Since April of 2014 and continuing on in February of 2019, the people of Flint, Michigan, mostly consisting of African-Americans (57%) in which many in Flint are impoverished (40%), have had to hand filter the water they drink and boil the water they bathe in every, single, day.
The governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder, claims ethnicity and class has nothing to do with why Flint’s pipes were neglected to the point where deadly levels of lead were able to seep into important pipelines.
Although Snyder has been reported to have taken some responsibility for the massive clean water drought, his recorded responses still seem to not fully grasp the significance of this situation.
“These are very technical issues. But the lead came to my attention in October, end of September, early October of 2015. We took immediate action, need to do more, did more.” - Snyder
NAACP President, Cornell Brooks, has coined this catastrophe yet another disappointing and frustrating case of Environmental Racism, where those in power deny people of basic necessities due to their personal disdain for people of color and those living in poverty.
There is little to no way to accept that clean water was denied to Flint, Michigan, the same way it was to those in Detroit, Newark, NJ, and Baltimore, MD, and other U.S. cities highly saturated with African-Americans and poor people for so long, for any real reason other than the color of their skin color, common financial positioning, and unfortunately, overall history with coming last in this country in terms of need.
We have been under attack. Those of us deemed as unimportant, who have to beg for the attention of our states and federal departments to provide us with the lowest of the bare minimum... Clean water
Yes, we the people have been organizing to bring conveniently clean water to these people more than their own city officials have.
Yes, we have been using our voices and platforms to make sure the world knows what is happening to us here.
Yet, the water...in several places all over this country...is still as brown as the skin of those whose needs are consistently ignored.
What else has to happen for all people of this nation to be truly cared for? Or, as per usual, have we yet to reach a time, and place in time where brown skin truly matters?
