Flint’s Toxic Narratives: Tales of Uplift and Athletes Who Resist Them

This article considers the narratives of sports-based uplift, which have followed in the wake of Flint, Michigan’s lead-poisoned water crisis. It provides context for the sports culture of Flint, the corrupted educational system that fostered it, and the consequential sense of identity sports teams provide. Examining the water crisis via the off-the-field charitable efforts of (mostly Black) athletes in Flint and the preformed narratives in which they are figured by the media, the article demonstrates the means by which sports narratives have served the White American public’s interest in forgetting or minimizing the suffering of mostly Black Flint. These media narratives celebrate Black athletes for “giving back” as if it is their responsibility or duty to so, in large part so that White audiences do not have to confront the failures of neoliberal capitalism. The article also examines what it means that these redemptive narratives are premised on athletes’ off-the-field labor, rather than on-the-field triumph. Finally, it asserts that the athletes who write back against narratives that would co-opt their efforts in service of forgetting importantly complicate linear narratives of progress