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A review by cpbindel
Soul City: Race, Equality, and the Lost Dream of an American Utopia by Thomas Healy
dark
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.5
A detailed account about the 12-year rise and fall of Floyd McKissick’s dream to develop a new city in the middle of rural North Carolina. McKissick, a Civil-rights leader and lawyer, held a unique utopic vision, as well as unique access to halls of power.
This is a depressing story. In some ways, it is in conversation with “Seeing Like a State,” which chronicles the many 20th century top-down social engineering projects that also didn’t pan out. The site for Soul City—on a former plantation in a poor remote rural county of North Carolina—was perhaps its greatest liability, and the idealism that McKissick and his entourage took to developing all municipal infrastructure from total scratch (hospitals, wastewater, schools, roads, to say nothing of housing and industrial buildings) is somewhere between foolhardy and bold.
Why does this still matter?
Black real estate developers still make up a very small number of the total developers (8.6% according to Zippia), and access to capital is still the largest problem facing these and other developers who are not white. Healey reveals in detail the many forms of anti-Blackness that came against Soul City from politicians, the press, industry and government administrators. Ultimately, the author implies that if Soul City had been as resourced as the Woodlands, a white-led New City project near Houston that received 4x the investment that Soul City received from HUD, it might have had a chance.
But yeah, I am discouraged and doubtful that federal investment will be the primary vehicle to build on the assets and talents of—and to create wealth for—BIPOC communities in a liberatory way. That doesn’t mean I won’t stop asking for it, but I feel less hopeful overall.
This is a depressing story. In some ways, it is in conversation with “Seeing Like a State,” which chronicles the many 20th century top-down social engineering projects that also didn’t pan out. The site for Soul City—on a former plantation in a poor remote rural county of North Carolina—was perhaps its greatest liability, and the idealism that McKissick and his entourage took to developing all municipal infrastructure from total scratch (hospitals, wastewater, schools, roads, to say nothing of housing and industrial buildings) is somewhere between foolhardy and bold.
Why does this still matter?
Black real estate developers still make up a very small number of the total developers (8.6% according to Zippia), and access to capital is still the largest problem facing these and other developers who are not white. Healey reveals in detail the many forms of anti-Blackness that came against Soul City from politicians, the press, industry and government administrators. Ultimately, the author implies that if Soul City had been as resourced as the Woodlands, a white-led New City project near Houston that received 4x the investment that Soul City received from HUD, it might have had a chance.
But yeah, I am discouraged and doubtful that federal investment will be the primary vehicle to build on the assets and talents of—and to create wealth for—BIPOC communities in a liberatory way. That doesn’t mean I won’t stop asking for it, but I feel less hopeful overall.