How the Home Became a Deathtrap: An Essay on the Subprime Mortgage Crash Open Access

Abstract

Tracking the Conquest of the Americas until neoliberalism, this paper illustrates how and why banks were never under risk of serious scrutiny after the financial crash of 2008. This paper will demonstrate, through histories of the plantation economy, American Expansion, coloniality, urban renewal projects, and the updating of slavery into liberal institutions, that tight frameworks of neocolonialism, settler colonialism, and various Marxisms cannot explain the aftermath of the crash. Rather, this essay borrows from Tiffany King, Saidya Hartman, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, and Hortense Spillers to unsettle standard explanations of racialized labor. Instead, this paper offers that indebtedness and fungibility form grammars of blameworthiness that always seek to deny livingness and access to space/territory for African Americans. As such, the collaboration between banks, the government, and white people meant that subprime mortgages were never meant to provide flourishing black communities but rather short-term liquidity to boost the American market. The purpose of this paper will be to demonstrate, not only that reverse redlining profited both the settler state and neoliberal financialization, but that American Expansion itself has always come at the sacrifice of racialized people. 

Table of Contents

Part I ……………………………………………..……………………………………..6

Part II………………………………………..………………… ……………...………12

Part III…………………………………..………………………………………..…….17

Part IV……………………………………..………………………………………......24

Part V………………………………………..…………………………………………..34

Part VI………………………………………..………………………………………….40

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	Philosophy
Degree	B.A.
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Philosophy American Studies African American Studies
Keyword	Subprime Crash Conquest Debt Colonial Modernity Neoliberalism Global South Afro-Pessimism
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Zambrana, Rocío, Emory University
Committee Members	Villa-Flores, Javier, Emory University Marder, Elissa, Emory University Chapman, Alix, Emory University

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