ABSTRACT
Between 2014 and 2020, an estimated 142,000–160,000 low- and fixed-income residents were disconnected from clean drinking water in Detroit, Michigan, for unpaid bills. Our chapter underscores the deep social costs incurred when water utilities and governments embrace profit maximization and debt-focused discursive logics to enact mass water shutoffs. Drawing on feminist standpoint theory and intersectionality, we engage in collaborative writing to show how these institutional practices target Black women by harnessing misinformation, guilt, and racist tropes. False narratives used to justify water shutoffs involve personal responsibility frames obfuscating deeper social histories, opacity and ambiguity instead of data transparency, racist socioeconomic tropes that vilify urban Black residents, and manufacture of crises to justify undemocratic Emergency Managers’ control. We identify core assumptions that perpetuate these tactics, closing with an epilogue of the ongoing uncertainty given the lack of a permanent ban on water shutoffs in Detroit.
