Cotten
Seiler

University of Chicago Press

White Care: The Impact of Race on American Infrastructure

Infrastructure is 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 deemed most highly evolved, showing the political stakes of its desegregation, and accounting for its current state of dilapidation.

"A magisterial exposé of the racist imaginary that does so much to explain the sorry state of America's infrastructure."

— Bruce Robbins, Columbia University

"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, 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 Beltran, New York University

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