Journal article
When Democracy Disappears: Emergency Management in Benton Harbor
Du Bois review : social science research on race, Vol.15(2), pp.295-322
Autumn 2018
DOI: 10.1017/S1742058X18000255
Abstract
In this case study, I look at Benton Harbor, Michigan’s tenure under a state-appointed “emergency manager,” with extensive local powers replacing all local elected government, and a single imperative to balance the city’s budget. The law, ostensibly race-neutral, wound up targeting almost all of Michigan’s cities with significant Black population. The law ultimately disenfranchised half the state’s Black population but only two percent of Whites. This law invalidates a basic civil right and prerequisite for urban political theory: electoral democracy. Who holds power in the urban regime when the state takes over? Drawing on forty-four interviews, observations and archival research, I argue a White urban regime governs without elected representation in this majority-Black city. The ideological framing of emergency management as “neutral,” and Black politics as “corrupt” or “self-interested,” provides the logic to blame Black governance for structural disinvestment and White-led extraction.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- When Democracy Disappears: Emergency Management in Benton Harbor
- Creators
- Louise Seamster - University of Tennessee at Knoxville
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Du Bois review : social science research on race, Vol.15(2), pp.295-322
- DOI
- 10.1017/S1742058X18000255
- ISSN
- 1742-058X
- eISSN
- 1742-0598
- Language
- English
- Date published season
- Autumn 2018
- Date published
- 2018
- Academic Unit
- African American Studies; Sociology and Criminology; Public Policy Center (Archive); Law Faculty
- Record Identifier
- 9984199359702771
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