Now
that the damage to the people of Flint, Michigan from their contaminated water supply has
been exposed, Americans are rightly outraged. The New York Times called
Governor Snyder’s attitude toward residents who complained “depraved
indifference.”
Time Magazine published a photo essay on an impoverished black child,
two year old Sincere Smith, who is suffering the effects of his bath water.
Public health officials announced that drinking water in some areas of the city had tested
at more than twice the level of toxic waste, and that all of Flint’s children
should be treated as if they had been poisoned.
Astute
commentators are calling what happened in Flint environmental racism, pointing
out that the poorest and most vulnerable communities, almost always of color,
are the ones that serve as dumping grounds for the waste of the affluent.
Whether it’s polluted water, pesticides, toxic smoke from incinerators, pig
farm refuse, or factory toxins, environmental pollutants are more likely to be
located in poor communities of color where complaints are ridiculed, disparaged, and ignored as they were in Flint, where forty percent of the population live below the poverty line and more than half are African American.
Despite
assurances from Governor Snyder that his failure to respond to the water crisis in a timely manner
had “nothing to do with race,” many Michigan Quakers are not convinced. We are quite sure
of what would happen if Ann Arbor residents turned up at City Council meetings
with jugs of foul-smelling tap water rife with floating bits of “organic
matter.” Indeed, Ann Arbor Mayor Chris Taylor pointed out that the water crisis
in Flint was not simply the result of a few poor official decisions, but can be
traced to “decades of state neglect . . . decades of broken promises, decades
of disinvestment in our communities." That’s another component of
environmental racism: a political culture of ignoring poor people’s problems.
Six
thousand miles away, in Gaza and the West Bank, Palestinians are facing a similar
crisis – for similar reasons. As journalist Ben Lorber writes: Israel has historically used Palestinian land as a dumping ground, covertly transporting waste products into the occupied west Bank, polluting the Palestinian earth and water supply, while Israeli settlers deliberately poison the water, land, and livestock of nearby Palestinian villages. Solid wastes from Israeli settlements and military camps throughout the West Bank are dumped without restriction on Palestinian land, fields, and side roads, and industry regularly moves from Israel to the West Bank, where labor is cheaper, environmental regularions are lenient and wast products can flow freely down to Palestinian villages in surrounding valleys. Today, says Lorber, as Israel portrays itself as a "green democracy," an eco-friendly pioneer in agricultural techniques such as drip irrigation, dairy farming, desert ecology, water management and solar energy, Israeli factories
Environmental racism is not just an American problem, It is a problem of "depraved indifference" of those who see themselves as dominant, entitled, and superior to others, wherever they may live. As people of conscience, our response to institutionalized racism and injustice should be worldwide, as well.
