Clean and White offers a history of environmental racism in the United States focusing on constructions of race and hygiene When Joe Biden attempted to compliment Barack Obama by calling him "clean and articulate," he unwittingly tapped into one of the most destructive racial stereotypes in American history. This book tells the history of the corrosive idea that whites are clean and those who are not white are dirty. From the age of Thomas Jefferson...

"Catherine Flowers grew up in Lowndes County, Alabama, a place that's been called 'Bloody Lowndes' because of its violent, racist history. Once the epicenter of the voting rights struggle, today it's Ground Zero for a new movement that is Flowers's life's work. It's a fight to ensure human dignity through a right most Americans take for granted: basic sanitation. Too many people, especially the rural poor, lack an affordable means of disposing cleanly...

In the wake of the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, Indigenous people are using their newfound platform to shed light on the wide array of injustices committed against them in an effort to embark upon the process of decolonization.

"As the world’s scientists have come together and declared a 'climate emergency,' the fight to protect our planet’s ecological resources and the people that depend on them is more urgent than ever. But the real battles for our future are taking place far from the headlines and international conferences, in mostly forgotten American communities where the brutal realities of industrial pollution and environmental degradation have long been playing...