Toxic Debt: An Environmental Justice History of Detroit

by Josiah Rector

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.

Genres: History

335 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 17, 2022

Reviews

[Ember McCoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was incredible! Really important read for anyone doing environmental / environmental Justice work (in Detroit or otherwise). But also a compelling read to understand the intersections of labor, housing, environment, and civil rights movements and to see the social, political, and economic factors leading to environmental issues today.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not always an easy read (try keeping track of all of the acronyms for governmental agencies and environmental/community organizations) but perhaps one of the most important books you'll ever read. The author's environmental history of Detroit vividly illustrates many of the problems created by industry, economic inequality, and ever-present American racism.

I drew a few essential truths from the book. First, corporations lack morality. If there is a choice between making money and preserving the lives and health of ordinary citizens, the corporation will choose the money every time. There are many examples in the book. Corporations spew poisonous chemicals into the air or water system and when they are called on it, they either deny that they are doing it or claim that the chemicals are not harmful. Then, after destroying an urban environment and injuring its residents, they simply walk away, inevitably to some place where they can make more money and poison some more people.

Second, privatization is never good for the public but always good for whoever is taking over something that was formerly the responsibility of a public entity. Why? The profit motive, of course. The company will slash services and hike the cost to the public, so that it can make more money.

Third, white privilege is a great thing to have. Wealth and whiteness will usually, but not always, give you the option of moving away from the poison. If you're black, or poor, you are probably stuck in a low paying job and can't move away. Your health suffers, you die early, and you don't leave any wealth to the next generation. Multiply that by a few generations and you'll understand the wealth disparities in the US.

And it isn't always the corporation that is sticking it to the poor. Often, practices of the government enhance in equality in wealth and health outcomes. A particularly enlightening section of the book dealt with the 2008 financial crisis, showing how wealthy banks and corporations were bailed out, while poor homeowners lost everything and received no bailout at all. The share of wealth of the super-wealthy grew exponentially while the poor just became poorer. Cities like Detroit went bankrupt and were placed under the rule of unelected emergency managers, so their citizens lost their right to democracy. What did the managers do? Privatized public services, of course, enriching their wealthy friends and causing the poor to lose essential services.

This book, which is extremely well researched, is a good companion volume to Richard Rothstein's "The Color of Law," which showed how government policies helped to segregate America. Much of Rothstein's history is echoed here.

Essential reading if you want to understand how some become multi-billionaires and others can't get a glass of water out of their tap (and if they can, it might be loaded with lead). Nice job, Josiah Rector. An admirable, important book that should be widely read.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

There was one really illuminating chapter near the end but this book is dryyyyy