ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on racial equity at the federal level through an examination of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). An analysis of this federal agency provides an important description of a long-term public sector organizational focus designed to promote justice by operating within the nervous area of government. The EPA's emphasis on racial equity was influenced largely by the environmental justice movement that gained force in the 1980s and 1990s. Several thousand groups merged in the United States to oppose inequities in the distribution of environmental hazards and the direct threat to public health of nearby communities. The racial equity focus within the EPA today is a direct result of this important preceding environmental justice context. While environmental justice is a broader term, the specific work of the EPA has a clearly identifiable focus on issues involving racial equity for communities of color in the United States, including a specific focus on tribal and indigenous people.
