Wastelanding and Racialized Reproductive Labor: “Long Dyings” in East Chicago from Urban Renewal to Superfund Remediation (October 2021)
Elizabeth Grennan Browning (Author)
Environmental History
Volume: 26
Issue: 4
Pages: 749-775
Publication date: October 2021
Language: English
This article examines the gendered valence of environmental racism and white privilege as it unfolded in the history of urban renewal, public housing, and Superfund remediation in East Chicago, Indiana. Offering a deep history of the US Smelter and Lead Refinery Superfund site, it demonstrates that the historical process of “wastelanding” in the Calumet region relied on the exploitation of reproductive labor. The nonprofit Purdue-Calumet Development Foundation (PCDF)—led by Purdue University administrators and supported by East Chicago municipal administrators, academic researchers, and local business executives—spearheaded East Chicago’s urban renewal program. Through the course of executing these renewal measures, the PCDF co-opted Black and Brown women’s reproductive labor to accomplish their goals and relied on metaphors of feminized labor—particularly women’s stereotyped tasks of cleaning and nurturing—to explain and sanitize the social cost of slum removal. These historical legacies of politicizing reproductive labor are visible today in government officials’ continued disproportionate burdening of East Chicago’s minority women as the city navigates its lead poisoning epidemic. Housing and environmental government agencies (alongside their partners in industry) have reinscribed their reliance on traditional gender roles from the urban renewal era through the distant futurities of Superfund contamination sites. Tracing the long history of the city’s mismanagement of toxic environmental exposures reveals the need for environmental historians to study the important role of racialized reproductive labor in both the perpetuation of environmental injustices as well as the resilience of environmental justice communities as they work to survive devastating health impacts and social trauma.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Andrew Gutkowski;
(2020)
The Evolution of Environmental (In)Justice in Spartanburg, South Carolina, 1900–2000
Article
Joel W. Grossman;
Robert J. Taylor;
Eri Weinstein;
(2016)
Trace Element Time Markers as Proxies for the Calibration of Civil War-Era Sediment Accumulations at the West Point Foundry
Chapter
Jennifer Dunn;
(2022)
1. Poisoned Wilderness: Superfund and Libby, Montana
Article
Rider Foley;
Richard Rushforth;
Tomasz Kalinowski;
Ira Bennett;
(2020)
From Public Engagement to Research Intervention: Analyzing Processes and Exploring Outcomes in Urban Techno-politics
Book
Sunaura Taylor;
(2024)
Disabled Ecologies: Lessons from a Wounded Desert
Article
John B. Stranges;
Matthew M. Troia;
Claudette E. Walck;
(2017)
Limited Victory: Love Canal Reclaimed
Book
Josiah Rector;
(2022)
Toxic Debt: An Environmental Justice History of Detroit
Article
Roxana Vergara;
María Eugenia Ulfe;
(2022)
Measuring incommensurability: Compensations in judicial processes of oil spills in Northern Peruvian Amazon
Article
Barbara L. Allen;
(November 2018)
Strongly Participatory Science and Knowledge Justice in an Environmentally Contested Region
Article
Heather Green;
(April 2021)
Environmental Racism and Violence in Rural Nova Scotia. (Film review)
Book
Simone M. Müller;
(2023)
The Toxic Ship: The Voyage of the Khian Sea and the Global Waste Trade
Book
Özge Yaka;
(2023)
Fighting for the River: Gender, Body, and Agency in Environmental Struggles
Book
Douglas Haynes;
(2017)
Fit to Practice: Empire, Race, Gender, and the Making of British Medicine, 1850-1980
Article
Carmen V. Harris;
(2019)
The South Carolina Home in Black and White: Race, Gender, and Power in Home Demonstration Work
Chapter
Leslie C. Gay Jr;
(2021)
Shadows of Black and White: Materialities and Medialities in May Irwin’s “Frog Song”
Multimedia Object
Dr. Elisa Prosperetti;
Thomas, Lynn M.;
(2020)
Lynn M. Thomas, “Beneath the Surface: A Transnational History of Skin Lighteners” (Duke UP, 2020)
Article
Sudev Sheth;
Geoffrey Jones;
Morgan Spencer;
(Autumn 2021)
Emboldening and Contesting Gender and Skin Color Stereotypes in the Film Industry in India, 1947–1991
Book
Lynn M. Thomas;
(2020)
Beneath the Surface: A Transnational History of Skin Lighteners
Book
Leilani Nishime;
Kim D. Hester Williams;
(2018)
Racial Ecologies
Article
Marika Plater;
(2020)
Climates of Inequality: Stories of Environmental Justice
Be the first to comment!