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Author 
BENJAMIN J. CLARK 
IUPUI Arts & Humanities 
Institute

PhD student in American 
Studies, IUPUI School of 
Liberal Arts

Environmental Racism 
in Indianapolis
The Importance of Connecting with 
Community Partners 

BENJAMIN J. CLARK

INTRODUCTION
“The lead in that soil we found 
came from an old lead factory that 
had been in the community. And 
when they closed, they poured their 
pollutants into the soil, into the 
ground, and then it went into the 
flood... I guess we could just say 
it went down into the drains, and 
the city on the streets, and then came 
back up into our system” 
(Anonymous, interview by Benjamin 
Clark, 29 June 2020, transcript, 
IUPUI Arts & Humanities Institute). 

A longtime resident of the 
Martindale-Brightwood 
neighborhood in Indianapolis, an 
area predominantly populated by 
Black residents for decades, spoke 
these words. The quote speaks to the 
disregard that some companies take 
toward the environment, especially in 
majority Black spaces. The experience 
is but one example of countless Black 
neighborhoods and communities 
across the U.S. being polluted by 
lead factories and other industrial 

activities (including dry cleaning 1, oil 
refineries, manufacturing, and waste 
disposal). 

At the heart of environmental racism 
is the simple question: Why are Black 
people disproportionately exposed 
to pollution in the places where they 
live? (Aygeman, et al 2016; Beliso-De 
Jesus 2019; Bullard 2001; Bullard 
et al 2008; Cole and Foster 2001; 
Dillon 2014; Henderson and Wells 
2021; Mohai et al 2009; Nixon 2013; 
Pellow 2016; Pulido 2000; Pulido 
2015; Pulido 2016; Pulido 2017; Sze 
2008; Turner 2016). The question 
is not new, but has not received 
enough governmental response 
when it comes to the experiences of 
residents in Indianapolis. Meaningful 
research on environmental racism in 
Indianapolis has happened but there 
is much more to be done (see Fuller 
2015). 

Community-engaged research, 
grounded in the humanities and 
social sciences and rooted in 
ethnographic methods, can provide 

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1 https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/4d28f320d66e4a449b2bca01e2491b9b

2 Visit https://anthropocenes.org/ to learn more about these projects.

important insights into how environmental racism 
impacts neighborhoods and communities. I am 
working on a project called the Anthropocene 
Household as part of a team of scholars doing 
community-engaged research at the IUPUI Arts & 
Humanities Institute (AHI)2. The Anthropocene 
Household explores the current geological epoch, 
the Age of Humans, on a local level through the 
lens of the household in order to understand the 
experiences, knowledges, and practices associated 
with environmental change (Angus 2016; McNeill 
2014; Moore 2017). In my research, I look at 
the experiences and understandings specifically 
related to environmental racism. In this paper I 
explore two different examples of environmental 
racism in Indianapolis. One illustrates how white 
privilege creates environmental racism and the 
other shows the impact of white supremacy in 
shaping government response to environmental 
racism. Both examples demonstrate the value 
in foregrounding voices and experiences of 
the people who live in impacted communities. 
Community-engaged scholarship brings peoples’ 
stories and lived experiences to the forefront. We 
cannot develop meaningful interventions into 
environmental racism without understanding the 
lived experiences and creating space to hear these 
voices. 

A critical element in effective community-engaged 
scholarship begins with establishing working 
relationships with community partners. There 
is a wealth of community knowledge wrought by 
personal experiences and connecting to community 
partners means that as researchers we seek to 
tap into this knowledge. The IUPUI IAHI and 
Anthropocene Household project partners with two 
organizations based in Indianapolis. Groundwork 

Indy (GWI)3, part of a larger national network 
of Groundwork organizations and based in the 
Riverside neighborhood, where a groundwater 
contamination site is located and where lead 
contamination hotspots are known to exist; GWI 
assists AHI in distributing free lead testing kits to 
residents and with recruiting participants in focus 
groups. The AHI has also developed a partnership 
with local religious leaders called the Indianapolis 
Ministerium. Through the Ministerium we have 
developed a network for distribution of the free 
lead testing kits. The anonymous results are 
returned to the household with information 
about levels of lead in the soil, dust, and water. If 
unsafe levels are found, the information includes 
no or low-cost suggestions to reduce risk to their 
families. In addition, we are working with GWI to 
conduct focus groups with residents to deepen our 
understanding of how they define and understand 
their environment in the context of environmental 
racism.

WHITE PRIVILEDGE AND 
ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM
“As the child's brain is being developed, they say 
by the third grade the brain has a hard structure 
around it, but while it doesn't have a hard 
structure, lead can get into it. Lead, they say, the 
body thinks lead is milk or calcium so it absorbs 
it into the brain and it causes damage to you. 
It shuts it down in certain areas.” (Anonymous, 
interview by Benjamin Clark, 21 April 2020, 
transcript, IUPUI AHI). 

One of the most common and least apparent 
pollutants is lead, which is found in many places 
in everyday environments. House paint and 
water pipes are what most people think of when 
they hear about lead contamination, but a more 

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3 https://www.groundworkindy.org/

4 https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/prevention/health-effects.htm

5 https://www.mapmyenvironment.com/

common and troublesome source is lead in the 
soil around people’s homes. The lead found in soil 
can easily make its way into people’s bodies when 
they play in the yard, plant a garden, eat produce 
from the garden, or from dirt on their shoes that 
is tracked into the house. Sometimes the lead 
comes from a nearby lead refinery, or it got there 
from particles in leaded fuel exhaust. Often, 
neighborhoods with the highest concentrations 
are ones redlined and subsequently bisected 
by the interstate system. The presence of lead 
refineries and interstates are often found in 
predominantly Black neighborhoods (Hentz, 
Filippelli, et al. 2018, 1). Many of these historical 
factors contribute to the state of spatial inequities 
we see in cities across the U.S. (see Ryan 
2021). This first example points to the sort of 
environmental racism that Laura Pulido blames 
on white privilege, or the social and spatial 
mobility of white people and the social and spatial 
immobility of Blacks (Pulido 2015, 2-6). 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 
(CDC) says there is no level of safe lead exposure
for children. Children exposed to lead may
experience brain and nervous system damage,
developmental delays, learning challenges,
behavioral issues, and hearing loss. The effects of
lead exposure remain long after removal from a
child’s environment. Lead can linger in a person’s
body and cause long-term health problems.
Children are not the only ones at risk, either.
Adults with lead exposure and poisoning can
cause high blood pressure, kidney damage, brain
damage, miscarriage, and infertility. 4

Exposure to lead is both a public health 
crisis and an issue of environmental racism. 
Unfortunately, many people are simply unaware 

of the presence of lead in their environments and 
the dangers posed by long-term exposure. Dr. 
Gabriel Filippelli has done extensive research 
locally and globally into something he calls the 
“urban lead exposome.” An exposome is the total 
environmental exposures a person has over a 
lifetime. Filippelli and his research team lead an 
ongoing project to map urban lead exposome. 
They make his findings available to the public as 
part of a citizen-science project.5 Filippelli has 
worked with Indianapolis' Kheprw Institute and 
residents from Riverside to gather soil samples 
from homes and yards. The value of doing citizen-
science is that it gathers data on a scale that 
would otherwise not be possible for an individual 
researcher and it puts power in the hands of the 
residents (Filippelli 2018, 9). Filippelli explains 
that a high lead level in the environment is 
typically identified through human disease rather 
than proactive environmental testing. This, he 
says, is “a harmful and backwards approach to 
protecting public health” (Filippelli 2018, 1). Lead 
hotspots usually are identified from a cluster of 
children with high blood lead levels. Community 
citizen-science shows the value and effectiveness 
of testing for the presence of lead before a child 

Children exposed to 
lead may experience brain 

and nervous system damage, 
developmental delays, learning 

challenges, behavioral issues, and 
hearing loss. The effects of lead 
exposure remain long after removal 
from a child’s environment.

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exhibits obvious signs of lead poisoning. “Social, 
health, and economic cost of [lead] exposure from 
urban soils is steep—far greater than the cost 
of targeted remediation of soil [lead] hotspots” 
(Filippelli 2018, 1).

The IUPUI AHI, as community-engaged 
scholarship, designed a user-friendly lead 
testing kit to empower households to test their 
homes for the presence of lead in the water, soil, 
and dust.6  The results will be sent directly to 
residents so they can have information to make 
decisions about how best to address issues the 
results reveal without fear of recrimination or 
fines by the government. The goal is to provide 
the information they need to understand the 
environment where they live and what actions to 
take to protect themselves and their loved ones.

In the Indianapolis neighborhood of Martindale-
Brightwood, the social justice fight over lead 
contamination was successfully waged by 
community. Neighbors came together to form 
a collaborative to make their concerns heard 
by local officials, and resulted in the area being 
designated a Superfund site. From the 1940-60s, 
the American Lead Corporation, a lead smelting 
operation in the area, left behind pollution for the 
residents. The Environmental Protection Agency 
(EPA) and Indiana Department of Environmental 
Management (IDEM) worked together to 
remediate the pollution, but this time the EPA 
took the lead. Thus far, lead-contaminated soil 
has been removed and replaced with clean soil 
at more than 100 residential sites. The cleanup 
process is not complete, but remains ongoing 
(Fuller 2015).7 

In an Anthropocene Household oral history 
interview with a Martindale-Brightwood resident 
and one of the leaders of the environmental 
justice collaborative effort said: “...We found that 

based on that a lot of people in this neighborhood 
did gardening. And after we began to look into it 
a little more and developed a community concern 
for it, which was our Martindale-Brightwood 
Environmental Justice Collaborative. We got 
grants, we did a lot of studies and found out 
that the soil was not one in which people who 
didn't know had put gardens in and that kind 
of thing. So we did a lot of training, got a lot of 
information, had help from... Well, the EPA had 
to come out and remediate the yards and put new 
soil into some of the people's yards. So there were 
a lot of things that have gone on here since I've 
been here.” (Anonymous, interview by Benjamin 
Clark, 29 June 2020, transcript, IUPUI AHI.)

The interviewee raised her children in this 
neighborhood and, even years after her children 
had grown up and moved on, I could sense her 
parental anxiety as she spoke. Entire lives were 
lived in this lead-polluted neighborhood. This 
resident still proudly calls Martindale-Brightwood 
her home and was courageous enough to mount 
what was, at times, a difficult effort to bring social 
and environmental justice to her neighborhood 
and community. 

Black children tend to have higher blood lead 
levels than their white counterparts (Waterhouse 
2015, 99). Historical factors, including the 
Great Migration and redlining, have led to 
neighborhoods with higher-than-average 
environmental lead levels to be home to majority 
Black residents. What this points to within 
Pulido’s theoretical framework is lead pollution 
as an issue of white privilege when it comes to 
environmental racism. White populations are able 
to choose and afford to live elsewhere; meanwhile 
Black residents are socially and economically 
bound to neighborhoods that have historically 
been the site of heavy industry and lead smelting, 

6   https://anthropocenes.org/lead

7   https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/SiteProfiles/index.cfm?fuseaction=second.Cleanup&id=0501643

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as in Martindale-Brightwood in Indianapolis 
(Pulido 2015, 2-6; Fuller 2015, 2-3). 

In one oral history interview for the Anthropocene 
Household project, the informant discussed 
concerns about exposure to lead that children 
experience at school through corroded pipes and 
outdated drinking fountains. Another concern for 
this interviewee is the lead children are exposed to 
at home. A concern in particular is lead paint, but 
lead exposure at home also can come from soil, 
dust, and water. The main issue with all the lead 
exposure is long-term health effects, physical and 
behavioral. 

The interviewee described an experience he had 
while visiting a school that illustrated behavioral 
challenges caused by lead exposure: “There 
was a kindergarten teacher that was taking 
her students from the restroom into the class. 
There were about maybe twenty-five, twenty-
six students. There was this small little girl, 
kindergarten, she was just having a fit. We said, 
let's go help the teacher. The teacher was able to 
take the other students in, but the little girl was 
sliding down the wall... When we approached 
her, I noticed something yellow in her mouth. 
‘What's that in your mouth?’ She was picking 
the paint off the wall and eating it. I knew that 
just from other lead issues and workshops that it 
causes, if your blood elevation is high, not only 
brain damage, but your ability to handle your 
emotions. There are anger issues, comprehension 
issues, and some issues can become irreversible 
as the child grows” (Anonymous, interview by 
Benjamin Clark, 21 April 2020, transcript, IUPUI 
AHI). 

This informant has worked with the local branch 
of the NAACP and its efforts to raise awareness 
and take action surrounding lead pollution and 
exposure in schools and homes—what had him 

in the school in the first place—but he relayed the 
story of the young girl “having a fit” and eating 
paint because he felt it showed the risks and 
problems children face from lead exposure. 

Without governments and corporations funding 
large-scale cleanup efforts or dramatic policy 
shifts at all levels, citizens will have to take 
matters into their own hands to protect their 
health and wellbeing. As with most public 
problems, until institutions catch up and reinvent 
practices and structures embedded in institutional 
racism, it is important that community members 
are empowered with good information and the 
ability to safely self-advocate. 

WHITE SUPREMACY AND 
ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM
In February 2013 Citizens Energy, a public 
charitable trust that manages drinking water 
and other utilities for Indianapolis, notified 
IDEM about contaminated groundwater (aquifer 
and wells) in Riverside, a near northwest side 
neighborhood. IDEM notified the EPA and began 
evaluating the site for the National Priorities List 
to trigger the Superfund process.8 Superfund is 
money established to fund long-term expensive 
projects, and here refers to paying for the cleanup 
of toxic pollution sites. (The site became known 
as the Riverside Contaminated Groundwater 
Site later labeled site 0153). According to public 
documents from IDEM9, it took more than a 
year to do a site visit to this place known to have 
contaminated groundwater. In May 2014, IDEM 
finally visited the area to take water samples. 
By this time the wells and aquifer10 were offline 
and not contributing to the water coming out of 
people’s pipes. However, the dangerous chemicals 
were still present in the ground. Evidence 
suggests the water was contaminated by decades 

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8   https://www.in.gov/idem/cleanups/sites-of-special-interest/site-0153-ground-water-contamination-site/

9   https://www.in.gov/idem/cleanups/sites-of-special-interest/site-0153-ground-water-contamination-site/site-0153-potential-respon-
sible-party-prp/

10  https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/4d28f320d66e4a449b2bca01e2491b9b



of commercial and industrial chemicals seepage 
into the soil and aquifer and proximity to the 
polluted White River with its problems related 
to combined sewer overflow. Not coincidentally, 
this section of the city has been predominantly 
low income, working class, Black residents for 
decades. 

“They tried to convince us the whole time, ‘Your 
drinking water is safe. This isn't the case of 
Flint, Michigan. Blah, blah, blah.’ I'm like, ‘I'm 
not stupid. I understand that Citizens Energy 
is gonna make sure the drinking water is safe, 
but what about everybody in the neighborhood 
that has basements. What about these chemicals 
leaching into the ground and vapor intrusion in 
the people's basements? How long has this been 
going on? Do they need treatment now? Have 
you tested anybody's basements?’” (Anonymous, 
interview by Abbey Chambers, 25 July 2018, 
transcript, IUPUI AHI).

The Riverside resident provides a clear window 
into the challenge posed by site 0153. The city, 
state, property, and business owners on the 
one hand and the residents of Riverside on the 
other, and tension over how best to resolve the 
groundwater contamination. This interviewee 
had deep concerns that residents were not being 
told the complete story and that the extent of the 
problem and potential threats to health and safety 
were papered over. 

Site 0153 illustrates the white supremacy in 
environmental racism wrought by governmental 
indifference, favoring private interests over public 
good, government agencies hamstrung by lack 
of funding and toothless public policy, and a lack 
of enforcement of environmental policies, or any 
sense of urgency. White Supremacy describes 

the kind of environmental racism that creates 
differential protection and unequal enforcement 
of public policy. Environmental injustice is 
readily apparent in the dangers posed to Blacks 
by corporations and governments collaborating 
to maintain regulatory noncompliance. Even 
with laws and regulations in place, governments 
let corporations off the hook when adhering to 
regulations in any meaningful way (Pulido 2015, 
1-6; Melamed 2015; Pellow 2016; Rodgers and
O’Neill 2012; Rosa and Diaz 2019; Sampson and
Winter 2016; Turner 2016; Waterhouse 2016).

Public debate focused whether to label site 0153 
a Superfund site and allow the EPA to fund and 
manage the mitigation project or to have IDEM 
take over clean-up efforts. Property owners feared 
the Superfund label would hurt property values, 
so community leadership (mostly in the form 
of the Riverside Civic League), 16 Tech “urban 
innovation district,11” with federal and state 
authorities decided to hand the project over to 
IDEM. The resident quote speaks to the unease 
and distrust that Riverside residents had of IDEM. 

What site 0153 offers in understanding white 
supremacy and environmental racism is how it 
provides a glimpse into various responses from 
community members as the story folds. Residents 
have a sense of connection and attachment to 
their neighborhood, even if they do not have 
a financial investment other than paying rent. 
Statements and public comments below are found 
on EPA’s website for the Riverside Groundwater 
Contamination Site. 12 This website’s public 
comments are part of the remediation process 
for Superfund sites. From the comments one 
can sense tension between opposing sides of the 
argument over the Superfund label and ultimately 

11  16 Tech is a $360 million plan for redevelopment of 60 acres of land within the Site 0153 project boundary into 100,000 square feet of 
research and office space.

12 https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/SiteProfiles/index.cfm?fuseaction=second.scs&id=0510936&doc=Y&colid=33747&re-
gion=05&type=SC

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the most efficacious resolution. The quotes 
illustrate priorities of the person or organization. 

From 16 Tech: “The Riverside neighborhood in 
which 16 Tech will be located, along with several 
other surrounding neighborhoods, welcomes 
this development and played an instrumental 
role in 16 Tech securing bond financing from the 
City of Indianapolis and the City-County Council 
last year.” (from Indiana Biosciences Research 
Institute and 16 Tech Community Corporation to 
Region 5 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 5 
September 2016). 

From the Greater Indianapolis NAACP Public 
Statement: “The Greater Indianapolis NAACP 
Branch 3053 is actively working with local 
public officials, neighborhood residents, clergy 
and minority organizations in support of the 
local plan and the removal of the site from NPL 
consideration… As the Greater Indianapolis 
NAACP Branch 3053 believes with continuous 
collaboration with the State, City of Indianapolis 
and Citizens Energy Group we are able to 
ensure safe drinking water. We look forward 
to ongoing investigations for remediation to 
correct potentially contaminated sites that 
could be contributing to the groundwater 
contamination” (Chrystal Ratcliffe, President, 
Greater Indianapolis NAACP Branch 3053, 7 
September 2016).  

From the Riverside Civic League: “The Riverside 
Neighborhood is at the brink of rising from 
decades of disregard and we the residents cannot 
afford to go backwards by becoming a superfund 
site especially when the reported contaminants 
can be addressed by a Local Alternative Plan that 
we help mold and would definitely oversee. Once 
the community was notified, we came together 
to hear the voices, fears and concerns of our 
residents then immediately sought out answers 
so we could weigh the heaviness of this choice.” 
(Peggy Gamlin, President, Riverside Civic League, 
12 September 2016).

There are pages of public comments, many 
posted anonymously. To give a sense for public 
sentiment, I share a sampling of comments on 
Superfund designation: 

“It would be wrong to designate this 
neighborhood as a Superfund...  The Riverside 
neighborhood has been a victim of terrible 
disinvestment and redlining in the past. The 
neighborhood has been a great partner to the 
new 16 Tech development occurring in the 
southern region of Riverside. A listing on the NPL 
would halt or end entirely that development and 
all the work that has been done to revitalize this 
neighborhood” (Anonymous, 27 June 2016).

“As a business owner in this area for thirty 
years, I believe it would be more destructive to 
the wellbeing of this neighborhood to designate 
this area as a Superfund Site than to allow 
for alternative means of resolution of the 
purported water contamination… The Riverside 
neighborhood has seen limited to non-existent 
investment in the infrastructure or neighborhood 
amenities for decades. The neighborhood 
now has a potential investor with the new 16 
Tech development that has been proposed…” 
(Anonymous, 25 August 2016)

A comment from someone who just wants 
something to happen and does not support one 
remediation over another: “I am a homeowner 
in the NW area of Indianapolis. I would truly 
appreciate clean water, clean fertile soil, to 
have my family be safe. I would like a remedy 
that does the poor and elderly people justice” 
(Anonymous, 12 September 2016).

Likewise, residents and tenants deeply invested 
in the community who wanted the Superfund 
label desired financial support from the federal 
government during the Obama Administration. 
Residents were skeptical of IDEM’s leadership 
under Governor Pence and the agency’s 
willingness and ability to follow through on 

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mitigation. It has been over eight years since EPA 
and IDEM became aware of the problem and with 
little progress on contamination removal. 

Public comments posted on the EPA website that 
support Superfund designation include:

“I live at 14th and Delaware and I am very 
concerned about the water quality in inner 
city Indianapolis. I sincerely hope the EPA will 
approve a Superfund to help with this 
cleanup” (Anonymous, 30 August 2016).

“The community needs resources from the EPA 
to test our own water. These resources might 
include financial resources for community 
organization and education. IDEM is not a 
trusted entity by any Hoosier I have spoken 
with.” (Anonymous, 30 August 2016).

“After attending a presentation at the Kheprw 
Institute that included presentations by EPA 
staff, and learning of the IDEM related to 
environmental cleanup (which is very poor), I 
strongly feel the EPA should designate Riverside 
as a Superfund site. Economic development is 
important, but the fundamental consideration 
must be the health of the people affected by the 
water supply. The number of people involved 
means this should be done correctly and as 
quickly as possible, and IDEM has a history 
that indicates it is not up to the job. Please have 
the EPA deal with this as a Superfund site.” 
(Anonymous, 31 August 2016). 

Now offline the wells no longer contribute to 
the city’s water supply, but remaining concern is 
vapor intrusion since the chemicals remain in the 
environment. IDEM site 0153 updates suggest 
mitigation remains in the planning phase. They 
only recently identified the method they plan for 
cleanup efforts. 

Anthropocene Household Oral History interview, 
Riverside resident: “I do think a big push back 
from homeowners is the idea of stigma of a 

neighborhood leading to reducing property 
values and derailing the development plans and 
projects for the neighborhood. Whereas I think 
that that was not the first lens we should use to 
make that decision, or at least have that decision 
made for the community by these institutional 
players who’re invested in a certain outcome… 
The priority was to protect the investment. 
And it was framed through this lens of local 
control and stigma that then leads to lowering 
property values… Because nothing has changed 
about the environmental circumstances… with 
the fact that IDEM is doing the cleanup. But 
the properties are also becoming less and less 
affordable in the neighborhood, and are quickly 
rising beyond what I can afford and what others 
in the community can afford.” (Anonymous, 
interview by Benjamin Clark, 23 September 2020, 
transcript, IUPUI AHI). 

Having IDEM manage the cleanup, keeping it off 
the Superfund list, would allow property values 
in this neighborhood to rise and could protect the 
investments of homeowners, businesses, and 16 
Tech. One resident described how IDEM initially 
made the call to have the EPA come in and 
manage the cleanup but after getting pushback 
from the developers of an area “urban innovation 
district” had concerns about a Superfund site. 

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“The issue is not about 
implicating any individuals, 

organizations, or agencies in-
volved. The problem speaks to the 

structures in place through public 
policy that all but ensure the process 

of holding polluters accountable is 
difficult, time consuming, favoring 
polluters over the polluted.”



VO L .  3,  I S S U E  129

Anthropocene Household Oral History interview, 
Riverside resident: “I learned that The Indiana 
Department of Environmental Management is 
not only incompetent, but they're dirty. They're 
liars. They try to play the community for fools…” 
(Anonymous, interview by Abbey Chambers, 25 
July 2018, transcript, IUPUI AHI).

Distrust that their health and wellbeing are not 
being looked after, but rather the interests of 
property owners, business, and corporations 
invested in gentrification won. The resident 
explains how IDEM officials in a public meeting 
seemed to purposely misrepresent the presence of 
chemicals in the environment—not only the levels 
but also the types of chemicals—done in favor of 
development and gentrification, not to protect the 
health of residents. 

Site 0153 has been stuck in a bureaucratic malaise 
for years. Meanwhile, area low income, working 
class Black residents live with dangerous levels of 
chemicals in their environment. Citizens Energy 
assures the community that the water is safe to 
drink. The water meets the standards set forth 
by the Safe Drinking Water Act. Nevertheless, 
the chemicals remain in the environment where 
children and adults live every day. 

The issue is not about implicating any individuals, 
organizations, or agencies involved. The problem 
speaks to the structures in place through public 
policy that all but ensure the process of holding 
polluters accountable is difficult, time consuming, 
favoring polluters over the polluted, resulting 
in slow cleanup, ultimately rooted in systems of 
oppression from white supremacy (Pulido 2015; 
Pulido 2016; Pulido 2017). 

An IDEM project manager asked in an 
Anthropocene Household oral history 
interview who he identified as his customers, 
his constituents, said: "Customers would be 
environmental attorneys, environmental 
consultants, their clients, so oftentimes dry 

cleaner operators, property owners they're 
interested in redevelopment or cleanup of their 
property for redevelopment, industry companies 
that have operated there that have had releases 
of contamination that either need to clean it up 
under regulation or are seeking or desiring to get 
it cleaned up for business purposes, so those are 
the primary customers or clients or people that 
we deal with.” (Anonymous, interview by Abbey 
Chambers and Stacia Murphy, 19 July 2018, 
transcript IUPUI AHI). 

He clearly states his customers are the polluters. 
What is absent is any acknowledgement or 
reference to the people who live in the polluted 
and contaminated neighborhoods. Instead, he 
says that their customers did the polluting. As 
a state agency funded by tax dollars, something 
seems upside down in his response, but speaks to 
the ways that the structures of public policy fail to 
meaningfully improve environmental conditions 
of lower income Black neighborhoods. 

Anthropocene Household Oral History interview, 
Riverside resident: “The way IDEM works, 
they don't have a lot of teeth to hold companies 
accountable. They tried to work with them and 
put them into a voluntary program, which again, 
there are long delays between steps and just 
hoping people do the right thing and trying to 
occasionally follow up with them.” (Anonymous, 
interview by Benjamin Clark, 23 September 2020, 
transcript, IUPUI AHI). 

C L A R K  |  E N V I R O N M E N T A L  R A C I S M

White Supremacy 
describes the kind of en-

vironmental racism that creates 
differential protection and unequal 
enforcement of public policy.



30

CONCLUSION
Site 0153 is an example of regulatory non-
compliance wrought by white supremacy that 
results in environmental racism. The processes 
move slowly and tend to favor private interests 
over public good. Subtle and multifaceted 
processes contribute to this slowness and the 
power dynamics at play that certainly deserve 
deeper examination. What ends up happening is 
that lower income Black and Brown communities 
are forced to live in polluted environments while 
the bureaucratic processes play out to favor 
polluters over the polluted. What is challenging 
about identifying and calling out white supremacy 
is that it is so ingrained into our hegemonic white 
cultural milieu and can be difficult to detect. It 
can easily fly under the radar. That is the value of 
Pulido’s theoretical framework as it allows us to 
illuminate the issues more clearly. The regulatory 
culture around noncompliance is “mutually 
constituted by the racial formation” (Pulido 2015, 
2). 

There are many ways to approach this issue 
of environmental racism. At the IUPUI Arts & 
Humanities Institute and the Anthropocene 
Household project, we believe that doing 
community-engaged scholarship is helpful and 
meaningful for forming necessary interventions, 
co-creation of knowledge, and working with 
impacted citizens to understand and contribute 

to finding solutions. Pulido explains that there is 
ample research that shows how “environmental 
hazards follow along racial lines but also many of 
the meta-processes… such as industrialization, 
urbanization, and capitalism, are racialized” 
(Pulido 2018, 117). What is fundamentally 
important about Pulido’s point is that the 
environmental hazards and meta-processes play 
a role in “determining who lives and who dies” 
(Pulido 2018, 117). 

Environmental racism is at the intersection of 
systemic racism, systemic poverty, and ecological 
devastation. If we want to achieve environmental 
justice, then we are going to have to recognize 
and call out acts of environmental racism in all its 
various forms [We're] hoping people do the right 
thing and trying to occasionally follow up with 
them.” (Anonymous, interview by Benjamin Clark, 
23 September 2020, transcript, IUPUI AHI). 

ENGAGE!  |  e n v i r o n m e n ta l  j u st i c e 

C O M M U N I T Y - E N G A G E D 
R E A S E A R C H  A R T I C L E S 



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