Families in Flint, MI continue to live a nightmare as more and more doctors deliver heartbreaking news that the children of Flint have been poisoned by the residents’ water supply.
Mayor Karen Weaver declared a state of emergency last Monday after a study by Hurley Medical Center revealed that the number of infants and children whose blood contains above-average levels of lead has nearly doubled since the city switched to the Flint River for its water supply in 2014, reports The Washington Post.
Though Governor Rick Snyder’s administration originally declared the water safe to drink and dismissed initial concerns, it changed its tune once residents’ complaints and protests about the water quality, as well as mounting medical evidence that the water was, in fact, adversely affecting their health, heightened.
Having grown up just outside of Flint in a relatively affluent suburb, I am disturbed by the news of Flint residents’ plight, though I am not at all surprised.
Take a look at any major city across the U.S. and you’ll find examples of injustice and inequity in abundance — injustices and inequities that you will not find in suburban towns mere miles away: Underfunded and low-performing schools. Inferior medical care. Crumbling roads and neighborhoods.
Why?
Because believe it or not, we are still living in a segregated society. Many urban areas are populated by minorities and people of low socioeconomic status who, unlike residents of outlying areas, are at the mercy of a system that continues to oppress.
I can hear the collective gasps of incredulity at that statement. But think about it. Would the continued poisoning of residents from unsafe water sources have stood in the more affluent community of my childhood? Absolutely not. The moment one or more residents complained about the water’s appearance and odor, and certainly the moment someone received medical proof that the water was contaminating their blood with toxins, the government would have stepped in and put a stop to it immediately. Quite honestly, the government never would have attempted to introduce water from a questionable supply into that community in the first place.
And you don’t have to rely on my word, either. Research supports this assertion that disparities across communities exist. According to the National Housing Institute:
Dominant features of metropolitan development … are sprawl, concentrated poverty and segregation (if not hypersegregation). Racial segregation, in conjunction with the concentration of poverty and growing economic inequality, results in growing isolation of poor minority households.
Moreover:
Spatial and racial inequalities are directly associated with access to virtually all products and services associated with the good life – e.g., health, education, employment. Sprawl, concentrated poverty and racial segregation tend to concentrate a host of problems and privileges in different neighborhoods and among different racial groups. These “concentration effects” shape opportunities and lifestyles throughout the life cycle and across generations.
Access to clean air and water, exposure to lead paint, high rates of stress and obesity, poor diet, social isolation and proximity to hospitals and other medical facilities all vary by neighborhood and contribute to long-established disparities in health and wellness.
Plainly put, the residents of Flint, MI never stood a chance. They are victims of an inequitable system, one that has and will continue to put their well-being on the back burner and relegate them to a lifetime of maltreatment, the price of which their precious children, and likely their children’s children, will pay in the form of lowered IQ, learning and behavioral disorders, and myriad health problems which, according to the World Health Organization, are the irreversible consequences of lead poisoning.
This should make every single one of us mad as hell, and yet there the residents of Flint, MI are, still fighting a two-year battle for the most basic of human needs: clean water.
I don’t want to hear about how privilege isn’t a thing. I don’t want to hear about how all anyone has to do is work hard and they can have and be whatever they desire. The reality for many people is, despite how hard they work for change, they still don’t have safe schools to attend, access to quality medical care, healthy food to eat, or clean water to drink.
And until we as a society make it a priority to recognize and rectify the disparities across communities, ensuring everyone is able to satisfy those most basic of human needs, no amount of “working hard” is going to get the unfairly oppressed anywhere.