Predatory Inclusion and the Flint Water Crisis

Abstract

In 2014, residents of Flint, Michigan began to experience the first effects of the years-long Flint water crisis. Mismanagement of crumbling infrastructure by the city and state and severe austerity measures exposed thousands of children to toxic levels of lead in the drinking water. While blame for this is often assigned to the officials in charge at the time, the history of Flint reveals a decades-long pattern of private and public collusion in the exploitation of city residents. The predominantly Black population of Flint has been tethered to derelict properties and excluded from opportunity through a process that Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor has termed “predatory inclusion.” In Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership, she provides a productive addition to the necessary conversations on how the real estate industry and its racial and class dimensions factor into the creation of environmental crises.