RabachK VtP: Are we all Flint?

In “Are We All Flint,” Catherine Fennel describes toxicity’s relationship to infrastructure in the context of Flint, Michigan. In a town imagined as “staggered by waves of deindustrialization, disinvestment, and abandonment,” the image of crumbling infrastructures is how this place become essentialized. Fennel troubles this narrative, but we can see the damage. If something is crumbling or in decay, there’s justification for revival for interference. In the case of Flint, there’s justification for state oversight. In this piece, though, Fennel critiques many of the post-Flint responses, especially the terms of solidarity used around the states to argue “We are all Flint.” The WE becomes something different here when it incorporates cities and people outside of Flint itself. Fennel argues, “we might be forced to recognize that if “America is Flint,” it is not because of the ubiquity of lead in our water infrastructures. It is because like Flint, America is a place built on profound, longstanding, and enduring racial and economic inequalities that continue to waste some but not all of its citizens’ bodies and / communities. … “We are all Flint” isn’t just hogwash: it’s whitewash” The WE in this case, then, is toxic. It undercuts the underlying racial and economic injustices within the Flint case. And this city's history and relationships with both the government of Michigan, as well as other communities throughout the state.