Sorry if this book has already been suggested, but this book should be required reading for every American worker.
Workers hear it constantly: “Sorry, it was just an accident.” And we've been deeply conditioned to accept that explanation and move on. But as Jessie Singer argues convincingly: There are no such things as accidents. The vast majority of casualties are not random but predictable and preventable. Singer exposes how the phrase “accident” shields those in power and leaves the most vulnerable people in harm's way, preventing investigations, pushing off debts, blaming the victims and works, diluting anger, and even sparking empathy for the perpetrators.
Accidents have become so prevalent in America because our leaders have convinced us that they are predominantly random, and thus we cannot hold anyone accountable. Comprehension of how blame is used and misapplied is a crucial element of this book; it has been the go-to justification for hundreds of years. If a worker got their arm caught in a machine, they were careless, tired, or accident-prone. Car crashes were caused by “the nut behind the wheel.” Pedestrian deaths were due to jaywalking. Drug overdoses are due to criminals who can't control themselves, not the Sackler Family, who pushed highly addictive drugs. Those experiencing material poverty have nobody but themselves to blame. It is all very convenient.
But the term accident also lets everyone else off the hook. Singer writes, “The chief consequence of blame is the prevention of prevention. In finding fault with a person, the case of any given accident appears closed.”
Thus the automaker isn't culpable of making deadly cars; the drugmaker can't be accused of pushing addictive medications. Boeing shouldn't be blamed for making defective planes—nobody is until the pile of bodies gets so high that people can't look away anymore. But that doesn't happen often, so hundreds of thousands of people die one at a time, evidently with nobody to blame but themselves.
“Studies show that this simple act—finding someone to blame—makes people less likely to see systemic problems or seek systemic changes. One prompted subjects with news stories about various accidents: financial mistakes, plane crashes, and industrial disasters. When the story blamed human error, the reader was more intent on punishment and less likely to question the built environment or seek investigation of organizations behind the accident. No matter the accident, blame took the place of prevention.”
The simple takeaway from Singer's book: Our uniquely American accidents result from our profoundly broadening inequality. “Across the United States, all the places where a person is most likely to die by accident are poor. America's safest corners are all wealthy,” she writes. “White people and Black people die by accident at unequal rates, especially in those accidents where access to power can decide the outcome. Whether or not you die by accident is just a measure of your power, or lack of it.”
Additionally, she argues that the significant power transfer from the government to corporations changes risk valuation. “Because American taxpayers, rather than corporations, carry most of these costs,” Singer writes, “letting accidents happen is perfectly profitable for corporate America, even when those accidents happen in unsafe American cars or in uninspected American workplaces.” While Singer started writing this book long before COVID-19. The pandemic has only heightened her book — there are some memorable quotes about disease prevention — and reading this book at this precise moment, as mask mandates have been repealed without the government putting a more robust sick-leave policy in place, provides a revealing explanation for the shifting of risk onto individuals rather than attempting to create a policy that protects.