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Toxic Debt: An Environmental Justice History of Detroit
From the mid-nineteenth until the mid-twentieth century, environmentally unregulated industrial capitalism produced outsized environmental risks for poor and working-class Detroiters, made all the worse for African Americans by housing and job discrimination. Then as the auto industry abandoned Detroit, the banking and real estate industries turned those risks into disasters with predatory loans to African American homebuyers, and to an increasingly indebted city government. Following years of cuts in welfare assistance to poor families and a devastating subprime mortgage meltdown, the state of Michigan used municipal debt to justify suspending democracy in majority-Black cities. In Detroit and Flint, austerity policies imposed under emergency financial management deprived hundreds of thousands of people of clean water, with lethal consequences that most recently exacerbated the spread of COVID-19.
Toxic Debt is not only a book about racism, capitalism, and the making of these environmental disasters. It is also a history of Detroit's environmental justice movement, which emerged from over a century of battles over public health in the city and involved radical auto workers, ecofeminists, and working-class women fighting for clean water. Linking the histories of urban political economy, the environment, and social movements, Toxic Debt lucidly narrates the story of debt, environmental disaster, and resistance in Detroit.
Toxic Debt is not only a book about racism, capitalism, and the making of these environmental disasters. It is also a history of Detroit's environmental justice movement, which emerged from over a century of battles over public health in the city and involved radical auto workers, ecofeminists, and working-class women fighting for clean water. Linking the histories of urban political economy, the environment, and social movements, Toxic Debt lucidly narrates the story of debt, environmental disaster, and resistance in Detroit.
Book Details
- Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
- Publish Date: Apr 26th, 2022
- Pages: 344
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 9.21in - 6.14in - 0.77in - 1.17lb
- EAN: 9781469665764
- Categories: • United States - General• Environmental Science (see also Chemistry - Environmental)• Public Policy - Environmental Policy
About the Author
Rector, Josiah: - Josiah Rector is assistant professor of history at the University of Houston.
Praise for this book
A groundbreaking study that opens up new questions and perspectives in urban and environmental history, while simultaneously showing a real understanding of the stakes for present and future residents of Detroit . . . . a major achievement . . . . a new model for understanding and explaining our current environmental challenges, as well as their causes and consequences."--Journal of American History
An outstanding book examining multiple issues of environmental justice in Detroit. . . . Alongside the issues, Rector highlights the story of the many people involved in environmental justice activism, critically examining successes and failures in their efforts to bring about change. . . . Highly recommended."--CHOICE
A must-read for anyone doing work on the environment, sociology, public health, policy, or labor in Detroit and beyond . . . . accessible and important for wide-reaching audiences, including activists, policymakers, practitioners, and scholars."--Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
[Josiah Rector] has written a book that advances two major interventions. First, it pushes back the environmental justice movement's genesis to midcentury union organizing. Second, and just as significantly, it firmly connects the effects of debt and austerity--that is to say, capitalism--to environmental racism. . . . Toxic Debt is an outstanding book . . . relentlessly clear-eyed in its focus on contemporary injustice and resistance."--Scott W. Stern, New York Review of Books