fight for Environmental Justice in LA.

Michael Mascarenhas (editor): Lessons in Environmental Justice: From Civil Rights to Black Lives Matter and Idle No More.

Lisa Sun-Hee Park & David N. Pellow: The Slums of Aspen: Immigrants vs. the Environment in America’s Eden.

Lisa Sun-Hee Park & David N. Pellow: The Silicon Valley of Dreams: Environmental Injustice, Immigrant Workers, and the High-Tech Global Economy.

David N. Pellow: Garbage Wars: The Struggle for Environmental Justice in Chicago.

Sarah Jaquette Ray, David J. Vazquez, Sarah D. Wald, & Priscilla Solis Ybarra: Latinx Environmentalisms: Place, Justice, and the Decolonial.

Sarah Jaquette Ray: The Ecological Other: Environmental Exclusion in American Culture.

Dorceta Taylor: Toxic Communities: Environmental Racism, Industrial Pollution, and Residential Mobility.

Dorceta Taylor: The Rise of the American Conservation Movement: Power, Privilege, and Environmental Protection.

Traci Brynne Voyles: Wastelanding: Legacies of Uranium Mining in Navajo Country.

Harriet A. Washington: A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind.

Priscilla Solis Ybarra: Writing the Goodlife: Mexican American Literature and the Environment.

Carl A. Zimring: Clean and White: A History of Environmental Racism in the United States.

ARTICLES

Rose Aguilar & Andrew Stelzer: The environmental costs of prisons. (Podcast.)

Michelle L. Bell & Keita Ebisu: Environmental Inequality in Exposures to Airborne Particulate Matter Components in the United States.

Julie Bosman, Monica Davey, & Mitch Smith: Flint’s Water Crisis Started 5 Years Ago. It’s Not Over. Pipes are now being replaced and officials say the water is safe, but residents still worry, drink bottled water and doubt their elected leaders.

Amber Bracken & Alleen Brown: After Police Defend a Gas Pipeline Over Indigenous Land Rights, Protesters Shut Down Railways Across Canada.

Alleen Brown:

• In California’s Wine Country, Undocumented Grape Pickers Forced to Work in Fire Evacuation Zones.
• Energy Insurrection: Puerto Rico’s Power Failures Inspired a Rooftop Solar Movement. But Officials Are Undermining It — in Favor of Natural Gas.
• Two Years After the Hurricane, Puerto Rico’s “Generation Maria” Leads a Climate Strike: The most powerful youth-led climate strike movement of the moment may actually be in Puerto Rico.
• See more by Alleen Brown here.

Tianna Bruno, Cristina Faiver-Serna, Cassandra Galentine, & Laura Pulido: Environmental Deregulation, Spectacular Racism, and White Nationalism in the Trump Era.

Robert D. Bullard: known as the “father of environmental justice,” Bullard has published a vast amount of work: see his many articles at his website. 

Joan A. Casey, Lara Cushing, Rachel Morello-Frosch, & Kathy Tran: Living near active oil and gas wells in California tied to low birth weight and smaller babies.

Joan A. Casey, Peter James, Rachel Morello-Frosch: Urban noise pollution is worst in poor and minority neighborhoods and segregated cities.

C.N.E. Corbin: The Rise of Green Spaces in Inner Cities.

Lara Cushing, Jill Johnston: The risk of preterm birth rises near gas flaring, reflecting deep-rooted environmental injustices in rural America.

Lara Cushing, Rachel Morello-Frosch,  Manuel Pastor, & Madeline Wander: Haves, the Have-Nots, and the Health of Everyone: The Relationship Between Social Inequality and Environmental Quality.

Coral Davenport: Climate Is Big Issue for Hispanics, and Personal.

Jaskiran Dhillon: Indigenous Youth Are Building a Climate Justice Movement by Targeting Colonialism.

Jaskiran Dhillon: Youth Activists Tell Washington “We’re Coming for You” on Climate Change.

Nick Estes:

• Indigenous People Are Already Working “Green Jobs” — but They’re Unrecognized and Unpaid. From Standing Rock to the Unist’ot’en Camp, land defense and water protection are necessary for the continuation of life on a planet teetering on collapse.
• See Nick Estes’ many writings and talks about Standing Rock and indigenous history and resistance here.

Thomas Frank: Flooding disproportionately harms black neighborhoods.

Carlos G. García-Quijano & Hilda Lloréns: From Extractive Agriculture to Industrial Waste Periphery: Life in a Black-Puerto Rican Ecology.

Erica L. Green: Flint’s Children Suffer in Class After Years of Drinking the Lead-Poisoned Water: The city’s schools, stretched even before the lead crisis, are struggling with demands for individualized education programs and behavioral interventions for children with high lead exposure.

Nichola Groom: U.S. solar industry battles ‘white privilege’ image problem.

Mary Annaïse Heglar:

• We Don’t Have To Halt Climate Action To Fight Racism: It’s time to stop #AllLivesMattering the climate crisis.
• Climate Denial by Any Other Name: If this new world we’re building is one in which you can have your climate action and your bigotry too, I don’t see a place for myself in it.
• After the Storm: How Hurricane Katrina and the murder of Emmett Till shaped one woman’s commitment to climate justice.
• The Hot Take podcast: An intersectional look at the climate crisis and the climate conversation.
• See more by Mary Annaïse Heglar here and here.

Justin Hosbey & J.T. Roane: Mapping Black Ecologies.

Brett Israel: Noise pollution loudest in black neighborhoods, segregated cities.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson:

• I’m a black climate expert. Racism derails our efforts to save the planet.
• We Can’t Solve the Climate Crisis Unless Black Lives Matter.
• Young voters and voters of color are key to climate policy.

Jill Johnston: Tooth fairy study reveals children near lead smelters are exposed to dangerous lead in the womb.

Alexi Jones: Cruel and unusual punishment: When states don’t provide air conditioning in prison: 13 states in the hottest parts of the country lack universal A/C in their prisons. We explain the consequences.

Alexander C. Kaufman: States Quietly Pass Laws Criminalizing Fossil Fuel Protests Amid Coronavirus Chaos: Over the past two weeks, Kentucky, South Dakota and West Virginia approved new laws meant to discourage Dakota Access-style protests.

Jens Manuel Krogstad: Hispanics more likely than whites to say global warming is caused by humans.

Ameer Hasan Loggins & Christopher F. Petrella: Standing Rock, Flint, and the Color of Water.

Stephanie A. Malin & Stacia S. Ryder: Developing deeply intersectional environmental justice scholarship.

Gerald Markowitz & David Rosner: How Many Flints Are There? In a country where 500,000 children have substantial amounts of lead in their bodies, Flint is no anomaly.

Jillean McCommons: Appalachian Hillsides as Black Ecologies: Housing, Memory, and The Sanctified Hill Disaster of 1972.

Tiya Miles: Black Bodies, Green Spaces: Why is the image of an environmentally conscious African-American still hard for us to picture?

Corey Mitchell: In Flint, Schools Overwhelmed by Special Ed. Needs in Aftermath of Lead Crisis.

Brentin Mock: The Green Movement Is Talking About Racism? It’s About Time. The same people and organizations we admire for protecting our wild places also have a history of being apathetic—or plain antagonistic—toward issues of race and social justice.

NAACP: Environmental & Climate Justice Resources.

NAACP: Fumes Across the Fence-Line: The Health Impacts of Air Pollution from oil & Gas Facilities on African American Communities.

Vann R. Newkirk II: Trump’s EPA Concludes Environmental Racism Is Real: A new report from the Environmental Protection Agency finds that people of color are much more likely to live near polluters and breathe polluted air—even as the agency seeks to roll back regulations on pollution.

Vann R. Newkirk II: Fighting Environmental Racism in North Carolina.

Tamara Toles O’Laughlin: If you care about the planet, you must dismantle white supremacy.

Romy Opperman: We Need Histories of Radical Black Ecology Now.

David N. Pellow: The disturbing link between environmental racism and criminalization.

Kendra Pierre-Louis: A Leader in the War on Poverty Opens a New Front: Pollution. A pastor is resurrecting the Poor People’s Campaign, a movement started by Martin Luther King Jr. He sees the climate and environment as issues on par with poverty and racism.

Kendra Pierre-Louis: Dr. King Said Segregation Harms Us All. Environmental Research Shows He Was Right. Both minorities and whites who live in racially divided communities are exposed to higher levels of pollution than those who live in more integrated areas.

Jayson Maurice Porter & Meztli Yoalli Rodríguez: On Dying Land: the Afterlife of Toxicity in an Afromexican Community. 

Laura Pulido:

• Flint, Environmental Racism, and Racial Capitalism.
• The Personal and the Political: Evolving Racial Formations and the Environmental Justice Movement.
• Geographies of Race and Ethnicity I: White Supremacy vs White Privilege in Environmental Racism Research.
• Geographies and Race and Ethnicity II: Environmental Racism and Racial Capitalism.
• You can find more of Laura Pulido’s articles here.

Jedediah Purdy: Environmentalism’s Racist History.

Raven Rakia: Fracking waste more likely to be located in poor communities and neighborhoods of color.

Robert J. Sampson & Alix S. Winter: THE RACIAL ECOLOGY OF LEAD POISONING: Toxic Inequality in Chicago Neighborhoods, 1995-2013.

Somini Sengupta:

• Read Up on the Links Between Racism and the Environment.
• Heat, Smoke, and COVID Are Battering the Workers Who Feed America.
• Black Environmentalists Talk About Climate and Anti-Racism: It’s impossible to live sustainably without tackling inequality, activists say.
• See mere from Somini Sengupta here.

Dany Sigwalt: Climate Activists: Here’s Why Your Work Depends on Ending Police Violence: To win on climate, we need to reinvent the power structures that haven’t functionally changed since slavery.

Phillip Luke Sinitiere: From Standing Rock to Waller County: Repression, Resistance, And Environmental Justice.

Nathaniel Stinnett: Climate Voters Could Swing Congress, But They Might Not Be Who You Think They Are: Racial Minorities, Lower Income Voters Prioritize Environmental Issues Most.

Dorceta Taylor: a huge amount of articles and interviews with Dorceta Taylor can be found here. (Note: for her non-academic work, scroll to the middle of the page and see the “In the Media” section.)

Heather McTeer Toney: Black Women Are Leaders in the Climate Movement: Environmentalism, in other words, is a black issue.

Yale Program on Climate Change Communication: Which racial/ethnic groups care most about climate change?

Carl A. Zimring:

• The Brutal Life of a Sanitation Worker.
• The Dirty History of White Supremacy.
• The Economic Crisis is an Environmental Crisis: Trash Has Crashed.
• From a Need for Hygiene to Environmental Racism: From the age of Thomas Jefferson and on, environmental racism in the United States and ideas about waste and cleanliness have shaped where people have lived, where people have worked, and how society’s refuse has been managed.
• See more by Carl A. Zimring here.

For more resources on systemic racism, visit the systemic racism section of the website.