Environmentalists and environmental organizations in the USA have long identified population growth as a key threat to environmental sustainability at local and global scales. The neo‐Malthusian logics they invoke embed racialized images and categories in defining population “problems”, yet increasingly social justice language is invoked in population debates as a “solution” in the context of international development. This article explores the historical and contemporary characterizations of race as a central component of population–environment advocacy. It focuses on locations of race narratives in both the conceptualizations of population growth as an environmental problem, and family planning as a global solution. Through a critical analysis of the “population justice” framework, I argue that new discursive approaches attempt to reposition population work as socially just, while eliding critical analyses of race.