Wastelanding and Racialized Reproductive Labor: “Long Dyings” in East Chicago from Urban Renewal to Superfund Remediation

Abstract

Abstract 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.