Environmental racism is the disproportionate placement of environmental hazards — toxic waste facilities, polluting industries, resource extraction operations, contaminated water systems — in communities of color and Indigenous communities. The concept was named by Benjamin Chavis (later Chavis Muhammad) in a 1982 study of hazardous waste siting in the United States, which found that race was the strongest predictor of proximity to toxic waste facilities, stronger than income.
Environmental racism is not merely the unintended byproduct of market processes. It is the result of political decisions made in contexts where the affected communities have the least political power to resist: zoning decisions, permitting processes, environmental impact assessments, and enforcement priorities systematically favor wealthier and whiter communities. When environmental regulations are enforced, they are enforced less strictly in communities of color. When cleanup occurs, it occurs more slowly.
The concept connects settler colonialism to ecological destruction: Indigenous lands are disproportionately targeted for resource extraction, pipeline construction, nuclear testing, and waste disposal precisely because settler-colonial structures have dispossessed Indigenous peoples of the political standing to refuse. Climate justice extends this analysis globally: the communities least responsible for greenhouse gas emissions bear the greatest consequences of climate destabilization.