White Care - by Cotten Seiler (Paperback)

About the Book

"Cotten Seiler argues that government investments in physical and social infrastructure constitute a regime of care that he calls "custodial liberalism." The New Deal was such a regime, creating a compact whereby the government's legitimacy derived from what it provided working-class whites. But as other people sought to avail themselves of that care, the regime changed. Whites not only denied that care to people of color but defined the regime away entirely, even for themselves. The rise of neoliberalism, insisting on the social autonomy of the individual, was driven by a racially charged desire to eradicate social responsibilities and society itself"--

Book Synopsis

Framing infrastructure as the expression of a state's care for its population, White Care explores the crucial role of race in the building, maintenance, scope, and quality of US infrastructure.

Infrastructure delivers to its users a range of benefits, from health, safety, and sanitation to mobility, energy, and education. It is, as Cotten Seiler argues, how modern states show care for their populations. White Care recounts the rise and fall of public infrastructure in the United States, unearthing its origins as an investment in those Americans deemed most highly evolved, showing the political stakes of its desegregation, and accounting for its current state of dilapidation.

From the late nineteenth century through much of the twentieth, government investments in physical ("hard") and social ("soft") infrastructure constituted a regime of care that Seiler calls "custodial liberalism." This regime achieved legitimacy with the New Deal, which conferred upon white citizens a bounty of life-enhancing public works. But custodial liberalism began to unravel in the postwar decades, as Americans of color gained access to public schools, housing, swimming pools, parks, and other sites from which they had long been excluded. As the infrastructural commons were desegregated, white Americans withdrew from the social compact that had empowered them and turned toward neoliberalism, with its program of austerity and privatization. This racialized renunciation has deprived everyone--including themselves--of a cleaner, greener, healthier, safer, more affordable, and more functional environment.

Review Quotes

"White Care offers a stunning account of how America's greatest infrastructural achievements-- its grand waterworks, highways, schools, and parks--were built on racial foundations that limited state investment and care to white citizens. Drawing on feminist and political theory, evolutionary science, and cultural studies, Cotten Seiler reveals how racism didn't just exclude people of color from public goods, it ultimately convinced majorities of white Americans to abandon the very idea of a shared public realm. White Care is a revelatory work that invites us to envision a future world of public goods that extends to us all."--Cristina Beltrán, New York University

"--Bruce William Robbins, Columbia University

About the Author

Cotten Seiler is professor of American studies at Dickinson College. He is the author of Republic of Drivers: A Cultural History of Automobility in America.