God Did Not Trouble Those Waters — Structural Racism Did

From Jackson, Mississippi to Flint, Michigan to Baltimore and beyond, when majority Black areas are plagued with water crises it is never by happenstance.

Image via bbc.com

There is nothing arbitrary about any systemic inequity people of color endure in the United States. When communities of color are under-resourced, abandoned, neglected, and disinvested or citizens are forced to migrate to areas with even less access, there is always an element of structural racism at play.

Sometimes, a majority-minority community's political and business class are assisted by natural disasters in their efforts to marginalize an already vulnerable population further. Wind and rain and fire have often served as the scapegoats when majority Black or brown cities have been leveled by weather events. It is common for lawmakers to solicit thoughts and prayers from a national audience when these moments impact citizens their policies ignore, as it is far easier than it is for them to own up to the deliberate infrastructural failures they allowed for.

The water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi that has garnered a great deal of national attention over the past two months is not at all a new dilemma for its residents. On the surface, state officials might have the public believe that the current emergency is attributed to complications from the Pearl River flooding, and the subsequent damage to the O.B. Curtis water plant.

But as Jackson native, Gino Womack told NBC News, he couldn’t recall a time when there was clean and reliable water in Jackson. Gino is 49 years old.

Jackson, the capital of Mississippi has a population of roughly 150,000 that’s just over 82 percent Black, with 30 percent of those Black residents living in poverty. For several weeks images of undrinkable and unusable Coca-Cola-colored water pouring from the kitchen sinks and bathroom tubs of Jackson residents have been making the rounds in the media, while state officials have been facing intense scrutiny behind their relative inaction in the face of this environmental atrocity.

Image via 9news.com

Mississippi, a state that historically has been one of the most brutal and violent places for Black folks in the US to live, is currently failing the citizens of its majority-Black capital by showing little to no deference to the severity of their needs. And much like the conditions that led to the browning of Jackson’s water supply, the state is once again culpable for endangering the lives and compromising the health of its Black citizens by dismissing the evident structural racism at play as the consequence of nature taking its course.