In one of his first actions after assuming office, President Biden signed an executive order with the explicit purpose of acknowledging and addressing how environmental racism has devastated the economic and human health of Black, Latino, and Indigenous communities.

But now the administration sounds very different as the White House introduces their Justice40 system. Justice 40 is an initiative to identify and provide disadvantaged communities with 40 percent of overall climate and clean energy benefits and with Federal investments. And while this initiative is supposed to address environmental racism — race is absent from the formula being used to identify these disadvantaged communities.

White House officials have said that they’re taking this approach in order to avoid possible legal challenges. 

For more on this, The Takeaway spoke with Sheila Foster, a Professor of Law and Public Policy at Georgetown University and co-author of From the Ground Up: Environmental Racism and the Rise of the Environmental Justice Movement.