Zone1 Systemic Racism-Jackson Mississippi

[IM2]

The Jackson Water Crisis Is a Public Health Failure Rooted in Systemic Racism​

Residents of Jackson, Mississippi, started boiling their water when, at the end of July, local health officials warned the city’s water supply was cloudy. That was already an unacceptable ask, but the situation imploded this week when a local river flooded and caused problems at the OB Curtis Water Plant, resulting in a water shortage.

Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves issued a statement announcing a state of emergency on August 30. However, the statement didn’t outline plans to restore the water supply to the city’s capital, nor did it provide updates on when Jackson’s nearly 150,000 residents can expect the shortage to end. Instead, they have been told they’ll be without clean water “indefinitely,” local news outlets report.

Having clean water is very obviously a public health matter: Aside from having to boil water in order to safely drink it, people in Jackson don’t currently have the water pressure needed to flush toilets or fight fires, per the statement from Governor Tate’s office. The situation is so dire that the city temporarily ran out of bottled water to hand out to residents earlier this week, CNN reported. President Biden has officially declared a state of emergency for the state of Mississippi, which means urgent federal assistance is now on its way to Jackson, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre tweeted.

It’s important to note that more than 80% of Jackson’s residents are Black—and this crisis is a painfully clear case of environmental racism. This term is used to describe “the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards on people of color,” according to Greenaction, a nonprofit organization dedicated to environmental justice initiatives. Some experts are comparing the current situation in Jackson to the 2014 water crisis in Flint, Michigan, during which the city’s primarily Black residents didn’t have access to clean water due to lead contamination for years.

“It’s not a coincidence. [Jackson] is a disproportionately Black city where people knew there was a problem,” and didn’t spend the money to fix it, Colin Jerolmack, PhD, professor of sociology and environmental studies at NYU, tells SELF. “It’s a result of a legacy of racism. You could draw a straight line [from] prior racist acts, such as discrimination, to environmental racism.”

The Jackson water crisis is only the latest example of the devastating impacts of environmental racism. It can be particularly insidious and hard to combat because there’s rarely one person to blame, Jerolmack says. It’s the result of years and years of discrimination and neglect, and people in power often rely on the public’s apathy toward racism, coupled with plausible deniability, to get away with it. “You can’t find some white lawmaker who said, ‘We don’t want to provide water to Black people,’” Jerolmack explains, but you can find examples of lawmakers who have voted against helping these very communities. “

The Jackson Water Crisis Is a Public Health Failure Rooted in Systemic Racism

Residents have been forced to boil their water for more than a month.

www.self.com

“You can’t find some white lawmaker who said, ‘We don’t want to provide water to Black people,’” Jerolmack explains, but you can find examples of lawmakers who have voted against helping these very communities. “

Last year, at least two bills aimed at helping raise money for water-system repairs died in the legislature. And in June 2020, Reeves, a Republican, vetoed bipartisan legislation designed to help residents with overdue water bills which, in turn, would have enabled the city to collect sorely needed water revenue.

In vetoing the bill, the governor acknowledged that residents "got overcharged in the past," but said the legislation would allow "politicians to say that individuals are not responsible for paying their water bill." Reeves also said there were "no safeguards in place" to ensure aid would go only to "the impoverished or needy."



This is an example of systemic racism. The white communities around Jackson and in Mississippi do not have this problem.

 

[excalibur]

Every mayor since the 1997 election has been black.

 

[IM2]

Every mayor since the 1997 election has been black.

Let me know when the governor has been black. Because they've asked the state for help and have not got it.

 

[White 6]

The Jackson Water Crisis Is a Public Health Failure Rooted in Systemic Racism​

View attachment 690348

Residents of Jackson, Mississippi, started boiling their water when, at the end of July, local health officials warned the city’s water supply was cloudy. That was already an unacceptable ask, but the situation imploded this week when a local river flooded and caused problems at the OB Curtis Water Plant, resulting in a water shortage.

Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves issued a statement announcing a state of emergency on August 30. However, the statement didn’t outline plans to restore the water supply to the city’s capital, nor did it provide updates on when Jackson’s nearly 150,000 residents can expect the shortage to end. Instead, they have been told they’ll be without clean water “indefinitely,” local news outlets report.

Having clean water is very obviously a public health matter: Aside from having to boil water in order to safely drink it, people in Jackson don’t currently have the water pressure needed to flush toilets or fight fires, per the statement from Governor Tate’s office. The situation is so dire that the city temporarily ran out of bottled water to hand out to residents earlier this week, CNN reported. President Biden has officially declared a state of emergency for the state of Mississippi, which means urgent federal assistance is now on its way to Jackson, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre tweeted.

It’s important to note that more than 80% of Jackson’s residents are Black—and this crisis is a painfully clear case of environmental racism. This term is used to describe “the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards on people of color,” according to Greenaction, a nonprofit organization dedicated to environmental justice initiatives. Some experts are comparing the current situation in Jackson to the 2014 water crisis in Flint, Michigan, during which the city’s primarily Black residents didn’t have access to clean water due to lead contamination for years.

“It’s not a coincidence. [Jackson] is a disproportionately Black city where people knew there was a problem,” and didn’t spend the money to fix it, Colin Jerolmack, PhD, professor of sociology and environmental studies at NYU, tells SELF. “It’s a result of a legacy of racism. You could draw a straight line [from] prior racist acts, such as discrimination, to environmental racism.”

The Jackson water crisis is only the latest example of the devastating impacts of environmental racism. It can be particularly insidious and hard to combat because there’s rarely one person to blame, Jerolmack says. It’s the result of years and years of discrimination and neglect, and people in power often rely on the public’s apathy toward racism, coupled with plausible deniability, to get away with it. “You can’t find some white lawmaker who said, ‘We don’t want to provide water to Black people,’” Jerolmack explains, but you can find examples of lawmakers who have voted against helping these very communities. “

The Jackson Water Crisis Is a Public Health Failure Rooted in Systemic Racism

Residents have been forced to boil their water for more than a month.

www.self.com

“You can’t find some white lawmaker who said, ‘We don’t want to provide water to Black people,’” Jerolmack explains, but you can find examples of lawmakers who have voted against helping these very communities. “

Last year, at least two bills aimed at helping raise money for water-system repairs died in the legislature. And in June 2020, Reeves, a Republican, vetoed bipartisan legislation designed to help residents with overdue water bills which, in turn, would have enabled the city to collect sorely needed water revenue.

In vetoing the bill, the governor acknowledged that residents "got overcharged in the past," but said the legislation would allow "politicians to say that individuals are not responsible for paying their water bill." Reeves also said there were "no safeguards in place" to ensure aid would go only to "the impoverished or needy."



This is an example of systemic racism. The white communities around Jackson and in Mississippi do not have this problem.

Not systemic racism. Systemic stupidity of local elected officials over the years.

 

[IM2]

Not systemic racism. Systemic stupidity of local elected officials over the years.

Systemic racism. Because the local leaders asked for years for the things they needed and were refused. The suburbs around Jackson that are mostly white do not have this problem. This is not because the leaders in Jackson were all just dumber than the white leaders in the rest of the state.

 

[excalibur]

Let me know when the governor has been black. Because they've asked the state for help and have not got it.

LOL

So the mayors have no responsibility. You really are silly.

 

[White 6]

Systemic racism. Because the local leaders asked for years for the things they needed and were refused. The suburbs around Jackson that are mostly white do not have this problem. This is not because the leaders in Jackson were all just dumber than the white leaders in the rest of the state.

Looks like they should have passed a bond issue and funded the required work years ago.

 

[IM2]

For some odd reason, there are some whites in forums like this who think blacks just all hurl the accusation of racism only because we're black, not because there is evidence. First, this is Mississippi, so that alone would explain the problem. But for those who cannot understand:

Jackson, Mississippi has a water crisis because our state legislature has a race problem​

The state's condescension to and contempt for the city's Black leaders isn't new and wasn't earned. But it is the root cause of this current disaster.

By Donna Ladd, founding editor, The Jackson Free Press and the nonprofit Mississippi Free Press

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves told the media this week, “I do think it's really important that the City of Jackson start collecting their water bill payments before they start going and asking everyone else to pony up more money."

As the governor gave that lecture on March 3 in his state’s capital city, thousands of homes near where he sat in Jackson were without even non-potable water to flush their toilets, and not a single home in the city limits had access to safe drinking water we could use without boiling first.
.
The Monday before Reeves’ flippant remark about the majority-Black capital city, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann threw out a telling statement of his own when he criticized the poverty-stricken city for not fixing its own water system, adding, “You remember during Kane Ditto’s administration, he did repair work on water and sewer. So what happened since then?”

Mayor Ditto's final term in office ended in 1997; people born during it are old enough to buy alcohol these days.

The real causes of Jackson's problems are deeper and more sinister and cost much more than a neglected city can recoup by collecting on late water bills.

For people not steeped in Mississippi politics, Ditto — not coincidentally — was Jackson’s last white mayor before white-flight demographic shifts brought Harvey Johnson Jr., an urban planner and infrastructure wonk who devoted $200 million to the problem, to office. Johnson warned repeatedly of a future breakdown of our aging systems in Jackson, including around the state Capitol where Reeves and Hosemann had the temerity to lecture us. This was a system, it’s worth noting, that was not exactly handed over to Black leadership in pristine shape, with nary a crack or challenge. It was already in trouble then.

But white state leadership at the time and ever since — including those whose families left Jackson after the forced desegregation of schools in early 1970 — have typically responded to the city’s Black leaders with contempt, blank stares or condescension.

Opinion | Racism caused the water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi as much as the weather did

The state's condescension to and contempt for the city's Black leaders isn't new and wasn't earned. But it is the root cause of this current disaster.

www.nbcnews.com

 

[IM2]

Looks like they should have passed a bond issue and funded the required work years ago.

What it looks like is years of southern white backlash over desegregation.

 

[IM2]

LOL

So the mayors have no responsibility. You really are silly.

What I am, is right.

 

[White 6]

What it looks like is years of southern white backlash over desegregation.

If that were the case, they would have moved the State Capital. Local leadership runs that city and are responsible for it's state of public infrastructure repair.

 

[IM2]

If that were the case, they would have moved the State Capital. Local leadership runs that city and are responsible for it's state of public infrastructure repair.

I think that the link I provided written by people from Mississippi, tells the story of how this happened. This is not about local leadership.

 

[fncceo]

In the latter part of the 19th and early part of the 20th Century, Irish and Italian immigrant populations, mostly centered around urban centers lived in deplorable conditions with correspondingly deplorable unemployment rates.

The quickly learned that jobs, housing and utility improvements were doled out by local government, They banded together in ethnic groups and elected their own to office. First as local aldermen, then mayors, then governors, and, ultimately, the Irish made one of their own President.

The initial result of electing Irish and Italian immigrants to local city office meant that city jobs, police, firefighters, and postal workers when to their own communities.

They were so successful that before long, you couldn't be a police officer, a firefighter, or a postal work without being Irish or Italian. The stereotype of the Irish cop lasted well into the last part of the 20th Century.

The moral of the story is ... if you want local government to give you things, you have to run the local government. If you run the local government and they're still not giving you things, you've been played.

 

[IM2]

In the latter part of the 19th and early part of the 20th Century, Irish and Italian immigrant populations, mostly centered around urban centers lived in deplorable conditions with correspondingly deplorable unemployment rates.

The quickly learned that jobs, housing and utility improvements were doled out by local government, They banded together in ethnic groups and elected their own to office. First as local aldermen, then mayors, then governors, and, ultimately, the Irish made one of their own President.

The initial result of electing Irish and Italian immigrants to local city office meant that city jobs, police, firefighters, and postal workers when to their own communities.

They were so successful that before long, you couldn't be a police officer, a firefighter, or a postal work without being Irish or Italian. The stereotype of the Irish cop lasted well into the last part of the 20th Century.

The moral of the story is ... if you want local government to give you things, you have to run the local government. If you run the local government and they're still not giving you things, you've been played.

Stop comparing blacks with what whites went through in the late 1800s and early 1900s. They were white and used their color to get better services than blacks got. The Irish got what they did by pushing down blacks, that was not success, that was playing the race card and white privilege.

"It must be remembered that the white group of laborers, while they received a low wage, were compensated in part by a sort of public and psychological wage. They were given public deference and titles of courtesy because they were white. They were admitted freely with all classes of white people to public functions, public parks, and the best schools. The police were drawn from their ranks, and the courts, dependent on their votes, treated them with such leniency as to encourage lawlessness. Their vote selected public officials, and while this had small effect upon the economic situation, it had great effect upon their personal treatment and the deference shown them. White schoolhouses were the best in the community, and conspicuously placed, and they cost anywhere from twice to ten times as much per capita as the colored schools. The newspapers specialized on news that flattered the poor whites and almost utterly ignored the Negro except in crime and ridicule.”
-W. E. B DuBois

I've posted the writing of Art McDonald up in here umpteen times describing how the Irish became white by doing exactly what I described. The black leaders in Jackson took the steps necessary, one spent 200 million working on the problem and warned the state years before this that problems were coming. So let's drop the lectures because what you're describing didn't happen the way you claim in the first place.

 

[22lcidw]

Stop comparing blacks with what whites went through in the late 1800s and early 1900s. They were white and used their color to get better services than blacks got. The Irish got what they did by pushing down blacks, that was not success, that was playing the race card and white privilege.

"It must be remembered that the white group of laborers, while they received a low wage, were compensated in part by a sort of public and psychological wage. They were given public deference and titles of courtesy because they were white. They were admitted freely with all classes of white people to public functions, public parks, and the best schools. The police were drawn from their ranks, and the courts, dependent on their votes, treated them with such leniency as to encourage lawlessness. Their vote selected public officials, and while this had small effect upon the economic situation, it had great effect upon their personal treatment and the deference shown them. White schoolhouses were the best in the community, and conspicuously placed, and they cost anywhere from twice to ten times as much per capita as the colored schools. The newspapers specialized on news that flattered the poor whites and almost utterly ignored the Negro except in crime and ridicule.”
-W. E. B DuBois

I've posted the writing of Art McDonald up in here umpteen times describing how the Irish became white by doing exactly what I described. The black leaders in Jackson took the steps necessary, one spent 200 million working on the problem and warned the state years before this that problems were coming. So let's drop the lectures because what you're describing didn't happen the way you claim in the first place.

The issue in politics is not the color as much as the person elected. Bravado and grandstanding do not make for success without doing the work behind the scenes to get things done. Flint and New Orleans are examples as lessons to that.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

I guess local Government has no control over local conditions right? The city has had YEARS to fix the problem and instead local Government chose to ignore it. Now suddenly it is supposed to be a Federal Issue?

 

[RetiredGySgt]

In an interview on ABC News Live Tuesday, Lumumba said the current crisis stems from up to 30 years of deferred maintenance and a lack of capital improvements to the system.

'A set of accumulated problems': Why Jackson, Mississippi, is facing a water crisis

The city's mayor says the current water crisis is a result of years-long issues.

abcnews.go.com

 

[MarathonMike]

The Jackson Water Crisis Is a Public Health Failure Rooted in Systemic Racism​

View attachment 690348

Residents of Jackson, Mississippi, started boiling their water when, at the end of July, local health officials warned the city’s water supply was cloudy. That was already an unacceptable ask, but the situation imploded this week when a local river flooded and caused problems at the OB Curtis Water Plant, resulting in a water shortage.

Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves issued a statement announcing a state of emergency on August 30. However, the statement didn’t outline plans to restore the water supply to the city’s capital, nor did it provide updates on when Jackson’s nearly 150,000 residents can expect the shortage to end. Instead, they have been told they’ll be without clean water “indefinitely,” local news outlets report.

Having clean water is very obviously a public health matter: Aside from having to boil water in order to safely drink it, people in Jackson don’t currently have the water pressure needed to flush toilets or fight fires, per the statement from Governor Tate’s office. The situation is so dire that the city temporarily ran out of bottled water to hand out to residents earlier this week, CNN reported. President Biden has officially declared a state of emergency for the state of Mississippi, which means urgent federal assistance is now on its way to Jackson, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre tweeted.

It’s important to note that more than 80% of Jackson’s residents are Black—and this crisis is a painfully clear case of environmental racism. This term is used to describe “the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards on people of color,” according to Greenaction, a nonprofit organization dedicated to environmental justice initiatives. Some experts are comparing the current situation in Jackson to the 2014 water crisis in Flint, Michigan, during which the city’s primarily Black residents didn’t have access to clean water due to lead contamination for years.

“It’s not a coincidence. [Jackson] is a disproportionately Black city where people knew there was a problem,” and didn’t spend the money to fix it, Colin Jerolmack, PhD, professor of sociology and environmental studies at NYU, tells SELF. “It’s a result of a legacy of racism. You could draw a straight line [from] prior racist acts, such as discrimination, to environmental racism.”

The Jackson water crisis is only the latest example of the devastating impacts of environmental racism. It can be particularly insidious and hard to combat because there’s rarely one person to blame, Jerolmack says. It’s the result of years and years of discrimination and neglect, and people in power often rely on the public’s apathy toward racism, coupled with plausible deniability, to get away with it. “You can’t find some white lawmaker who said, ‘We don’t want to provide water to Black people,’” Jerolmack explains, but you can find examples of lawmakers who have voted against helping these very communities. “

The Jackson Water Crisis Is a Public Health Failure Rooted in Systemic Racism

Residents have been forced to boil their water for more than a month.

www.self.com

“You can’t find some white lawmaker who said, ‘We don’t want to provide water to Black people,’” Jerolmack explains, but you can find examples of lawmakers who have voted against helping these very communities. “

Last year, at least two bills aimed at helping raise money for water-system repairs died in the legislature. And in June 2020, Reeves, a Republican, vetoed bipartisan legislation designed to help residents with overdue water bills which, in turn, would have enabled the city to collect sorely needed water revenue.

In vetoing the bill, the governor acknowledged that residents "got overcharged in the past," but said the legislation would allow "politicians to say that individuals are not responsible for paying their water bill." Reeves also said there were "no safeguards in place" to ensure aid would go only to "the impoverished or needy."



This is an example of systemic racism. The white communities around Jackson and in Mississippi do not have this pr

The water treatment plant was flooded by record level rainfall. That caused the water treatment plant to shutdown leaving Jackson residents with no running water. So I guess God is systemically racist since he sent the flood waters to Jackson's water treatment plant?

 

[AMart]

Systemic racism. Because the local leaders asked for years for the things they needed and were refused. The suburbs around Jackson that are mostly white do not have this problem. This is not because the leaders in Jackson were all just dumber than the white leaders in the rest of the state.

That's because the well run suburbs are Republican Whites and Jackson (mini Detroit) is Black Democrats that are corrupt.

 

[IM2]

The water treatment plant was flooded by record level rainfall. That caused the water treatment plant to shutdown leaving Jackson residents with no running water. So I guess God is systemically racist since he sent the flood waters to Jackson's water treatment plant?

You have been shown the racism. There will be no debating this with you.