"We are all Flint." Toxicity is generalized, spoken of as an issue impacting everyone equally. Much like "All Lives Matter," it presumes that toxicity has consequences for all who drink water. This statement is professionalized: according to doctors, journalists, and activisits, lead is an ongoing presence in everyday lives of all Americans, especially in older cities. Yet this discounts the fact that America is a place built on enduring racial and economic inequalities. This statement elides the toxicity embedded in the lives of some groups of people more so than others, whether it's via housing or other infrastructural and environmental factors. As Fennell argues, such a statement "blunt[s] any serious criticism of those inequalities by diluting them in a wash of misdirected solidarity...it's whitewash." Narratives aimed as solidarity regarding toxicity are in themselves toxic. And they ignore the other risks that certain groups of people are exposed to via other toxic infrastructures, including housing. The issue of toxic housing is invisibilized due its not being percieved as a collective good, and thus does not get nearly as much widespread attention. Housing is considered a responsibility of the individual, and thus a publics cannot make demands on that which is not centrally administered (like water). The symptom is higher rates of childhood lead poisoning, and the silencing of the toxics that render such rates higher in the first place.
