Book summary “The Intersectional Environmentalist”: summary

Introduction

You likely care about the planet, yet traditional environmental movements often ignore social justice issues that impact marginalized communities.

When conservation efforts focus solely on nature while excluding human rights, you miss how systemic racism and privilege shape ecological crises.

Leah Thomas introduces intersectional environmentalism as an inclusive approach that connects social justice and environmental protection.

You will explore the historical roots of environmental injustice, the impact of unearned privilege, and the consequences of global consumerism.

The book addresses several core questions:

• How do overlapping identities shape your environmental impact?
• Why are toxic waste sites disproportionately placed near marginalized neighborhoods?
• How does fast fashion drive global ecological inequality?
• What steps can you take to build collective community power?

1. Origins of Intersectional Environmentalism

Intersectional theory originates from the intellectual labor of Black women facing overlapping marginalization. Kimberle Williams Crenshaw coined intersectionality in 1989 to describe how multiple forms of discrimination, such as racism and sexism, combine. The framework emerged because legal systems and mainstream movements treated race and gender as separate categories.

In the 1976 case DeGraffenreid v. General Motors, a judge ruled that Black women could not be protected after the company laid off only Black women.

Misogynoir describes the specific, compounding type of sexism and racism directed uniquely at Black women. Coined by Moya Bailey, the concept examines how anti-Blackness interacts with misogyny. It manifests in societal stereotypes, workplace policies policing natural hair, and severe health care disparities.

Natural hairstyles like braids, locs, and Afros are frequently banned in schools and workplaces under discriminatory dress codes.

Feminist Movements

The Combahee River Collective pioneered identity politics to fight multiple interlocking systems of oppression simultaneously. Formed in 1974 by Black feminist revolutionaries, the organization argued that the liberation of Black women requires the destruction of capitalism, racism, sexism, and homophobia. They asserted that oppressed groups have the right to self-determine their political identities.

The collective was named after the Combahee River Raid in South Carolina led by Harriet Tubman to liberate hundreds of enslaved people.

Chicana feminism emerged to address how gender, ethnicity, and class intersect in the oppression of Mexican American women. Mainstream feminist movements and male-led Chicano movements both demanded that Mexican American women silence overlapping issues. Chicanas pushed back against imbalanced cultural expectations and machismo culture that forced them into uncompensated domestic labor.

In the 1970s, Gloria Arellanes became the first woman to resign from the Brown Berets to organize efforts empowering Mexican American women.

Critical race theory examines how race and identity intersect with power structures like the legal system. Developed by legal scholars following the Civil Rights Movement, critical race theory posits that race is a social construct used to uphold systemic inequality through white superiority. Scholars like Kimberle Williams Crenshaw utilized it to expose structural inequality leading to issues like the school-to-prison pipeline.

Ecofeminism

Ecofeminism connects the degradation of the natural world to the subordination of women under patriarchal structures. Defined by Françoise d’Eaubonne in 1974, ecofeminism splits into cultural and radical branches. Cultural ecofeminists emphasize biology connecting women to the earth, while radical ecofeminists focus on dismantling patriarchal systems.

The Chipko movement in India in 1973 is regarded as an early ecofeminist demonstration where more than two thousand women surrounded trees to protest deforestation.

Intersectional environmentalism explicitly links social justice and environmentalism, arguing that the same systems of oppression harming people also degrade the planet.

Leah Thomas defines intersectional environmentalism as an inclusive approach advocating for the protection of both people and the planet. It broadens traditional ecofeminism by incorporating additional intersecting identities such as race, class, sexuality, religion, and ability, while validating Indigenous wisdom as the original blueprint for sustainability.

Nations in the Global North that prioritize extractive industries and profit over the planet consistently display interlinked social inequalities.

When you engage with this work, you can apply practical steps:

• Stand in solidarity with Black, Indigenous, and POC communities and the planet.
• Acknowledge how environmental protections have historically failed to extend to BIPOC communities.
• Validate Indigenous wisdom, credit its origins, and infuse it into environmental education.

2. History of Environmental Justice and Privilege

Systemic discrimination and unearned privilege dictate the unequal geographic distribution of environmental hazards and toxic waste sites.

Environmental Justice

Environmental justice is the fair treatment of all people regardless of race or income regarding environmental laws and policies. The movement emerged in the 1980s to address how marginalized communities bear a disproportionate burden of ecological hazards and toxic waste sites.

Hazel M. Johnson established People for Community Recovery in 1979 and coined the term toxic doughnut after discovering that Altgeld Gardens in Chicago was surrounded by 50 landfills and hundreds of toxic waste sites. In 1993, she presented the seventeen Principles of Environmental Justice to Congress. President Bill Clinton signed executive order 12898 in 1994 to focus federal attention on environmental injustice.

Early mainstream environmental movements largely excluded the intersectional struggles and contributions of Black, Indigenous, Chicano, and Latinx activists. In 1968, Black sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, went on strike with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and in 1969, Indigenous activists began an occupation of Alcatraz Island. The first Earth Day drew twenty million Americans on April 22, 1970. Congress passed the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act in 1976, and a major sit-in occurred in Warren County, North Carolina, in 1982.

Dr. Robert Bullard deployed with the United States Marine Corps in 1970 and later earned a PhD in sociology from Iowa State University in 1976. His pioneering sociological research demonstrated that race was a primary driving factor in the geographic placement of toxic waste sites. Attorney Linda McKeever Bullard filed Bean v. Southwestern Waste Management, Inc. regarding a landfill in an 82 percent Black neighborhood, prompting Dr. Bullard to conduct his landmark study, Solid Waste Sites and the Black Houston Community, followed by Dumping in Dixie. At the time of the study, Black residents accounted for 25 percent of the population in Houston.

Delegates gathered in Washington, DC, from October 24 to 27, 1991, to adopt seventeen principles at the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit. These principles establish a framework for ecological unity, self-determination, and ethical land use. When you study this history, you can apply these mandates:

• Affirm the sacredness of Mother Earth, ecological unity, and the interdependence of all species.
• Demand that public policy be based on mutual respect and justice for all peoples free from discrimination.
• Mandate the right to ethical, balanced, and responsible uses of land and renewable resources.
• Call for universal protection from nuclear testing, extraction, production, and disposal of toxic wastes.
• Affirm the fundamental right to political, economic, cultural, and environmental self-determination.
• Demand the cessation of the production of all toxins, hazardous wastes, and radioactive materials.
• Demand the right to participate as equal partners at every level of decision-making.
• Affirm the right of all workers to a safe and healthy work environment without forced choices.
• Protect the right of victims of environmental injustice to receive full compensation and reparations.
• Consider governmental acts of environmental injustice a violation of international law and human rights.
• Recognize a special legal and natural relationship of Native Peoples to the U.S. government.
• Affirm the need for urban and rural ecological policies to clean up and rebuild cities and rural areas.
• Call for strict enforcement of informed consent and a halt to experimental medical procedures on people of color.
• Oppose the destructive operations of multinational corporations.
• Oppose military occupation, repression, and exploitation of lands and peoples.
• Call for the education of present and future generations emphasizing social and environmental issues.
• Require individuals to make personal and consumer choices to consume minimal resources and produce minimal waste.

Privilege

Privilege is a set of unearned advantages, positive perceptions, and outcomes based on identity aspects that are favored by society.

Societal norms, cultural biases, and systemic structures assign higher value to specific identity aspects, granting disproportionate power to certain groups. W.E.B. Du Bois described the psychological wage in his 1935 book Black Reconstruction in America, noting how poor white Americans received public deference. Peggy McIntosh published her article on white and male privilege containing forty-six examples in 1988. A 2020 New York Times report found that only 20 percent of executives identified as persons of color, while 80 percent of the faces of power were white and largely male. People of color will collectively become a majority in the U.S. by the projected year of 2045.

The Horatio Alger myth propagates the belief that hard work alone guarantees success while ignoring systemic oppression and unearned privilege. This cultural myth places blame on marginalized individuals who experience poverty, framing systemic barriers as personal failures. You can observe this myth when you evaluate how external factors alter life possibilities regardless of individual perseverance.

Systemic discrimination and privilege directly dictate exposure to environmental hazards, creating severe disparities in pollution burdens. Due to housing discrimination and redlining, communities of color experience significantly higher levels of air and water pollution while maintaining less access to green spaces. Black and Latinx people experience a 56 percent and 63 percent higher air pollution burden respectively compared to their consumption. White Americans breathe in 17 percent less air pollution relative to their consumption. More than half of the nine million Americans living near hazardous waste sites are people of color. Black Americans face a 3 times higher likelihood to die from exposure to air pollutants compared to white counterparts. During the Flint, Michigan water crisis that began in 2014, officials switched the water source to save costs, exposing a majority Black population to dangerous levels of lead exceeding one thousand parts per billion. Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005.

3. Global Environmental Injustice and Consumerism

Historical racist policies, fast fashion, and resource extraction drive severe environmental inequalities across marginalized communities and the Global South.

Marginalized Communities

Historical racist practices such as slavery, Jim Crow laws, and redlining dictate the present-day proximity of Black communities to environmental hazards. These practices forced African Americans into specific geographic areas with lower property values and higher pollution. As of 2016, African Americans made up 13.3 percent of the total U.S. population. Among them, 71 percent lived in counties violating federal air pollution standards, resulting in 36 percent higher rates of asthma compared to whites. The U.S. slave trade forcibly brought around 388,000 people from Africa.

Latinx communities face severe environmental racism, including high exposure to air pollution and dangerous conditions in agricultural labor. Systemic discrimination concentrates Latinx populations in high-heat areas and heavy pesticide-use zones without adequate healthcare. Hispanic residents accounted for 17.8 percent of the total U.S. population as of 2016. In California, 92 percent of the farmworker population is Latinx. Over 60 percent of Latinx communities in the U.S. live in areas impacted by air pollution, flooding, and extreme heat. Latinx farmworkers face a 3 times higher likelihood of heat-related death on the job compared to white Americans.

Indigenous communities in the U.S. suffer from severe water scarcity and infrastructure neglect rooted in the legacy of colonization and land theft. Government-mandated land use projects and historical displacement have left Native Americans with disproportionately high rates of lacking indoor plumbing and safe drinking water. The 2010 U.S. census recorded 5.2 million self-identifying Native Americans and Native Alaskans. Native American households face 58 out of every 1,000 households lacking plumbing compared to 3 out of 1,000 white households. Indigenous peoples also face a 5.5 years lower than average life expectancy compared to other U.S. races. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Navajo Nation experienced an infection rate of 2,500 per hundred thousand residents due to a lack of clean water.

AAPI populations experience unique environmental health risks, including high cancer rates from air pollution and severe proximity to toxic waste sites. Aggregated data often obscures specific ethnic groups like Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, hiding their extreme exposure to industrial contamination. As of 2019, the Asian population made up 7 percent of the total U.S. population, while Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders accounted for 0.4 percent. In Hawaii, projected sea level rise will be 1 to 2.5 feet higher than global averages by 2100. Furthermore, 84 percent of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander neighborhoods in Los Angeles are located within one mile of a Superfund site.

Fashion and Green Energy

The Global North exports massive quantities of electronic and consumer waste to the Global South, creating severe health hazards in low-income international communities. Overconsumption in wealthy nations leads to illegal and legal dumping of hazardous materials in developing regions where vulnerable laborers process toxic components without safety standards. In 2013, the United Nations stated that China had become the largest e-waste dumping site globally, receiving around 70 percent of world electronic waste.

Fast fashion alters brain chemistry to encourage addictive purchasing behavior while driving massive environmental degradation and human rights abuses. Low-priced garments trigger the brain's pleasure center with minimal cost-benefit friction, resulting in rapid overconsumption, high textile waste, and extreme labor exploitation abroad. The fashion industry produces 10 percent of global carbon emissions. World clothing consumption increased by 400 percent since 2000, and women make up 75 percent of global garment workers. In 2013, over 2,500 garment workers were injured and over a hundred killed in the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

The global transition to renewable energy frequently harms Indigenous communities through land dispossession, human rights violations, and a lack of prior consent. Green infrastructure projects such as biomass plants, wind farms, and lithium mining operations often bypass local Indigenous governance and deplete vital regional water tables. South America's Lithium Triangle holds 70 percent of the world's lithium. According to the World Bank, lithium production needs a projected 500 percent increase by 2050. Each ton of lithium extracted requires 500,000 gallons of water. In Chile, lithium mining operations extract brine that causes the Atacama water table to lose 1,750 to 1,950 liters per second.

While plant-based living is heavily promoted through Western narratives, communities of color adopt plant-based lifestyles at higher than average rates. Mainstream vegan culture often ignores centuries of traditional plant-based practices in Eastern religions and Indigenous cultures, framing plant-based eating as a modern Western invention. A Pew Research Center study found that 8 percent of Black Americans identify as strict vegans or vegetarians compared to 3 percent of the general population. Livestock agriculture contributes 14.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Removing meat and dairy enables a 73 percent individual food-based carbon footprint reduction, and the U.S. saw a 600 percent increase in people identifying as vegans between 2014 and 2017.

4. Global Activist Perspectives and Action

Effective environmental action requires dismantling harmful systems, centering Indigenous autonomy, and building collective community power.

Mikaela Loach argues that representation politics can embolden harmful institutions. You should aim instead for collective liberation and building new systems. Vanessa Nakate founded the Rise Up movement in Uganda and notes that African and Black activists are least responsible for the climate crisis yet most affected.

Global Perspectives

Indigenous populations make up 5 percent of the world's population and protect 86 percent of the world's global biodiversity. Jordan Marie Daniel founded Rising Hearts to highlight these caretakers of the lands. Andrea Perez works as an Indigenous environmental justice advocate and geospatial analyst, urging you to center Indigenous autonomy to stop extractivist industries from placing harmful infrastructure in marginalized communities.

15 percent of the world's population lives with a disability. Ambika Rajyagor cofounded Disabled & Outdoors, and Larissa Crawford founded Future Ancestors Services. They explain that environmentalism fails when it produces solutions that actively cause harm to people with disabilities or ignores accessible sustainable practices, creating a barrier known as eco-ableism.

Hilda F. Nakabuye is an activist and founder of Uganda's Fridays for Future movement. She points out that Uganda has experienced massive deforestation from timber businesses, leaving only 8 percent forest cover left. Lake Victoria faces severe pollution and receding water levels that threaten domestic use and aquatic life, leading researchers to project a dried up freshwater body 100 years from now.

Taking Action

Social change terminology distinguishes clearly between the roles of activists, advocates, and organizers in driving reform. An activist works to support a cause and campaigns for structural change through demonstrations, digital campaigns, or economic choices. An advocate fights for the rights of others primarily using education and awareness building. An organizer works to build community unity, solidarity, and collective political power.

Alaska is warming at 2 to 3 times the rate of the lower forty-eight, and the Tongass holds 44 percent of CO2 across national forests. Meghan Buck addresses boil water advisories for indigenous communities in Canada, while other advocates raise concerns over urban heat islands and chemicals of concern. You can navigate these systemic challenges by examining your own methods of contribution:

• Ask yourself what your unique skill is and combine that to create your unique mode of change.
• Acknowledge climate grief and celebrate climate joy with your communities.
• Vote with your dollar by supporting companies and products that are transparent with ingredient lists.

10 Key Ideas

1. Intersectional environmentalism connects social justice and environmental protection by arguing that the same systems of oppression harming people also degrade the planet.
2. Systemic discrimination and unearned privilege dictate the unequal geographic distribution of environmental hazards and toxic waste sites.
3. Privilege represents a set of unearned advantages, positive perceptions, and outcomes based on identity aspects that are favored by society.
4. Historical racist practices such as slavery, Jim Crow laws, and redlining dictate the present-day proximity of Black communities to environmental hazards.
5. The Global North exports massive quantities of electronic and consumer waste to the Global South, creating severe health hazards in low-income international communities.
6. Fast fashion alters brain chemistry to encourage addictive purchasing behavior while driving massive environmental degradation and human rights abuses.
7. The global transition to renewable energy frequently harms Indigenous communities through land dispossession, human rights violations, and a lack of prior consent.
8. Indigenous populations make up 5 percent of the world's population and protect 86 percent of the world's global biodiversity.
9. Environmentalism fails when it produces solutions that actively cause harm to people with disabilities or ignores accessible sustainable practices, creating a barrier known as eco-ableism.
10. Effective environmental action requires dismantling harmful systems, centering Indigenous autonomy, and building collective community power.