To the editor:
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Second, why does Henderson represent Heat Wave as an expression of liberal values but fail to notice that most of the political changes it criticizes–“reinventing government” in the spirit of business, delegating social service work to “community police” while cutting funds for other agencies, and “revitalizing” working-class neighborhoods by eliminating affordable housing–were primarily liberal projects? Henderson lauds Heat Wave for transcending “the usual left-liberal analysis” by examining the vulnerability of men, SRO residents, and elderly African-Americans. So why fall back on a reductive liberal-versus-conservative framework that clearly doesn’t fit?
Finally, why does Henderson think that the epilogue, “Together in the End,” implies a view of the disaster that the book rejects? This one I can answer: It’s because he misread the text, substituted his words for mine, and then criticized them as if they were my own. I don’t say that “nobody cared” for the victims–but that dozens of victims were buried alone because “no one came” (p. 237) to claim their remains. This is a revealing slip. If Henderson had evaluated the book on–and with–its own terms, perhaps he would have recognized why the social autopsy was necessary, and where it fits in the city’s intellectual and political life.
Every diagnosis implies a prescription–not a detailed prescription, but a general approach. And every prescription carries a responsibility to make some kind of case that the prescription won’t make things worse. I think Klinenberg needed to give us some kind of assurance that putting more social workers on the public payroll would actually do some good. And his hypothetical opposite would need to give us some kind of assurance that urging people to live near their elders would be anything more than an exercise in rhetorical futility.
