Urban Specters: The Everyday Harms of Racial Capitalism

by Sarah Mayorga

Racial capitalism, invisible but threaded throughout the world, shapes our lives. Focusing on the experiences of white, Black, and Latinx residents of Cincinnati, Sarah Mayorga argues that residents' interpretations of their circumstances, what she calls urban specters, are often partial recognitions of the exploitation and dehumanization produced by racial capitalism. Much scholarly work on racial capitalism has necessarily focused on historical, theoretical, and macro-level accounts. Mayorga takes these vital insights and applies them to two contemporary working-class neighborhoods, centering the lives of working-class and poor people.

Using data from interviews with 117 residents, Mayorga maps how racial capitalism creates the everyday harms people know all too well. Chronic underdevelopment, private property, and policing, she shows, have produced these harms. In this enlightening book, Mayorga identifies small windows into abolitionist possibilities that create different types of relations, ones based on care and connection. This is a guide for anyone trying to understand urban inequality, but also more importantly, for how we might create a different world.

220 pages, Paperback

Published August 29, 2023

Reviews

[Chloe Connelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Urban Specters explores racial capitalism through Sarah Mayorga's study of two Cincinnati neighborhoods. She does a great job understanding people's ideologies and taking their concerns and experiences seriously while always maintaining a larger view of the social, political, and economic structures that create and shape people's lives and neighborhoods. She consistently rejects the impulse to reify current structures as natural or necessary, always maintaining nuance and a critical understanding of capitalism, racism, and white supremacy at the core of her work.

This quote from the conclusion really stuck with me and summarizes well her approach to this work: "We must remember that poverty - for individuals and neighborhoods - is not a necessary characteristic of modern living. It is a policy choice. We choose it daily with our economic priorities and policies. When we understand our current society as a series of daily decisions, it is easier to reject that this is the way it needs to be or will always be. Or that only some people deserve safe and affordable housing, health care, and fresh food. We can choose for it to be different. Undoing these decisions is not easy, but it is possible if we work together to make it so."

I would recommend this book to anyone looking to gain a deeper understanding of capitalism, racism, or (most importantly) how intertwined the two are, and how racial capitalism affects (and is strengthened by) our day to day experiences in our homes and with our neighbors. I would also recommend this to any reader, inside or outside a classroom.