Y'all, this week we have a doozy. We're talking about "the I word"—insurance—and how insurance companies not only profited from, but actively spurred, the burning of American cities in the 1970s.
My guest is Professor Bench Ansfield (Temple University), author of Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City. I am obsessed with this book. It's an astounding exposé of how the insurance industry abandoned entire neighborhoods, then benefited as those areas burned—and hid their complicity through financial mechanisms that will sound awfully familiar.
The conversation, I think, gives you a taste of the headspinning narrative Professor Ansfield weaves about "the fierce churn of racial capitalism,” showing how insurance companies have systematically extracted wealth from vulnerable communities and how tenant organizing is so often at the heart of fighting back.
