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RE: Civil Rights Commission Says Systemic Racism Contributed to Flint Water Crisis

in #news • 7 years ago (edited)

A Civil Rights Commission adding potential future racial tensions to the mix by conveniently (for funds?) evoking ''systemic racism'' as the main culprit of a health crisis? Do you really think the lead in water discriminates between which households' pipes it goes through? Maybe the ''white privilege'' boogeyman saw the 37.4% White, 0.5% Native American, 0.5% Asian, 1.1% from other races, and 3.9% from two or more races as only collateral damage when trying to punish its 56.6% African American target. So, if I understand correctly, it's a generational story of structural harm & hardships, according to their report. I wonder then, how they would explain the systemic discrimination in the context of the three generations back numbers (non-Hispanic Whites were 35.7% of the population in 2010, compared to 70.1% in 1970)? White flight leaving (or taking) their ''entitlements'' behind (or with them) combined with black lives flocking where it supposedly didn't even mattered back then? What I'm saying is that their ''it's been a race problem for decades'' conclusion doesn't make sense. Where is the proof of organized racist wrongdoing?

Source for stats:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint,_Michigan#Demographics

7 years ago in #news by
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     7 years ago 

    Lead does not discriminate, but demographics absolutely plays a role in the enforcement —or lack thereof—of environmental laws and regulations. Just research the makeup of populations living within a 5-mile radius of superfund sites.

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     7 years ago (edited)

    This is an article I read about a year ago that I find pretty convincing. It was arguing the Flint fiasco is a case of ''Keynesian stimulus project gone wrong'':

    The whole mess occurred because Flint decided against renewing its 30-year contract with the Detroit Water and Sewage Department (DWSD) and switched instead to Karegnondi Water Authority (KWA). KWA was planning to build its own hugely expensive pipeline, parallel to DWSD's, to harness water from Lake Huron and service the Genesee County area where Flint is located. This left the city in the lurch for a few years when its contract with DWSD ended but the new facility had not yet gone online, prompting it to reopen a local mothballed facility that relied on the toxic Flint River as its source...

    ...sources close to the situation at the time tell me that it was essentially because Genesee County and Flint authorities saw the new water treatment as a public infrastructure project to create jobs in an area that has never recovered after Michigan's auto industry fled to sunnier business climes elsewhere. And neither Snyder nor his Emergency Manager Ed Kurtz nor the state treasurer Andy Dillon had the heart to say "no," especially since to hand Flint to DWSD would have made the whole project less viable. What's more, they felt that just as Detroit was receiving an infrastructure boost post-bankruptcy (with the state-backed $650 million ice-hockey-arena-cum-entertainment center that I wrote about here) it was only fair that Flint get one too.

    And for the populace generational hardships: ''crony capitalism''?

    If McCormick had been corrupt and untrustworthy like her predecessor, who was indicted in the scandal involving former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (for, among other things, illegally steering contracts to friends and cronies), it would have been one thing. But McCormick has a stellar reputation as an administrator and was brought on board after a federal court ordered a reorganization of the DWSD to clean up its operations and ensure that it was complying with federal water regulations. (Despite opposition from the city's powerful unions, she made a nearly 80 percent reduction in staff while improving operations, all of which ended 35 years of court oversight of the department!) In fact, she even offered the city representation on the board and a say in "facility operations and capital investment" in order to guard against unwarranted future rate hikes, removing an issue that has long been a bone of contention between Detroit and its municipal clients.

    http://reason.com/blog/2016/01/25/the-flint-water-crisis-is-the-result-of

    To be fair, I have to admit it's the only article I've read on the topic.

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